Real Estate

Tenants’ lives are changing. It is time landlords caught up


For a young (or, in my case, middle-aged) professional, renting is no longer a staging post on the path to the magical property ladder. For myriad reasons — a lack of access to Bomad, a nomadic career, riding out the Brexit superstorm, divorce, planting a flag in a school catchment area or an old-fashioned fear of commitment — today’s tenants can be anyone, of any age, renting for any length of time. It is time landlords and the rest of the rulemakers caught up.

We renters in many global cities often spend a higher share of our income on housing than mortgaged homeowners. Landlords make healthy returns while our savings shrink, pension pots lie empty and our lives are limited by clauses in tenancy agreements.

There are ways to redress this that cost nothing but a change of attitude. We want the stuff of life as much as anyone else. We want to redecorate; we want some say over how long we can call a place home; we want to modify interiors to suit our lifestyles; we want to adapt to growing families. And we want to have pets.

Richard Davies of Chestertons, a UK estate agent, spotted this gap between standard rental conditions and renters’ aspirations back in 2014. “We had corporate clients who helped Americans relocate to London, especially to areas with good schools. But a lot of these families had dogs and we struggled to find suitable properties that would accept them,” he says.

A YouGov poll from the same year highlighted the scale of business that the UK’s pet-shy landlords were at risk of losing. Of nearly 1,000 private tenants, 77 per cent believed that owning a pet would damage their chances of finding a place to live, yet 46 per cent had been determined enough to keep a pet while renting (the data didn’t specify whether the 2 per cent who lived with rats were willing co-habitants). Which means, according to the Pet Manufacturers Association’s annual census, that renters are as likely to be pet owners as the rest of the population.

This calls for creative thinking. Chestertons worked with Lets With Pets, a campaign set up by the Dogs Trust charity to convince landlords to consider non-human tenants. It offers guidance on freehold and leasehold arrangements, insurance, a “pet deposit” and adding a pet clause to a contract — including name and description of the furry/scaly/feathered tenant. For maximum reassurance, it recommends a pet curriculum vitae and references from previous landlords.

A CV for a dumb animal? No problem. If I am happy to brag about anything, it is my dog’s training achievements and special talents.

Likewise references from landlords I beam with pride as they recall impeccable behaviour, give or take an adorable breach or two. And I want to see my dog’s name on my tenancy agreement for the same reason I keep an up-to-date photograph in her photo-optional EU pet passport.

Why would a landlord bother with extra administration? Because it pays.

Pet-owning tenants tend to stay for longer, which means fewer void periods. They look after the property, not least because they are likely to have paid a higher deposit. And someone who takes responsibility for a helpless but demanding creature may also be the safest caretaker of their four walls. The same goes for tenants with children, of course.

In New York there is a hack, or “waiver”, for private sector tenants: even if animals are not allowed under a tenancy agreement, a private landlord has only three months to act — so long as the animal has not been concealed. It is a test of faith, but if your pet can behave well enough to escape notice or complaint in just a few weeks, you are both home and dry.

Whether it be styling, tenancy periods or choice of companions, excessive restrictions are not just down to landlords. Inflexibility is a structural problem. In bigger blocks, head leases drafted at the time of building can set the conditions of letting agreements for decades. In the UK, mortgage lenders impose limits on tenancy periods, with more than three years considered a deed. But as the rental sector grows, so the attitudes of developers, lenders and insurers must evolve.

Renters can no longer be expected to put the stuff of life on hold. One person’s sense of home might stem from the freedom to install the light fitting of their dreams; for another, the security to plan their family’s future in years instead of months. My needs are even less complicated. For me, home is where the dog is.

Maria Crawford is a House & Home commissioning editor

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