A Upad.co.uk survey of tenants found that they were overwhelmingly in favour of being able to find out information about their landlord before they rented a property. Last week, Housing Minister John Healey announced that the government would be establishing a "Trip Advisor-style website" on which tenants could leave feedback on their landlord and their accomodation.
Our tenants wholeheartedly supported this idea. Asked if being able to find out what other tenants thought of a landlord before they rented, 97.7% of those responding said that it would be "very useful" or "of some use". 93.2% of respondents thought that this information would have been "very helpful" or "of some help" to them with their current landlord. 63.4% of those surveyed said they had known "nothing" about their landlord before they moved in.
Mr Healey might be pleased to know that his plans for a special website to give out landlord information should meet with approval. Our survey found that most tenants preferred to find this sort of information via the internet: 83.6% of respondents thought the information should be available via a dedicated site, while 62.3% were in favour of showing the information on lettings agents' sites. Advice centres, libraries and council offices were much less popular sources of information, all polling at less than 30% in favour.
It's when tenants were asked *why* they thought landlord feedback would be helpful that things really get interesting:
- "Landlords insist on referencing tenants - so why not the other way round?" was a view expressed several times
- a number of tenants mentioned they'd like to get information on lettings agents too
- by far the most frequent comment concerned landlords fulfilling their legal obligations on deposits and repairs
- many mentioned bad experiences in the past and concern that these wouldn't be repeated
- several wanted to know about their landlord's personality: were they nice?
- and several acknowledged the difficulty in obtaining objective opinion, one commenting "would have been interesting to get an overview, but the last people were not good tenants!"
We don't yet have any information on how Mr Healey and his department plan to run this website, or how they intend to ensure that it doesn't become a place for revenge attacks by disgruntled tenants. But one thing seems certain - tenants will be keen to use the site.
We surveyed 175 tenants between 29th Jan and 7th Feb, of whom 147 are currently living in private rented accomodation.
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