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

[HumanNotAnAsset]

I’m not saying all landlords or agents are terrible. But having rented for years, I’ve lost count of how often tenants are treated as problems to manage rather than people with lives, stress and basic dignity. Delayed repairs, poor communication, dismissive language and an attitude of “that’s just how it is” - all while someone is paying a significant chunk of their income for a safe home.

AIBU to think there’s a real empathy gap in the way renting is handled and that tenants are too often seen as numbers rather than humans?

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.

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.

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.

@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

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.

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

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 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.