Hello - I am a journalist writing a piece for The Evening Standard about competition for rental properties/rooms in London.
I am looking to speak to landlords who have received large numbers of enquiries for your property listings, and how you handle the volume of responses. I’d also like to discuss how you ultimately choose a tenant when faced with so many interested parties, and whether you have changed your selection process for tenants (e.g. introducing interviews or questionnaires).
Please message me if this is you and you’d be happy to share your experiences.
I am such a landlord, but I won’t message you as I don’t trust journalists. However, hope your article makes mention of the s21 proposals, the effect of which for me at least is to change the way I sift through enquiries (I had 87 in one week last month) to exclude people I think could potentially be difficult to evict in a future where s21 is scrapped. this means is I have someone who is by nature itinerant (e.g. foreign students) then I prefer them over e.g. a family as the students will at some point leave of their own volition and so I have safety knowing over the long term I will get the keys back. the rent was above UC housing upper limit so benefits tenants were not an issue for me but they would fall into same category as families, I would consider but if I have someone whose stay will be limited to a couple of years I would prefer them.