Worried about our young people's utter lack of initiative

[ThisDandyWriter]

I work for an English letting agent and every year I'm utterly shocked at our young people (ie students) utter lack of initiative/entitlement and lack of self resilience. A few examples of the sort of things that we encounter
My smoke alarm is bleeping, why is that?
The light in our bedroom has gone out, can you send someone out to change the bulb
What does a fuse board look like?
My washing machine is smelly, I think it needs replaced
This house has got a massive damp problem as water (ie condensation) is running down the windows in the mornings

We had to stop offering an 'emergency' line (which is not compulsory) because our staff were getting calls at 2am about seeing mice, light bulbs blowing, smoke alarms beeping, boiler not working (in Aug and has an electric shower).

Today a tenant has emailed to say that she's locked herself out and we need to open the office to get her a spare key.

When I was at Uni, Google wasn't a thing, so if there was an issue, I'd call my dad and try and sort it - I very rarely contacted the agency or landlord.

Today, we have all the information at a drop of a hat, but they can't be arsed to Google or try and sort something themselves and the first stop is to email (or get their mum or dad to email - don't get me started on that). The lack of initiative is genuinely worrying.

So please, if you have kids at uni - spend a bit of time with them explaining the basics!!!!

And encourage them to actually read the information they are sent - the amount of questions we are asked which is covered by information sent out (about important things like handing in your keys, how to claim back your deposit) is ridiculous!

Well there’s far more out there about disgusting student housing and agents/landlords not doing the basics! My DD is in her second shared house and last year the agent/landlord thought it was ok to replace the kitchen (sited as not meeting fire code after council inspection) over Christmas break. They decided not to after the ‘entitled’ students asked: would there be a rent reduction during the weeks there was no usable kitchen; what guarantees for potential damage by the builders; how would the students’ belongings be protected… yea no initiatives these students 🙄.
I’m a landlord and have had all these same issues presented by professional working people who really should know better. I’d give students, first time living independently, some slack.
And do a better job - a boiler should work any time of year and mice is an urgent issue.

I was going to say - SOME young people are a bit useless but so are SOME older people! And it's not hard to give them a checklist of things they should be sorting out for themselves and things the landlord is responsible for.

I would have thought that a washing machine should be cleaned thoroughly as part of the clean a landlord does inbetween tenants. Boilers are meant to be serviced once a year too and shouldn't then break down very often, if at all.

Sounds more like the landlord/agency is useless, not "our young people" (who's our by the way).

Having had DC at uni the last few years, I think calling the emergency helpline is initiative. Because let's face it, for every issue DC used email/ office hours the response was: Mañana.

But why is that a surprise?

Grown adults have called 999 with ridiculous non-emergency stories?

Some people are attention seeking and like drama. It has nothing to do with age.

You don't need landlord approval to put up a key safe anymore than you need their approval to put up pictures. You do need to remove it when you leave and make good.

All this people .

This is what the thread is about. Not slum landlords.

oh give them a break! You didn't know better at that age, you said so yourself. They have to learn somehow 🙄

Well as the parent of a uni student and from the experience of other parents, student landlords are taking the absolute proverbial with the state of some of the accommodation. DC moved in this term, to a house that clearly had not been cleaned since last tenants left, carpets filthy despite claiming they would be replaced they were not even hoovered, boiler not working, crusty toilet, front door lock hanging by a thread, mould on mattress, overgrown yard with rats. So bearing in mind the multiples of rent that landlord is getting for 5 rooms per house per month, I really do expect better than this. So I will call their emergency line when something needs to be fixed because, I shouldn’t have to direct my DC by FaceTime on how to re pressure a boiler when she has no hot water or deal with rats in the kitchen when I am hundreds of miles away at work. Just because they are students doesn’t mean they should live in squalor and it’s not until something bad happens in a student house due to poor standards will all the handwringing happen about how they deserve better.

Well my ds was charged an exorbitant amount of his deposit at the end of his tenancy (something like £75) for an electrician to come in and change a lightbulb in a light that they hadn’t even realised wasn’t working (he could have easily changed it himself if he had). So tbh I’m all for getting the landlord to fix problems, however minor and at whatever time of the day or night, because our experience so far of student accommodation is that the landlord is only there to charge a fortune, do as little as possible and rip off young people for as much as they can get. Sorry op if you are not like this, but actually as others have said, damp, broken boilers and mice are all things that should be fixed.

An alarming amount of students get to university with good academic grades, but little knowledge of how to run a house... presumably because their parents/carers didn't teach them. I remember people not knowing how to make mashed potato (he was trying to mash a raw one), cook anything beyond warming something up in the oven/microwave, or make a bed. Changing a lightbulb would probably have been way beyond them, too.

There are also difficulties with landlords. I ended up dealing with the mouse problem in my house, getting around not having heating or hot water because of a problem with the gas supply until that was dealt with (after about a year), and a million other things, so I'd say that it's swings and roundabouts on both sides.

I'm glad it's not like "in my day" now. Some students down the road died of carbon monoxide poisoning due to dodgy gas appliances.

And FWIW, we as students could not change batteries in the smoke alarm or change a light bulb on a ceiling lamp 30 years ago as the ceilings were too high for anyone to reach them, even standing on a stool. A 6'5" policeman did ours for us when they came round after we thought next door had been broken into.

They're still shitholes, ones I wouldn't live in, but DD and three friends are now paying £2400 a month for a 3 bed (her bedroom is the living room) terrace in a NW city.
DD's bedroom has vertical blinds with wide slats. She isn't allowed to put curtains up. One of the slats is missing. I told her to ring the the agent who told her to get one from the end of the blind, which would still leave her with a 15cm gap that anyone could see into her bedroom from outside.
They had to start paying for this house in July, but they knew the students wouldn't be moving in until late September. The photo of mould is in DD's bedroom, and don't get me started on the decorating and how clean it is.
What makes it worse is this is in one of the better student areas and in far better condition than a lot of other student houses. They signed for it in December to try to get somewhere decent.

I don’t think it’s necessarily surprising but maybe more alarming that these are the top 10% academically and we give incredibly clear instructions on the page with our out of hours emergency contact number on of what constitutes an emergency and what can safely wait until office hours.

Nothing anyone can say will convince me that someone can justify waking someone up at 11pm because of a spider on a tumble dryer, even if they do need the clothes inside for a night out.

Carry out minor repairs? Oh come on. You know very well that if a tenant dares to attempt a repair of any sort a landlord would have their deposit.

The trouble is, google can be a bit of a drama lama. My son and his housemates had a roof leak near the electric box and google was having a fit. They rang the emergency number and were told someone would be out the next morning which they did. They also phoned me. We agreed they would not run computers or tvs and make sure as much as possible was turned off but I wasn't 100% happy but didn't know what to do. I was quite impressed they had looked in the folder provided and phoned the emergency number. That is what I would have done.

On the other hand they dealt with maggots in the wheelie bin appropriately the other day from just googling. No calls to landlords or parents required.

I agree mice are not a 2am emergency but it's not great to find you have them indoors. I have lived in various houses over the years and the only time I have seen mice indoors was when cats brought them in and you couldn't blame the mice for that! Similarly condensation. A well heated and ventilated home doesn't have this problem. It is hard to tell from your post whether this is something the landlord or tenants need to solve. You could at least give them tips and then get someone round to assess if the problem doesn't resolve. We had condensation growing up and mold it was due to crappy windows and lack of air bricks. Later when I was renting, water was getting in behind the rendering and causing damp. That was a landlord rather than a tenant issue but I didn't know what the cause was until they sent someone round to look.

Students pay through the nose for student housing, so the least you can do is expect them to be a bit more needy than fully fledged adult tenants and be understanding and helpful when they are.

Bloody awful.

Some have poor initiative. Some have lots of initiative. It has always been that way. The OP is simply noticing the ones without - we never notice the "normal" invisible people as they don't stand out. I'd love to know what proportion of students the OP thinks don't have initiative - probably a minority.

Nail on the head. Students are just seen as people that landlords can fleece more easily than adults.

I think this is 2 separate issues.
Some..yes, some young people seem to lack initiative, we see it in the workplace. The expectation to be spoonfed every instruction. Some will be leaders, others followers. Leaders will look for solutions to problems, followers want it sorted by others.
The issue of landlord responsibility is another, when people are paying premium prices, yes they will expect value for money including access to repairs / advice from those providing service 24/7.
Landlords wanting to opt out of that can give written information and realistically priced fees that reflect lack of service.

Worse person on my team? A man in his 50s. Best? Woman in her 20s. I'm prepping her for my job.

I have to spoonfeed him like a baby. And he's been there years longer than me. I've zoomed past him and he still can't work out why...

My DD is in a student house, its pretty shit and daggy as you'd expect. They had a gas leak last year, a bird trapped in the extractor fan and several water leaks. DD usually whatsapps us with a message or video before they call the LL but we're not local and paying substantial rent so not unreasonable to contact the letting agent about it. Not at 2am though. If it was something we thought they could sort out, we would of course advise/give instruction.

I did say some....not all...there will always be some that are less unproactive with lack of drive.

Fire alarms in rentals should either be on the mains in new or heavily adapted properties, or be sealed for life units. If there's beeping tenants should not be replacing any batteries, the whole unit needs replacing (by the landlord or LA).

And do you provide the dehumidifiers? Or a tumble dryer? It was infuriating being told whilst renting that we couldn't dry clothes inside. When we had no outside space, no tumble dryer, and shit storage heaters.

Yes, I do. Landlords who aren’t contactable outside of office hours suck. what is she meant to do until ‘office hours’?