The BBC has revealed that 24% of adverts it examined listed by landlords via online letting agency OpenRent showed said ‘no families’.
Of some 8,000 adverts by landlords listed on the site over a recent four-day period, 1,800 said ‘no families’ while 73% of the listings said ‘no pets’.
The BBC also monitored listings on Zoopla but said it found less than 1% that it monitored rejected families, reflecting how OpenRent allows landlords to write their own listings and offers tick boxes on accepting both children and pets, while those on Zoopla are only uploaded by letting agencies.
Although the BBC’s opening paragraph of its report say the OpenRent adverts mean ‘thousands of adverts for rental homes posted by private landlords and lettings [agencies] say children or pets are not welcome’ the issue is more complicated.
Reject
A landlord with a bedsit or one-bedroom apartment is entitled to reject tenants with children because their property is unlikely to be suitable for these applicants, whereas a landlord with a four-bedroom house would struggle to justify such a ban.
As this thread on the LandlordZONE Forum highlights other challenges lurk for landlords when children move in – in this case a neighbouring tenant in a block of flats owned by one landlord who had been promised a ‘quiet apartment’ but then discovered a new tenant next door had a noisy seven-year-old.
The BBC does not make it clear how many of the ‘no family’ ads it saw were for smaller, less suitable properties.
OpenRent Adam Hyslop (pictured) told the BBC that making it clear when a landlord did not accept children or pets helped tenants “prioritise their searches” and that “the decision of who to let to is entirely with the landlord”.
This will not be case in England when the Renters (Reform) Bill becomes law next year – as it will outlaw ‘blanket bans’ on tenants with children and/or pets by landlords or letting agencies.
Zoopla says the vast majority (95%) of its listings do not mention pets or children and that it had found no evidence that agents operate blanket bans on either type of tenant group.
Read a full guide to the Renters (Reform) Bill.
