Landlords – Attack back?

Reply to the comment left by dismayed landlord at 01/12/2022 - 17:55
Perhaps we should also consider that we all respond on these pages but that this is only read by people of the same minds. so we moan and we agree mostly with what is said. The response needs to go out further. to other media websites - regardless if they are property/rental/BTL news items. on every news article that dos not cause offence.
Otherwise just sit and we all read Pauls responses. As good as they it is us reading them. Not the wider public. Not the media. Not the people who are attacking us. not the people making yet more rules that we hv to comply with. Not even most tenants who will never see our point of view. They only see the media bashing view point.

I just want to point something out about the parts in this thread.

There been discussions about coming together to good a website with requests so much that it crashes.

That's a crime. A literal on the books crime which people have been arrested for in the past. You may not want to discuss such things on a public forum.

If we feel we are such good landlords, maybe we should create a new Tenant Action Group (TAG) & we each ask our Tenants to join in support of us. At this stage I have no idea how it could be set up & run nor how we could encourage our tenants to be bothered to join in to support us on an ongoing basis (life gets in the way & all that) but if some clever marketing & IT people could find a way, Tenants voices would be better heard by other action groups, Government & the media.

re The Forever Tenant - thanks for the heads up. Much appreciated. I did not know this. In that case please do not post anything that may cause any adverse affect to the internet. Or upset any laws of the land. Ignore all my previous comments. Its a bad idea anyway. Its does seems a bit unjust that the media , Shelter, Crisis and Generation Rent get a free hand to pick on Landlords and we have to just take it. However I would not like anyone to break any laws. Would make us no better than other protest groups and we are already suffering from an image crisis. Better for the housing crisis to be allowed to peak thanks to the comments from such tenant groups and then say 'we told you so'. It is after all only the tenants who will suffer. I'll take the money from the sales (yes I am selling up asap), the tenant support groups will still get paid and issue their advice. The world will still turn.

Hello everyone,

This is my first message even though I have been reading p118 for a number of years.

I agree with the wider sentiment that public image of landlords has become unfairly skewed. I also agree that we should be providing excellent tenant service day to day and indeed any proactive landlord action to change the media narrative should be based on improving actual and perceived tenant service. If we successfully do that, I think we are more likely to get a more positive response from the media, tenants and politicians.

My starter thoughts are that the wider ‘good’ landlord community should collectively find ways to positively “self regulate” the industry. So if it’s true that local councils are not or cannot detect, inspect and root out the bad landlords or unsafe and unfit properties in the industry - should the good landlord community do that for them?

Naturally this needs wider thinking but as a starter could we set up a property whistleblowing website that reports bad or unsafe properties? Members of the public could report on it? Good landlords could do some drive by initial inspections of properties to identify possible bad properties and / or supplemented by door knocking to ask occupiers do they rent and explain what we are doing, if they do rent then ask things like are they happy with their property? Do they have any outstanding repairs, anything unsafe? Can they share any evidence, How would they rate their landlord or agency? If the house is owner occupied, they could be asked if any neighbouring properties are rented and do they have any issues etc etc

Then over time flag the website to local authorities across the country to take targeted enforcement action (criteria and evidence would need to be defined of course) and flag to media news channels.

In essence, the overwhelming message should be “good landlords help councils to root out the bad landlords to protect and safeguard tenants and improve standards’. In addition, the website overtime would help to provide factual data on the number of bad properties that truly do exist.

All thoughts welcome, these are just starter ideas, may not be perfect and some clever people out there can expand on these things or have more efficient ideas for identifying bad properties 😊

Reply to the comment left by Judith Wordsworth at 01/12/2022 - 11:08
I think it has been said before, the outcome would be that central government would put a temporary ban (which would then, very quickly, become a permanent ban) on all Section 21 AND Section 8 evictions. i applaud the sentiments but would have to say 'I'm out'.