Taylor Scott International News
The vast majority of people who rent a home in London don’t bother to check the landlord’s credentials leaving them open to dodgy landlords, new research suggests. Some 92% of London renters take what they can get and despite typically having to pay for the privilege of having a background check conducted on themselves, they don’t perform the same due diligence on their potential landlord. The study, by London removals firm Kiwi Movers, also found that highly competitive property marketing is cited as the number one reason for not doing checks on landlords and overall only 20% of UK renters do any sort of check on their landlord before agreeing a tenancy. Renters in Liverpool most likely to check out a landlord online before renting. . A third of the city’s residents say they’ve performed a background check on a landlord before agreeing to move into a property. Some 31.63% in Swansea would check the landlord, 26.83% in Southampton, 24.33% in Leicester, 24.07% in Glasgow, 23.37% in Sheffield, 23.3% in Brighton and Hove, 23% in Cardiff, 21.73% in Portsmouth and 21% in Birmingham. The research also found that women are more likely than men to background check a landlord at 24% compared to 15% of men and 44% of women would prefer to rent from another woman. Also one in five believe renting from an agency meant they didn’t need to worry about landlord credentials or history and but 53% of those that found negative information, in the form of a review, news article or details of legal issues, said it influenced their decision to rent from that person. Just 8% of London residents do any kind of background check on their landlord, 62% below the national average of 20%. London residents are also the least likely to act on information about a potential landlord, with fewer than half (44%) of them saying negative the information had influenced a housing decision. In other words, the need to secure a property was greater than their need to rent with confidence. One of those who prefer a woman landlord is PR manager Billie Gianfrancesco who has been renting in London since 2008 and is on her fifth rental property. ‘In my experience, female landlords tend to work more closely with property managers or put a system in place whereby tenants can resolve any issues quickly without needing to bother or chase them,’ she said. ‘I've found that male landlords prefer to try and resolve the issue themselves first. This often means repeat visits in person, which makes any tenant nervous, and a greater recurrence of botched DIY repairs. In one situation an upstairs bath was leaking, and our male landlord visited four times attempting to fix the issue himself. Because of this, the problem wasn't resolved for over a month. I faced a similar issue a couple of years later with a female landlord, she… Taylor Scott International
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