Accord Mortgages has found that 72% of tenants value the flexibility of renting and 60% believe private landlords provide choice in the housing market, challenging the more uniformly negative picture often heard in the debate around the sector.
The lender’s new No Way Home? policy paper draws on a survey of 4,000 UK adults. Among respondents, 40% described their landlord as reasonable and the same proportion called them approachable, while 29% said their landlord was responsive.
Those findings come as the private rented sector faces a supply test. A landlord who is weighing an exit is not likely to be persuaded by sentiment alone, but a more accurate account of tenant experience is relevant when policy is designed to retain responsible providers. This follows Residential Landlord’s report on rental homes leaving the market, which examined the pressure created when let properties are sold.
Accord records a more positive tenant view
The paper records a clear split between the terms tenants most often associate with landlords and the less favourable descriptions. Just 9% called their landlord negligent, 8% unresponsive, 7% unreasonable and 5% exploitative. It does not mean poor practice is rare enough to ignore, but it does suggest that broad claims about the sector can obscure the experience of many tenants.
Accord also said 56% of mortgage brokers reported landlord clients were reducing their portfolios, while 53% said clients were leaving the private rented sector altogether. The lender’s No Way Home? report argues that responsible landlords should be supported alongside first-time buyers if the supply of homes is to improve.
Tom Simpson, managing director of homes at Yorkshire Building Society, said the findings showed a “different picture” among people with direct experience of renting, while standards still had to be maintained and poor practice challenged.
Supply remains the harder policy question
The tenant results should be read with care. They are survey responses rather than an audit of property condition or compliance, and a positive relationship with a landlord does not remove the need for enforcement where homes are unsafe. Equally, a policy response that treats all owners as the same can make it harder to keep compliant homes in the market.
The timing is important. Costs, tax changes and the Renters’ Rights Act are already influencing investment decisions, so policymakers have little room to separate tenant protection from the availability of homes to rent. The useful test is whether new rules improve standards without accelerating the loss of landlords who are meeting them.
Opinion
Accord’s survey is not a case for lowering standards. It is a reminder that tenants can value the choice and flexibility supplied by responsible landlords at the same time as they expect firm action against the minority who fail them. The next round of rental policy should be judged on both outcomes: safer homes and a market with enough of them.
