This information should not be interpreted as financial, tax or legal advice. Mortgage and loan rates are subject to change.
Categories: prs | renters reform bill
Survey data from a rental services provider show that 7 out of 10 tenants in private rental accommodation have never heard of the Renters’ Rights Bill, with 75% not understanding how the upcoming legislation will impact them.
Housing Hand questioned 1,700 private tenants about their thoughts on the Renters’ Rights Bill. Although the bill is almost universally known about by private landlords, due to the huge impact it is set to have on their livelihoods, tenants proved to be significantly less knowledgeable about it.
This may not be surprising for many, since private landlords and their tenants have fundamentally different priorities. What may be common knowledge to one group could be mere background noise for another.
However, the Renters’ Rights Bill has been widely publicised by the government, mainstream news, and large tenant advocacy groups, so it is hard to call it an obscure piece of legislation.
Alarming answers
The results of the survey indicate that an alarming portion of private tenants have a shaky grasp on the basic principles of renting property, beyond the topic of the Renters’ Rights Bill.
46% of renters said they don’t know how deposit protection schemes work. 33% don’t know the consequences of late rent payments, and 58% had no backup plan if they found themselves unable to keep up their payments.
34% could not explain what a guarantor was, before they were asked by their landlord to provide one.
What this means for landlords and tenants
While landlords may feel a more immediate financial impact from it, the effects will quickly trickle down to tenants, so it is important that both groups are prepared for its arrival.
The “significant knowledge gaps” indicated by the survey could have profound impacts on tenant-landlord relations after the Renters’ Rights Bill comes into law, unless there are concentrated efforts to increase public awareness.
Graham Hayward from Housing Hand said:
With the Renters’ Rights Bill set to deliver the biggest change to renting in a generation, the potential for knowledge gaps to cause issues grows exponentially.
As such, we are calling on landlords and other accommodation providers to use our new research to help underpin more informed, smoother tenant relationships.
There is a significant opportunity here for landlords and others in the sector to work with renters for the benefit of all those involved in the rental process.
Because few tenants are aware of the forthcoming removal of Section 21 from law, many may continue to operate under the assumption that landlords will retain the power to issue ‘no-fault’ evictions.
