Letting agents must up their game

We all know the property market isn’t working properly – with first-time buyers struggling to get on the housing ladder, price hot spots in certain cities pushing people out and rents rising at ridiculous rates.

Yet despite the cost of renting, more and more people are in private rented accommodation because it’s still more accessible than a mortgage.

Indeed research suggests that a third of millennials will never own their own homes.

So at the very least this is one area of the housing market which you would hope has its act together.

Well, undercover research by Which? investigators has shown otherwise.

We sent out researchers to five cities – Bristol, Edinburgh, Leeds, London and Manchester – to assess the conditions of flats for rent versus how they were being described in listings. And we asked the letting agents pertinent questions to make sure they were following health and safety guidelines to the letter.

What we found was shocking. Twenty per cent of the homes had damp problems and letting agents seemed ignorant about what needed to be done to resolve the issues and the impact of damp on people’s health.

Eight out of the 30 view- ings our researchers undertook were rated as “poor” for answers to property maintenance and repairs questions, half of the agents were unable to provide information about a property’s boiler, and only one in three scored “good” for their knowledge of life-saving carbon monoxide alarms.

Basic stuff really, but the agents seemed to think just saying the landlord would fix the problems before the tenant moved in was enough reassurance.

In fact, tenants should make sure repairs are made a condition as a special clause in a tenancy agreement to ensure they’re carried out.

And many of our researchers felt they were pressured to make a decision by agents there and then – two of them were asked for £1,000 plus in a deposit despite not being able to see all the rooms.

Tenants need clear and accurate information before moving in to rented accommodation – and there are clearly real issues with agents trying to rent out properties that are simply not up to scratch.

With so many people reliant on renting, letting agents need to up their game – and fast.

Send me your consumer queries to askalex@which. co.uk