How To Apply

We advertise all our homes on Devon Home Choice, a Choice Based Lettings system (CBLs) run in partnership with local authorities within Devon.

Before you can bid on a property, you need to register and be given a banding according to your housing needs. Once this is done, you will need to log on every week and bid on properties.

New available homes are live from midnight on Wednesday until midnight the following Monday (No homes are listed on a Tuesday). The list of homes will change each week. Cornerstone will not always have available properties to bid on.

Choice based lettings schemes are designed to introduce an element of choice for people applying for council and housing association homes and existing tenants who want a transfer. People are given a priority banding based on their assessed housing need, and they bid for properties which are advertised by landlords.

Banding is assessed and decided on by the local authority, and we don’t have any say in this. If you believe the banding is inaccurate, you should contact the relevant local authority. Click here to find your local authority.

Our properties sit within five local councils.

Exeter City Council
East Devon
District Council
Mid Devon District Council
Teignbridge District Council
West Devon Borough Council

There may be restrictions on the property that you do not meet.

For example:

• The number of people per bedroom is exceeded
• There is an age restriction in place
• The property requires a local connection

Check the details of the listing. Initially, please contact the local authority/Devon Home Choice for assistance.

We are unable to provide the property number until you have successfully completed the bidding process and we have contacted you to arrange a viewing. This is because tenants are still living within the property, and we would not want their privacy disturbed while they are moving out.

When the advert on Devon Home Choice is live you can place your bid. When the advert has closed, the system will sort all of the bids in order of banding (highest band and longest length in that band at the top).

We then work our way through the shortlist, from top to bottom, although occasionally we will give additional preferences to households that have been given a homeless duty by their local authority or to applicants requiring specific adaptations that a property already has. Depending on the number of bids received for this property, the process can take some time.

We will try to arrange access for you to view the property in the first week that it is empty, provided that it is safe to do so.

It is essential to keep an open mind during the viewing, as it is unlikely that you will see the finished product. We will provide you with as much information as possible about the work we will do before it’s ready to let.

We ask for one month’s rent in advance before signing up, and the handover can go ahead.

We require all deposits to be made by bank transfer. You must make sure the payment has reached our account before your sign up appointment. It is a condition of your tenancy agreement that rent and service charges are paid in advance on the first day of each month.

We will arrange a sign up appointment when we know an anticipated date that the property will be ready to let. This can vary depending on the amount of work required at the property, but you will be kept up to date by our Lettings Officer.

We do not normally provide carpets or other floor coverings. If there are floor coverings when you move in, these are gifted to you, and you will need to replace them if they become damaged. We may also ask you to remove them when you move out if they are not in a suitable condition for the next tenant.

Gifting refers to items left on the property, such as carpets from a previous tenant or a shed in the garden, which are included with the property but are not something we will maintain or repair.

Social rented homes are generally older homes or new homes built using government grants or funding to support the development of much needed homes. The government grants we receive to build these homes mean rents are much lower than both affordable and private sector market rents, normally around 50%.

Affordable rent allows social housing providers to charge up to 80% of the local market rent.