I used to be a tenant once. I had to rent property for 3 years.
I recently became a landlord, not out of will but by horrible circumstance with a parent dieing and leaving me with a property.
I decided to try advertising on here, and the constant ridiculous one-liner responses, poor english, and showing absolutely no evidence of having read the advert properly, leads me to immediately reject their enquiry - if they can’t show basic reading, writing, and comprehension skills when enquiring about a place to live, why would i expect them to be any better as a tenant?
My advert could not be clearer. At the very least i’d expect the tenant to be able to write a simple polite query, confirming they fit the requirements and therefore would like to arrange a viewing. THat’s what i would do. Instead, I get this:
1st query - not even a single message given.
Query 2 - “I want house for 1 family both are employed”. End of message.
Query 3 - “Would like to view house”
4. “Can I view this and I’m on pip and universal credit that okay”
5. “Hello , I’m interested on this property”
6. “This property still available or gone?”
Only 1 person - 1 - read the advert and put my ‘codeword’ at the top of the message so I knew he’d read it properly.
Am I asking too much? Has the standard of cognitive skills declined this much that I should just lower my expectations entirely? Where are all these ‘generation rent’ professionals all desperate for property?
Maybe it’s because my property is in Scunthorpe which is hardly a thriving economy, but even so with good links to Doncaster, Grimsby, Hull, i’d expect at least a decent population to be looking for housing, who can also read/write and can communicate properly.
I have found that the youngsters (sorry to be ageist) that have grown up with social media tend to respond with the type of one liners you describe. I have to applaud your use of a codeword
Agree. I still can’t get used to Facebook and suchlike. Everybody seems to be talking in one-liners to each other. So unsatisfying. I just don’t feel I connect to people.
that is amazing. No wonder so many cannot find a place to live. I could not handle all that . I put my last one thru an agent to avoid such an event . Whittled down to five and I chose one
Raj, I noticed most of your replies are from unemployed people. Did you indicate that your property would not suit people on benefits? There is an option to do it. It may help a bit. Unless you do accept benefit claimants. But in this case be prepared for replies like that. I noticed they don’t make an effort. The ones who do are always professionals used to hard work.
The only exception that I consider is people on disability benefits. They deserve to be given a chance. But it depends on their attitude. When I see a strong sense of entitlement and confrontational attitude, I always leave it.
Respect should be reciprocated between potential tenant and landlord on here. It all boils down to individuals characters. I have come across when making enquiries about a property, rude, obnoxious and down right arrogant potential landlords who I wish couldn’t string a sentence together as what they try and communicate just doesn’t make sense. So, at the end of the day, like I mentioned all down to individual character.
I’ve never seen a need for a codeword, but do use the very useful Openrent auto reply to ask 1/2 dozen questions for them to clarify their cicumstances. When they reply to this, I deal with them, as I have the information I need to inform my decisions.
My favourite one-line response was a guy who simply wrote “great place, its mine!”. He did provide a couple of nonsensical answers to the screening questions including that his monthly income was £40,000 (this was a £1,300 flat). I checked his linkedin profile that showed 2 weeks ago he had updated it to say “looking for new opportunities”, i.e. unemployed. I was about to say that openrent should make the screening questions smarter e.g. if someone says their monthly income is £40k then reject this answer and make them re-submit, but probably by leaving the questions “dumb” they are doing us a favour as these time wasters are more obvious
The opposite problem here. Looking for a place to rent in Scunthorpe but can’t find a landlord that can’t reply in English or take down their listings when they’re no longer available. If you’d like we could mutually solve each others problems because I’m getting pretty desperate in finding a suitable place.
Raj10, I think you should check the wording of your adverts with a solicitor or one of the landlord associations. I think the text youve shown above could potentially be deemed in breach of equalities legislation.
it’s irrelevant now anyway, i unpublished the listing last week as the house is sold subject to contract.
I’d be curious to know why you think it may breach any equalities legislation?
I just dug up this article on the matter:
It concludes with this:
"A 2020 YouGov survey found that 63% of private landlords either operate an outright ban on letting to tenants receiving housing benefit or say they prefer not to let to this group.
But this ruling means that letting agents and private landlords will have to drive out old discriminatory practices for good, so that renters who receive housing benefit are no longer barred from renting any privately rented properties.
Landlords and letting agents can still, however, reject applications for housing on the basis of unaffordability, even if the applicant is a tenant which will rely on Housing Benefit or Universal Credit."
seems alright to me then.
Actually if i were to relist for e.g. if the house sale falls through - I would accept people on disability benefits - but not those who were claiming benefit in between jobs, for example. Disabled/vulnerable people on those type of benefits would presumably have a fairly stable/‘guaranteed’ income stream from the government to pay for housing etc. so maybe these would actually be safer tenants in some regard.
But to your question, clearly there is some argument to say it indirectly breaches the act, but also a large majority of landlords are then also breaching it if that’s the case, and I can understand why. When I was a renter I had to jump through all kinds of hoops and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want any tenant in the property to have a provable/relatively stable income stream to avoid all this mess: My tenant has lost his job and can’t pay the rent. What should I do?.
I just select the tenants that I think can pay and won’t wreck the place, unfortunately I only seen to select working professionals for a number of reasons , as I once got bitten by someone on HB , they were claiming and fiddling at the same time and it cost me £1375 and all the judge said was £10 per week payment schedule!
Yes, I think it could be challenged on ground that the exclusion of part time working indirectly discriminates against women, who are more likely to work part time if they have child care responsibilities and statistically the numbers would support that argument. Also the judge wouldnt care that everyone’s doing it as they only try the case in front of them. Shelter would likely provide the renter with free legal support.
