Property Investing

If you are unfamiliar with the recent ruling by the government to implement stricter landlord regulations in order to offer tenants greater protection against deposit loss and poor property maintenance, then you have only heard the half of it.

I thoroughly agree that there are landlords out there who abuse their powers over tenants and fail to fulfil their responsibilities. But the latest developments from the government feel more like an opportunity for tenants to ‘landlord bash’ than actually offer tenants better letting relationships…

Take this recent development.

Aside from giving tenants a Housing Hotline where they can seek advice against problematic landlords and the introduction of the National Landlord Register where tenants will be able to see how well prospective landlords maintain their properties. The government has also proposed launching a tenant dedicated website where tenants will be able to supply reviews on landlords and their property lettings – both positive and negative.

And it is here where everything becomes complicated…

Of course there will be genuine negative reviews from tenants against unscrupulous landlords who are at fault, but there will also be an influx of negative reviews from tenants who simply disagree with their landlords about issues which are actually law abiding.

All you need is to have one disagreement with your tenants and this website opens the doors to having your reputation tarnished for good! In some ways such a website could even make some landlords too scared to act on their legal rights in case their tenant tarnishes their name to the world.

It truly is a catch-22 where without the proper regulation this website could easily become a landlord bashing location which only works to drive bad landlords under ground whilst penalising law-abiding landlords instead…

May be it is just me and maybe I am viewing this all wrong, but I do strongly feel that this site could do more harm than good to the rental market where new tenants come to find a good landlord only to be painted a negative picture.

Wendy xx