Is Marks Out Of Tenancy Really Bad News For Landlords?
There is a certain type of email which arrives in the Marks Out Of Tenancy inbox all too often - they all read more or less the same; a landlord is unhappy that we have published a review from a tenant, they say the review is full of lies, the tenant was awful and has an axe to grind, the website is terribly one-sided and why don’t landlords get the chance to review tenants?
Are they right? Is Marks Out Of Tenancy just a platform set up by vindictive renters to bash landlords? Or did we actually create this place because we want to improve the sector as a whole, including for landlords themselves?
How Good Landlords Benefit From Using Marks Out Of Tenancy
Most landlords are honest, decent people who provide good quality housing for millions of households across the UK. We know this and we salute you, good landlords!
As we see it, our job here is to help bring good landlords and good tenants together via honest customer reviews of a service being provided. Reviews are everywhere - from buying a new phone to ordering a takeaway, most of us wouldn’t dream of making a purchase without a glance at the business’ star rating or reading some customer feedback.
You may find it useful to scan through the Legitimate Interests Assessment which lives on our Privacy Policy page. It describes who benefits from the review process and how landlords can use customer feedback to make improvements.
- Potential future customers benefit from reading previous customers' experiences renting from landlords.
- Potential future customers benefit from reading previous customers’ experiences living in specific rental properties.
- Landlords benefit from reviews by using previous customer feedback to make any adjustments to their operations or practices.
Choosing a place to call home is a massive financial decision; many tenants will be looking to enter into a relationship with their landlord which could last for years and see the transfer of many thousands of pounds - so it is only natural that they want to find out all they can about the property, area and landlord before signing a contract.
A Few Bad Apples
Make no mistake, these landlord reviews are already happening, in informal ways and in informal spaces on social media, the forums of renter’s organisations and just between friends at the pub. But there has been no formal, widely accepted place for gathering reviews together, until now. In the absence of a place to read trusted reviews of rental properties, prospective tenants are left to search blindly, going on hearsay and rumours about this landlord or that property, constantly afraid of crossing paths with the infamous ‘rogue landlord’.
The papers are full of such stories, families forced to live in crumbling, mouldy properties while their cruel, uncaring landlord ignores their calls for months at a time. This portrayal, only getting more popular as more and more people turn to the private sector, not only sells papers but it also risks tarring all landlords with the same brush.
The well-publicised few bad apples give the vast majority of landlords a bad name and unfairly paints them as a menace to society.
Balanced, Fair and Secure
What we provide at Marks Out Of Tenancy is a free and simple right of reply for landlords and letting agents. If these reviews are going to happen, surely it is better they happen on a platform where unfair criticism can be answered.
On Tripadvisor, for example, the snappy comeback from a business to an unfair reviewer has become a genre of news article in its own right, examples here, here and here. This is a perfect example of how a robust, open and fair review platform can benefit both customers and service providers.
Landlords and letting agents can sign up for a free account and once registered will receive a notification when new reviews are written about them. You can have your say, replying to tenant reviews, answering criticism and if necessary setting the record straight, in a public open forum.
Reviews also pass through a filter to screen for foul language and slurs and any review can be flagged to moderators for a thorough check. As paying customers, tenants have a right to review the service they receive, and we provide a platform where that can happen in a fair and open way with a right of reply from the provider.
We believe that positive, constructive feedback from previous tenants helps good landlords attract good tenants. And open, honest back-and-forth removes the ‘rogue landlord’ stigma that tars so many decent hard-working providers in the private rental sector. We want to help good landlords stand out from the bad, and many are already using Marks Out Of Tenancy to do so.
If you wish to sign up as a landlord or a letting agent, you can do so using the links below.
Marks Out Of Tenancy conducted a survey of our users to see why they signed up and left reviews. The results show that many tenants are signing up to leave a positive review. But many more are having a negative experience.
So is Marks Out Of Tenancy bad for landlords? Only if you’re a bad landlord.
Tenants have the flexibility to choose and are using Marks Out Of Tenancy to search for good properties and landlords.
