The Bidding Process

By ‘bid’ we simply mean to apply for a property. Every week you can bid for one or two properties depending on the council or housing association. Bids will be accepted for properties from Wednesday or Friday though to midnight of the following Monday.

Bidding is simple: - you can either bid by

Phone

calling the ELLC Choice Homes bidding hotline. The system is full automated in 15 languages and you are only charged for a local call. The number is 0845 650 4125. Simply select your prefered language and follow the online instructions.

Internet

You can register your interest in a property on this website by logging in either seeing what properties are available from your home page or clicking properties and filtering the properties that way.

Kiosks

We have approximately 50 kiosks in and around London. They are placed in local service centres, housing offices, the head offices of some of our partner organisation. You can use any kiosk to bid - so if you live in Waltham Forest but work in Hackney why not see what's available from one of the Hackney offices. You can even use the kiosks on our sister services in Thurrock and Southwark.

Text

You can now choose to bid using text messaging on 0778 148 6526. Messages are charged at the standard rate* and texting a bid is simple.

Enter:

• Your Housing Registration Number (Reg No), followed by a space
• Your date of birth (DOB) or memorable date, followed by a space
• The property number (Property No), or if you are bidding for two properties, both numbers separated by a space.

Or, if you are bidding for two properties: 28975 23/06/1966 15001 15002

These are just examples, you must enter your own details. Please take care to enter your details correctly, we do not accept responsibility for text messages that are not received. When your message is ready send it to 07781 486 526

You will receive a text message back confirming your bid, but cannot withdraw bids using our texting service.

* Please note we cannot guarantee that our texts will be included in any free text bundles supplied to you by your provider, some will include our texts some will not depending on the provider.

The Magazines or Newsletters

Don't forget when you want to bid by phone or text you can view the properties in one of our magazines or newsletters. These can be found at the various service points which you can see on the specific organisation page in the left hand menu bar or if you have problems getting to a distribution point contact your council or housing assosciation.

Bidding

When bidding you will need to have to hand:

• Your housing registration number
• Date of birth of the person who completed your household's housing registration or memorable date for those who have changed their date of birth
• The reference numbers of the property/properties you are interested in.

• you are eligible to bid
• the properties you are interested in are appropriate to your registration, age or even disability for some organsiations and properties

The website, kiosk, text and hotline can tell you where several households have bid for the same property and what your position in the queue will be if you decide to bid. Your position may subsequently change if other bids are placed and the system will enable you to transfer your bids to other properties should you so wish.

Check your Bidding History

You can check your bidding history here on our website.  To view details of your past bids, including their final ranked positions, simply login and select the dates of the bidding cycle you are interested in. The queue position of each bid tells you how many bids placed by other customers on the same property were ranked ahead of your own.  Bids are ranked according to your council's allocation policies.