One in 10 renters with children say they face rental discrimination

I rent out reasonably high standard 2 & 3 bed houses with gardens, so suitable for families with children.

I’d say that about 50% of my portfolio have kids and the more there are, the more wear and tear I expect.

Some younger tenants didn’t have any kids when they moved in and now have 3, some of the older ones now have grand kids staying with them on a regular basis. Providing that the tenants look after the place and pay rent on time, and let my tradesmen in to do repairs. I deal with it.

I don’t discriminate between someone that has kids and those that don’t other than affordability, can they afford to pay the rent and I wouldn’t ask them to leave if they had kids after moving in.

I leave finding a tenant up to my letting agent and they normally have quite a few booked for the same day viewing and I pick whoever I think is the most suitable for the property on the information she gives me.
I’ve only once rejected them all and asked her to conduct more viewings. Never refused anyone because they have kids.

I can’t believe that only 5% of tenants with kids can believe that their little cherubs have damaged properties. I guess that they have never tried to remove or paint over felt tip pen drawings on the walls.

I have a few tenants on benefits. Most but not all were not on them when they became my tenant. I don’t advertise as no DSS (or housing benefit as I think it’s currently called) but, It’s not my tenant of choice as I have better options to chose from and hopefully my properties are priced out of their reach. Due to possible issues if they become a problem tenant it’s going to cost a fortune in court to get them out and you have no chance of ever getting your money back. Luckily all of mine are mostly ok, sometimes a bit behind on rent, but seem to catch up slowly after a bit of prompting.

Luckily in being a landlord for over 30 years, I’ve never yet had to go to court to get a house back. After the RRB comes in, I may be saying differently.

With the RRB coming in this year, I will be more selective on tenants. When more and more landlords sell up no one is going to want the, don’t want to work benefit tenants as they have better options to chose from.

even more restrictive when you have a house in a SL area. The council assess the size of the rooms and tell YOU the max numbers of occupants you can have. Then you consider the ages/sexes of the kids in the prospective family and work out that sharing is not possible ‘according to the occupancy/sharing rules’.

Yet of course, a family of 7 squeezed into two hotel rooms or temp accommodation in two bed flat is perfectly ok and a totally cost effective alternative…

no one has overt blanket no DSS/children policies.

It just works out that at the point of application there were others that applied first and met the required affordability criteria…lets face it there are practically zero properties of any size that now rent at exactly the LHA rate.
The bigger the house, the higher the rent. If you are working and able to support a large family knowing the rent will be higher then fine. If you have a large family but have capped income then you will always struggle.

A lot of large 5/6 bed houses are now being converted to flats/HMO/Supported accommodation anyway as there is simply more profit in it – so the chances of finding larger houses are a major problem.

Ask the Home Office – they were absolutely desperate to find large houses for all the Afghan families (some with 2 wives and multi kids). Where are they all now?

“Discriminate”, I just get sick of this word.How about 100% of landlords feel discriminated. Your property , you have who you want, end of story. I could continue but I might be further discriminated against or the speech police will be knocking.

Dual standards here. It’s ‘discrimination’ for landlords to take children in account when selecting tenants yet Local Authorities and the legal system gives them more rights, e.g;

https://www.tenancydepositscheme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/A-guide-to-deposits-disputes-and-damages.pdf

Number and age of occupiers – the more bedrooms and occupants, the higher the wear and tear.
If you are letting to a family with children, factor that in too. Scuffs and scrapes are unavoidable in normal family life. A property occupied by a single person should see far less wear than a family of four, so bear this in
mind when it’s time for tenants to check out.

From my 20 years experience, that is absolute nonsense. This is again trying to make everything about a tenant is a victim.

I have tenants that are so unreasonable with their behaviour then fabricate they feel threatened again making out they are the victims when their behaviour were so unreasonable.

They must be evidence before they can make blanket claims.

So 9 in 10 don’t feel discriminated which is appears a good response, and it’s not surprising the 1 in 10 may come across as entitled so use the victimhood excuse of child discrimination when it may be down to the size of flat, the sheer numbers applying for the property, politeness and attitude of the applicant, or simply relative affordability compared with their monthly outgoings.
Bearing in mind the local authorities DO discriminate in favour of parents so who is going to house those young mobile taxpaying childless professionals looking to move to skilled work where it’s needed?

Is it discriminatory to prefer tenants that are less likely to cause damage to a property? It is called having a bit of commercial acumen. Most landlords are not charities, and view BTL properties as a business. The idea is to achieve as high a profit/gain as possible.

Headline suggests they face discrimination but the text says only that the ‘feel’ discriminated against.

Not the same thing.

Reply to the comment left by Ryan Stevens at 10/04/2025 – 11:24Exactly that. It’s down to risk factor. We should be allowed to accept the most risk averse tenant in order to limit our maintenance costs. Exactly like insurance company’s who discriminate against landlords on risk factor. I am trying to get renewal quotes for my building at the moment and am being told that underwriters won’t provide cover. Can I claim discrimination? I doubt it.