Local Authority PRS Teams

OccupID is the full solution for Local Authority PRS teams to identify:

(1) Unlicensed HMOs

(2) Overcrowded Properties

(3) Empty Homes

(4) Council-Tax Fraud

(5) Breaches of Prohibition Orders

(6) Illegal HMO Conversions

Through an innovative, data-driven approach that is faster, cheaper, and more reliable than traditional methods, such as relying on reports from tenants or EPC reports. It is created by the Marks Out Of Tenancy team but is separate from our review platform.

About Us

We're a social impact organisation funded by Impact on Urban Health (part of the Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation)
We have a rental review platform with over 9,000 tenant reviews of their experience renting from landlord and letting agents
Work with Local Authorities to identify housing-related offences in the PRS to reduce harm to residents and increase council revenue
Produced illegal eviction data research recently shared in parliament
Data partner to Safer Renting and Justice for Tenants

The Solution

As we know, the private rental sector faces many challenges that harm residents and reduce local authority’s budgets.

The problem is it’s challenging to identify properties where these offences are taking place, because doing so often relies on reports from tenants and landlords (who lack incentives to report the problems occurring)

A better approach is to gather occupancy rate data on a per property basis, to establish the number of residents and non-family households living within it.

For example, it’s much easier to identify an unlicensed HMO by knowing there are 5 occupants from different households living in a property that does not have an HMO licence.

Occupancy data enables the identification of many housing-related problems such as:

Our Methodology

We compile data from over 70 different sources regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority to calculate the number of financial identities linked to a property address.

This enables us to provide an estimate of the occupancy rate for all UK properties, by identifying the number of residents who have listed the property as their address on any one of said data sources.

The image above shows some of the occupancy rate estimates we calculated for a local authority we worked with, showing the number of identities attached to various properties over time, and indicating which of these has an HMO licence. 

Using our data, they were able to identify 15 unlicensed HMOs and 5 Empty Homes from the first door knock after engaging with 65 properties we flagged as a likely cause for concern.

What We Offer

By working with us, we’ll gather occupancy data for any property of your choosing, as well as any relevant reviews from our rental review platform. 

You can choose specific properties, streets, postcodes, wards or entire local authorities. 

We’ll then provide the occupancy data for all properties requested, typically with a 1-week turnaround time.

Pricing

Our pricing is customised to each project we deliver, to reflect the customised nature of our research. 

In your discovery call where you can ask us questions about our approach, one of our friendly data consultants will be able to provide you with a customised quote.

Does this sound useful? Want to learn more?

Click here to book a slot in our calendar and let's talk.