Recent Survey Discovers UK Landlords And Tenants are happy!
Four Out Of Five Tenants Happy
With Their Landlords
The majority of tenants living in private rental sector (PRS) rented properties have nothing but good things to say about their landlords, according to a survey conducted by Saga Home Insurance.
In a poll of UK tenants conducted by the insurance company, 77% of tenants who responded rated their landlord as either ‘good’ or ‘excellent’.
Fewer than 8% of tenants, (1 in 10) described the quality of service they received from their landlords as ‘poor’, which the insurance firm claimed to be contrary to popular stereotypes.
The survey surmised that UK landlords are largely a morally sound, ethical group of business people!
However, 56% of the tenants polled by Saga still identified room for improvement in their tenant-landlord relationships. With:
- 23% of tenants complaining about hard-to-reach landlords
- 21% of tenants had reservations about the quality of tradesmen used for repairs.
The insurance firm also spoke to landlords themselves about their relationships with tenants, and the biggest obstacles to a cordial co-existence with their tenants were:
- Late rent payments cited by 37% of landlords,
- Damage to rental property – 32%
- Failure to provide notice when vacating rental property – 20%.
Finally, the insurance company also discovered that at least 10% of landlords, an alarming one in ten, had not paid tenants’ deposits into one of the three the Deposit Protection Schemes currently in operation, which as well as being illegal, can result in problems when tenant eviction becomes necessary.
Saga’s head of home insurance, Sue Green, commented on the survey results, saying “In the age of housing shortages and escalating rents, landlords have been getting some bad headlines, but the research shows the extent to which this portrayal is unfair. The vast majority of landlords are conscientious and ethical, although tenants do believe more can be done which is why we have released a guide with practical tips to help them improve their ethical credentials.”
