According to new research there are a significant amount of private landlords failing to keep their rental properties up to a safe and habitable standard, with one in five UK tenants describing their existing renting conditions as a “nightmare”.

A study by Help-Link.co.uk found around 740,000 rented homes in Britain are in a ‘poor condition’ and pose a “severe threat to tenants’ health”, which include category 1 hazards such as severe damp, rat infestations and even risk of explosion.

Help-Link’s landlord study also discovered that:

• 41% of tenants are currently living in properties suffering from damp
• a quarter will be without functional heating this winter
• Building faults = 33%
• Water leaks = 30%
• Damaged windows = 20%
• Unwanted pests = 12%
• Broken fire alarms = 10%
• Tenants not receiving their full deposit back = 37%

More alarmingly, after raising issues with their landlords tenants found that it took (on average) seven and a half weeks for landlords to fix problems.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of these statistics can be attributed to

• spurious claims from tenants,
• the fault of the tenant,
• tenants making it difficult for landlords to access the property,
• a break down in communication between the landlord and their tenant.

Thinking back to this Summer, it reminds us of the Somerset Property Network’s campaign; where a freedom of information request was submitted to North Somerset Council for a breakdown on the 754 ‘tenant complaints’ that they claimed they’d received 2014/15, which backed up their implementation of a Selective Licensing scheme in Weston-super-Mare town centre. It actually turned out that at least 20% of these ‘complaints’ were related to absolutely nothing to do with property problems in the first place.

And this is where the NLCE.co.uk comes into play.

Free online maintenance and repair tracking tool for private renting tenants

This system creates a paper-trail immediately. Suddenly, what that does is eliminate the 750 complaints that North Somerset Council got and once they do this, if you (the landlord) don’t answer it they can then escalate it to the NLCE. That means that for every single one of your tenants, you have a system that all you’ve got to do is give them this card and say if you have a maintenance issue you simply report it to them through that.

Those interested in becoming part of a forward thinking group of pro-active landlords & agents who are dedicated to PRS best practice should visit www.nlceuk.co.uk for full information.

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Free online maintenance and repair tracking tool for private landlords