to think that renters get a raw deal

[Catza]

I am in a quite an interesting position as I am currently buying a house but need to rent in the meantime.
I noticed that the treatment of renters by EAs is vastly different from buyers. Nothing about my circumstances changed: my earnings are the same, my savings are the same, I have the same job and I am the exactly same person. Yet.. when I contact EA to view a property, they are polite and helpful. When I contact one to enquire about a viewing of rental, they treat me with high suspicion, write almost confrontational emails with a long list of demands and generally make me feel like a second class citizen.
OpenRent which I have used many many time in the past has done downhill massively as well. Landlords who book viewings but don't provide property address and then disappear. Many are "away next week" and promise to get back to me, then ghost even after chasing. This morning, I had to report yet another landlord to OpenRent for failing to respond.

If anyone has been in a similar situation, did you feel this too? Or am I being a bit too sensitive due to normal house buying stress?

AIBU = I have never experienced this myself
AINBU = yes, I also feel like I am being treated poorly as a renter by EA at the enquiry stage.

I was renting for a couple of years while my divorce went through. Yes, you are correct,

but it’s a buyers market at the moment- lots of houses for sale and few buyers. They are polite to you because they want to sell houses.

renting is a different story - lots of people want to rent and very few places to rent.

Yes I agree.
Also if you are a tenant I noticed different behaviour from various handymans, or anyone who comes to do some repair, even British Gas etc.
They treat me as renter always poorly with high disrespect , rude attitude like I m not important enough to be taken seriously.
One handyman who came to fix shower even told me the loose tiles don’t need a new grout as it is only rented property so no big deal.
Plumbers not really interested in repairs and fixing or just botched jobs and or just poorly patched up.
However if I m owner as I was in the past before I sold my flat, any engineer or handyman treated me ok.

Because onca you buy a house thats it. End of problem for the estate agent. With renting the problems are only beginning. There are bad renters out there. Bad landlords too. So estate agent has to vet carefully.

From the estate agent's point of view, if you're a buyer then you're a customer. If you're a renter then you're not the customer, you're the product the estate agent is selling to their actual customer - the landlord.

I rented about 15 years ago and the EAs were awful. I was corrected by one posh woman (when I said I would like to rent the property) that i should say I would like to be “considered” for the property , as the decision was theirs. It made me feel so low and like I was begging. Awful. Renters today are tomorrow’s buyers and I never returned to them when I wanted to find a home to buy.

I have found they are only nice to the buyer at the beginning of the process. After the offer has been accepted, they are firmly in the camp of the seller as it's them who is paying the EA's bill.
Haven't rented for some years but I remember them being shitty. One EA tried to make me responsible if the pipes burst - always read the contract! - and when I met the landlord he said he was as outraged as me. They took the clause out and the pipes never did burst but still. Bastards. The lot of them.

I absolutely understand and I don't mind answering questions. It's the attitude that's the problem. Enquiries can still be made politely.

It's disgusting how poorly renters are treated. Some estate agents will ask for all sorts of documentation to "prove" you can afford the rent. It's crazy, and this certainly isn't the norm in other countries. If you like the property, you sign the contract and that's pretty much the end of it.

Class system in action, imo. It's awful and will likely die out as more and more people choose to rent long term.

This is happening to us, even though we are in shared ownership.

My DD has finally been accepted for a house, she's had to pay £181 for the checks to go through. Her Landlord is radio silence on the reference, so it looks like it will fall through. She's overcrowded now her DD is going to high school and her house is now in serious disrepair. It wasn't when she moved in seven years ago.

Being able to afford the rent is pretty important.

That's the law. And the changes coming in this year there will be more of it

We have a burst pipes clause - because a tenant turned the heating off and went on holiday in winter for 3 weeks, he came home to frozen/burst pipes and massive water damage. Never underestimate the stupid decisions people make!

She needs to report that disrepair to her local council's housing team

When I was trying to buy afew years ago I was messed around d so badly.

Cancelled viewings.

Once they even denied a viewing had been booked in the first place when no one showed up to show me a house- then refused to rearrange the viewing because an offer had been accepted- basically they'd accepted an offer just hadn't cancelled the viewing with me.

Just bad attitudes all round.

I was not impressed with the estate agents. This made it difficult in who to choose to sell my own house because most had been so bad.

Maybe it's changed now, but I think they're just bad all round.

I mean, how have you only just noticed this? I rented privately on London for 14 years beyween 2000 and 2014, everyone who has rented has a clutch of "you'd have to laugh or you'd cry" horror stories. Tenants are treated less like people and more like convienient mortgage paying units.

Oh god, I don't. Not at all. But I am guessing you paid or at least claimed on your insurance? As I renter, I doubt I would have been able to get insurance for that. Might be wrong, I didn't look into it. I wouldn't have minded the EA putting in a clause "leave the heating on for an a couple of hours a day if you leave the house" but I didn't think I should be responsible for a pipe potentially bursting when I had no idea what condition the pipes were in, if they were lagged etc.

The whole thing is a mess for both sides. I’d hate to be a landlord, at the mercy of awful tenants. Equally I’d hate to be a tenant at the mercy of awful landlords. There are both. I think everyone has become far more anxious and sceptical about everything and this is the result.
You are quite right tho that rudeness is never acceptable.

Yes yanbu. Renters are treated appauling, my agency gave me a new tenacy and tried to change the dates without even consulting me and then grumbled when it had to be edited to the correct dates. wouldn’t of minded but I pay a month ahead and they were trying to take 20 days off it and pretended it didn’t matter thats over £500 I would of lost for no reason.

Re burst pipes most modern heating systems have a frost setting that will automatically kick in if the temperature inside falls below 5 degrees. The old burst pipes cos you were away issue is very much a old central heating/no central heating thing.

It is a fact that tennents do not treat the properties they live in as well as home owners. I used to work in lettings many moons ago in a former lifetime and I can say with some confidence that (anecdotally at least) that for every crap neglectful landlord who tries to keep entire deposits or levy additional chargers for spurious reasons there is an equally crap tenant who skips town owing rent and leaving the place in state that can only be described as outright vandalism. As a business we did not want to deal with either crap tenants or landlords and avoided most like the plague once identified. Most private landlords did give a shit about the fabric of the building and would not just casually allow leaks or serious defects to cause long term very expensive damage. Most also wanted a happy tenant as they stay longer (fewer voids and change over costs) and the last thing they (or we as a business) wanted was being called up several times a day due to an unaddressed broken boiler or washing machine. Most of the landlords I dealt with owned a single rental property that more often or not used to be their own home before they got married/had kids/moved for work etc and were planning on using their property as an income during retirement given the collapse of final salary pension schemes and the uncertainty on relying underperforming stocks and shares. A balanced supply of both private and social housing rentals underpinned with strong protections for both parties is required.

But you do need to prove you can pay the rent!
Landlords don’t rent out of the goodness of their heart, it is a business and of course you have to take reasonable steps to ensure the tenant can afford to pay the rent every month.

As a renter you are expected to behave well in a property.

As an owner you also don't have to behave but you're the one who'll suffer if you dismantle the roof.

The thing I found bizarre (renting between houses again) was they’d say “and you’ve got references?” And I’d say “well no we haven’t, we were homeowners” and they’d say oh alright then 🤣 like it’s actually that easy to get through their systems

I do think perceived money plays a big role. Estate agents are often taught to overly influence their customers and take charge including often telling mistruths. When faced with someone who they know is beyond their fluff, they fold. Renting to ex home owners is a very small example of this

a few years ago I sold my flat to a aristocrat hedge fund manager. The difference in the way the estate agent deferred to him was astonishing.

I'm not in the UK and have rented three properties and been offered another one. Not once was I asked to provide proof that I can pay the rent.

100% agree. Renting is a nightmare. In a similar position to OP at the moment and the difference in treatment is stark, even with a letting/estate agent who do both rentals and sales!