Report asks landlords – Do you trust your tenants?
Many would argue that for landlords, if you want to have peace of mind. We thought that we’d therefore conduct an investigation into the how trusting the relationships between landlords and tenants are.
Four core questions were asked:
- How much do you trust your tenants (on a scale of 1-10)?
- Would you trust your tenant to house sit your own home?
- How often do you visit your tenants?
- Has any tenant property damage occurred in the last three years?
We got a sample of 300 landlords from around Britain. We also got a load more data such as landlord age, location and so on to see if we could distinguish any correlations. We found that in the main, UK landlords predominantly distrusted their tenants especially when it came to the house-sitting question – two thirds of landlords did not trust their tenants to house sit, which is perhaps understandable.
We saw that predictably, any landlords who had experienced property damage by tenants tended to be much less trusting with 42 percent of those suffering damage being the least trusting and only 11 percent the most trusting.
We could also see that there was a correlation between frequency of landlord visits and the damage that a property had sustained. Of those landlords who visited their properties every week, 5% suffered damage however of those who visited annually, 40% had experienced property damage. We can hypothesize that either more frequent tenant visiting means a better landlord-tenant relationship, or in fact the fear or prospect of a landlord visit encourages tenants to be more careful so as to avoid having to relinquish their deposits.
Finally, there was another correlation between trust and wealth. The wealthier the area, the more trusting landlords tended to be, as wealthier areas tended to have much higher rent prices. We can see that certain parts of the South East which have the highest trust levels average between £1000-£1350 per month whereas the lowest trust area, Northern Ireland has a very cheap monthly rent of £550. From this we can see that it’s either a case of class and education divisions, or that people who pay more are more conscious of keeping their properties in better condition.
London was the one anomaly in all this as it has a very complex demographic and socioeconomic structure and as such the London rent was higher than the rest of the UK however landlord trust levels weren’t. Further research would be needed to get an accurate picture of the London situation.
Just Landlords would suggest that you pick a tenant that you trust first, as this is crucial if you want to avoid property damage and costly landlord insurance claims having to be made.
You can read the full report here, Just Landlords White Paper.
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