NLA survey puts housing down the list of tenants’ election concerns

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Housing issues:

A recent survey
carried out by the National Landlords’ Association (NLA), the body
that represents 41,000 landlord members, says that the results “give
the lie” to the clichéd view that all landlords are “dodgy”
and treat their tenants badly.

It seems that along
with much of the rest of the population, Brexit, not housing, is the
Number One issue of concern for Britain’s tenants in the
forthcoming general election. This is followed by climate change and
the environment, and education, with housing coming fourth on the
list as highlighted by the survey.

The results would appear to support previous evidence that private sector tenants are on the whole satisfied or very satisfied with the way their private landlord treats them. In fact private landlords have consistently scored higher on the satisfaction scale than do social housing landlords (councils and housing association) in numerous studies.

Jeremy Corbyn
launched the Labour Party’s general election campaign with a
scathing attack on “dodgy landlords”. But, the NLA’s survey of
tenants shows that housing is not the most prominent issue on the
average tenant’s mind, ranking only fourth, followed by
immigration, the NHS, police and crime, tax, transport and the
welfare system.

The findings show
that, contrary to the mantra constantly peddled by the popular press
and some politicains, most tenants actually enjoy a cordial
relationship with their landlords. When they were asked how confident
they were in their current landlord or agent’s professionalism,
nearly a quarter answered “very confident”, with 69 per cent
marking them 7 or above, on a scale of 1-10. Only 3 per cent said
they were “not confident” in their landlord or agent’s
professionalism, says the NLA.

This data was
corroborated by other findings over a number of years where
consistently over 85 per cent of tenants say they have a positive
view of their current landlord. In this survey some 68 per cent
admitted that they had “never had cause to complain”. A further
16 per cent noted that while they had registered a complaint, the
landlord or agent subsequently “resolved the situation to my
satisfaction”.

This, says the NLA,
perhaps reflects the fact that landlords have resisted the temptation
to raise rents over the past year: nearly three-quarters of tenants
reported that their rents had “stayed the same” while some even
revealed that their rent had actually fallen over the past 12 months.
Furthermore, 86 per cent of tenants had never been served with either
a Section 21 or Section 8 over the past five years.

Richard Lambert,
Chief Executive Officer of the NLA, commented:

“The private
rented sector is not the big political issue that some tenants’
groups claim it to be. The idea that tenants and landlords are
constantly engaged in some kind of bitter dispute is just another
example of fake news.

“When tenants go
to the ballot box to cast their vote next month, housing won’t be
top of their agenda. That’s because, as the survey we commissioned
reveals, the majority of tenants are perfectly happy with their
rental property and perfectly happy with their landlord.”

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