To think landlords and letting agents often don’t see tenants as people?

In my experience a lot of problems are caused by hoity toity agents who dont know their job and treat tenants like a lower form of life.They forget that they are merely employees and service providers.

I have an elderly relative who rents. The bath had a history of disrepair and the agent tried to charge her £1000 to replace it. I soon put him straight on the concept of depreciation of assets. We threatened to report the agent to their regulator for the bullying and harassing tone of their communications. They did other wrong things like failing to protect their deposit (Something we can still sue for) and employing a coboy workman who completed a fake EICR form. Another thing we did was to find out their client base by making a note of every house they rented out over the past few years. The names of the owners can be discovered from the land registry.

Somehow they would not be wnating us to wite to their client base to advise them of the errors and corruption of the so called agent they were trusting with their asset. Since we threatened to blow up the agent to the regulator, leave bad reviews on all thereview sites and across social media they have kept their heads down and their mouths shut. Agents are reptiles.

When my Nan died, we inherited a property. My DH painted it throughout and put in all new carpets and blinds. It looked lovely. We rented it out to a young woman with two children. My DH was a very good landlord. He did a course and where we live, you have to pay to be registered. My DH died last year and I couldn’t face taking on being a landlord. So we served notice on the tenant. We did everything correctly. She refused to move out and stopped paying rent.

Eventually she moved out. The house is a right mess. It breaks my heart to see the state she’s left behind. It was pristine when she moved in.

Some tenants don’t respect the property or see their landlord as a real person.

In my experience some tenants don’t see Landlords as ‘People’.

With the rent reform bill coming in more LL will be selling up and there will be less rentals in the market. As a KL myself I feel that tenants have more rights than LL. They can stop rent payments and be antisocial and the LL needs to go through the legal channels which costs and take time, to get them out. If I did not pay my mortgage I would be repossessed, if a tenant dies not pay rent they o lt get a CCJ if the Ll Perseus it. The BTL market is dying.

@MidnightPatrol indeed -my current landlord popped by to pick up some mail that actually in the end was just Xmas card from years ago as he was passing but we mentioned something in passing that hadn’t been sorted in 8 months relating to the outside and he had no idea there was even an issue - despite the agent being told4 times that landlord ‘needed to know’ - this is on an expensive biggish property too

I work in property management and I assure you, the majority of the time the tenant is to blame. Nonetheless they are treated with more respect and benefit of the doubt than they give that’s for sure.

Goes both ways......we have a new tenant, paid first 2 months and hasn't bothered the last 3 months....fabulous (not).

The previous tenants, wonderful young married couple who were here for PhDs and when they were leaving we took them out for a lovely meal to wish them well, and rather wonderfully they had bought small gifts for our children!

There are good and bad on each side.

Letting agents are awful.

Never dealt with one that wasn’t a complete nightmare.

On more than one occasion even the landlord employing them was in utter despair at their uselessness.

I live in a HMO. My landlord, who owns a lot of HMOs in London, is really good, and his agent is lovely. Problems are dealt with, and maintenance issues sorted, very quickly, in most cases within 24 hours. My previous landlord was also nice, and so was her agent. I moved because I wanted to live in a different area, and my end of tenancy was dealt with without any problems. Either I have been astonishingly lucky, or there are more decent landlords than this thread might suggest.

You know the broken glass and dirty underwear was from the previous tenants, not the landlord, right?

The landlords of HMOs were the worst IMO. One threatened my house mate (came round with a baseball bat) because she'd been off work sick for a while and so submitted a benefit claim as her sick pay dropped. Turned out he'd been falsely claiming benefits in false names/previous tenants names for the property, so he was getting double rent - what we paid and what benefits paid - for each room, and he was angry because he was worried he was going to get caught.

Had quite a few who would just let themselves in to the property when they thought we weren't in - not fun when I worked nightshifts and thought we were being burgled.

They were crooks, but there were so so many who seemed to think that maintenance of their properties was optional, and they were happy to leave us without heating or with water leaks while they waited for their mate who was a 'handyman' to have a look, never willing to pay the actual cost for the actual qualified trade. Who would paint over mould and blame it on the tenant. Who would charge for end of tenancy cleans but never actually get any one in to clean.

A lot of the landlords seemed to think that if we were in HMOs it was just a place to crash, that we all had family homes somewhere we could disappear off to - no recognition for the fact that it's actually just how many people live because the cost of renting is so high.

The amount of times I've seen tenants advised on here to stay beyond notice, months on end, in order to get assistance with housing... is that treating a landlord like a person not a business?

No.

The relationship between a landlord and tenant isnt a personal one. Its business. Its regulated by law. Each should stick to the regulations and thats it.

Every single tenant I've had has treated me like a landlord, not a friend. And vv. Thats it.

It’s a difficult one because I realise there are crappy examples on both sides - we rent at a high end level and the only issues I’ve ever had involved either the agent being poor at managing any issues or trying to make extra money by doing things like charging for an extra clean when I had Molly maids in only the day before - I actually contacted the landlord myself on one occasion and asked him to come round the house with me - agents were trying to charge £520 for another clean - landlord agreed with me that it was absolutely mint and very pissed off at them

Rented a house and realised from 1st day was gonna be trouble as bins filled with unbagged rubbish including glass and dirty underwear. Garden overgrown, kitchen cupboards with dirty items in them. Painter was painting dining room wall when we entered the property!

Had huge amount of major damp and mould letting agents kept sending someone round to paint over and we kept saying that is not the solution! In end after they refused to do adequate work and my youngest daughter kept vomiting regularly made complaint with MO involved. Letting agents issued section 21 saying landlord could not afford repairs (despite owning portfolio of properties). They then had cheek to refuse to return deposit saying we’d caused damage by not ventilating property and cobwebs were left which caused cleaning charges. If any they were very high up i thoroughly cleaned before leaving and left in cleaner condition then when moved in. Deposit scheme allowed me to get deposit back.

Managed to buy own place and no damp or mould issues! daughter is not regularly sick either.

Will be good and bad tenants same with landlords but if decide to make a profit out of letting out properties should respect your tenant and look after them.

I think that there needs to be more regulation for both tenants and landlords.

Tenants need protection for their home but equally so do landlords for bad tenants who can leave properties destroyed.

I’m a landlord and it is a business as I have no personal information about my tenant, I do know via the letting agency that they treat the property well and in the 7 years they have been in the property, have always paid on time.

In return, I always ensure repairs are done as soon as possible and refrain from rent increases as I want to keep them.

i have experienced the opposite and was happy to increase the rent as they were awful and quite frankly happy to get rid.

So in my opinion, it’s a two way transaction and if both parties are reasonable individuals then it’s great but if one party isn’t, then it all goes horribly wrong.

They've been forced out by the Starmer regime. He thought all the madcap assaults on LL's would help the tenants. In the end they won't help either the tenants nor the LL's imo.

I’m a landlord , a good one , but in all honesty I don’t know my tenant , the agents find them and paperwork is sent through . I obviously know basic information about her but I don’t know what’s going on in her life . I’ve put YABU because tenancy is a business not a personal relationship. Having said that I am always accommodating if something goes wrong eg her wages are late or wants to change payment date . I also do repairs immediately.

I’m a LL (10 years) and I think the problem is…. Tenants want to treat the property as their own home/personal property and when they cause damage they lie (100% of the time without fail), they don’t respect property agreements they have signed up to (ie maintain the garden, ventilate property, report maintenance in a timely manner), whereas the LL is looking to protect their asset from damage. I agree rents are paid but when a tenant leaves there are £xxx of damage and unreasonable heavy handed wear and tear, this means if a property is rented for 5 years the landlord after tax paid has to pay the equivalent on average 2 years rent to put it right. I hate to say tenants are creating their own rent inflation as LL have to cover the costs for the repair, damage and maintenance issues they cause…. Above and beyond what is typical for a privately owned house.

Being a landlord is a business. As such, no I'm not interested in the minutae of my tenants lives - that's literally not my business. I do like to keep my properties in good nick because they are my assets, so I'm quick with repairs and I want my tenants to be happy because I'd rather keep tenants than have constant turnover. But the relationship only works for me if the property is being treated well and the rent is being paid on time. And if there were to be a problem with the rent I would expect to hear about it from the tenant before the rent is due. Someone who's always paid on time previously and is proactively communicating with me would get more slack than someone I have to chase. Honestly though, I've only had 1 bad tenant in over 20 years.

YABU like anything, there are good and bad.

My first flat was let by a lady who had just that one property, and she made sure we were happy and any repairs etc carried out were prompt. No letting agent as she dealt directly with us.

My next flat was via a letting agent. The landlord had a portfolio of properties and did not even live in the UK. I had so many things go wrong. The radiator in the lounge had a hole in so didn't work, and had a knock on effect on the rest of the heating and hot water. I was constantly topping up the boiler. There was a leak in the bathroom ceiling. I had to throw away lots of my own items as they got mouldy due to damp coming in through the walls. I was running de-humidifiers constantly.
I would report all this the the letting agent. Someone came out to measure up a new radiator. and nothing happened after. Apparently the landlord was just ignoring the letting agent when they were pressing him about it.

Dunno. But an increasing number of tenants see landlords as sub-human and treat them accordingly.

You can’t really have it both ways, tax and legislate them out of business but still expect them to be around. If you’re a renter, likely to need to rent in the future or ever likely to need to rent your own property out (work in a different city for example) and you voted for Labour, it’s a massive own goal.

It’s their actual business FFS. You think they shouldn’t run it at a profit?

I'm glad that finally they are putting more laws in place for tenants. We rented for 10 years and the landlord accused us of not cleaning the house before we left. We did clean it to the best of our ability and yet he still kept our deposit. He would bodge things so they kept breaking and we had mould in the bedrooms from a leaky roof. We had a baby there and his moses basket had green mould on the bottom of it. He said it was our fault for not ventilating the house but we had the windows open every day. There was no bathroom window and the fan was crap so the damp would fill the house. It was shit but seeing the reports on the news it wasn't nearly as bad as how those poor tenants had it. Finally we got out and bought a new shared ownership house and it's like paradise in comparison.

Works both ways. I inherited a house with two tenants already living in it, and I was very mindful of their situation. The rent they were paying was extremely low, to the point where it was actually costing me money, but I didn’t want to start making demands so I made no increases. From the outset, I was honest with them and explained that I might need to sell the house, but that I would give them plenty of notice.
Over a year later, I decided that selling was my only viable option, so I gave them six months’ notice, which I later extended. That’s when the problems began. One tenant stopped paying rent and made physical threats towards me. On the day they finally left, they deliberately left all the taps running, every light switched on,the heating left on high; every window left open and they left rubbish dumped outside. Thankfully I went straight to the house after they’d gone that day.
Situations like this highlight how few rights landlords now have over their own properties, and it’s one of the main reasons I ultimately chose to sell.