How do I bid for a property?
If you are interested in renting a property you can make one bid for the tenancy at no cost:
- On the Sheffield Property Shop website
- By telephone on 0114 293 0000 (Sheffield North and Sheltered Housing) or 0114 205 3333 (Sheffield South)
- At the Sheffield Property Shop – 18-20 Union Street, Sheffield S1 2JP
- At any First Point or Area Housing Office
- By post, to the Sheffield Property Shop
New properties are advertised each Wednesday and you can make bids for them up to the following Tuesday at 4pm. When you place a bid during the bidding cycle does not in any way affect who is offered a property.
What happens to my bid?
Once the Tuesday 4pm deadline has passed, we sort all the bids for each property and offer it to the person with the longest waiting time or oldest priority and who meets the lettings criteria. However, we may not offer you a property if you owe us money, have a history of anti-social behaviour, or have not kept your current property in good condition.
When you bid we will ask you to rank your bids in order of preference. If you have made a number of bids and are successful for more than one property, we will offer your preferred one. If you have not ranked your bids, we will telephone you and ask which one you prefer. If we cannot contact you by telephone and have no record of your preferences we will decide which one to offer you.
Once an offer is made we will not consider your bids for any other properties until you have decided whether or not to accept the property offered.
When will I know if my bid has been successful?
We will call or write to you, but only if your bid is successful.
How will I know what happened to the properties I bid for?
We publish details of all lettings in a weekly Property Shop newspaper, which is available free from any local area housing office, First Point and the Sheffield Property Shop - or on the Sheffield Property Shop website. It tells you how popular particular properties are and the length of time you may have to wait for a similar one, helping you make more realistic bids in the future.