Thank you to everyone who answered our Feedback Survey last month. I have been reading all your responses with great interest and they will help my web developer and I as we work on a major upgrade to the Landlord Law service.
We had 359 responses in total which was pretty good – thank you if you were one of the people. Here is a bit of feedback on the responses we had:
About you (collectively):
Most people (59%) were private landlords with 11% letting agents and the rest being a mixture of advisers, property managers, lawyers and the like. Those of you who are landlords had mostly been landlords for over 10 years (44%) , with about 20% having been members for 5-10 years and the rest under 5 years or new.
You mostly live in the South East / London (43%) with about 13% in the North, 11% in the South West, 10% in the Midlands, 10% in the Eastern Region, 2% in Wales and the rest elsewhere (eg Norway, Ireland and Dubai).
Only about 30% manage HMO or shared properties.
60% of you manage your properties yourself with 17% not being a landlord and the rest (23%) using a letting agent or property manager.
47% of you own less than 5 properties, 16% owning between 5 and 9, 6% owning between 10-19 and about 7% own 20 or more.
Most landlords (61%) collect rent by standing order with 12% using a letting agent and 2% collecting it by cash or cheque. Most landlords seem to have few problems with this other than a few late payments and the inevitable issues with benefit payments.
About 40% of respondents were now or had been recently a member of my Landlord Law service.
Landlord Law Feedback
(These questions were only answered by Landlord Law members)
Most people (44%) found the site by a general search on the internet or can’t remember. Most of you joined between 2010 and the end of 2017 but some 40% of you have been members since before 2010. 18% of you had been a previous member when you joined.
Most people join because they want to use the site for long-term support (47%) but a lot of you (27%) joined because of the tenancy agreements.
You seem to use the legal articles and FAQ most (69%) and the tenancy agreements (58%), but the other forms (36%) are also very popular as is the forum (28%), the eviction guide (21%) and our guides and trails (29%).
Generally, people seem to have been attracted to Landlord Law due to the quality of the information provided, the documents, the quick responses to forum questions, and the clear and easy to read (‘plain English’) content. People also like the breadth of content and the fact that it is regularly updated. And the fact that it is a personal service and not a big faceless company.
The main problem is that it is sometimes hard for people to find things until they get used to the system (but we hope to improve the navigation in our new site).
We popped in a ‘Net Promoter Score’ question which gave us a score of 66 – which is pretty good and puts us in the top 50-75% of companies.
Hopes and Fears
We had a few open questions about being a landlord and the private rented sector generally. We can only give a vague summary of these as there were a lot of responses.
However here are some of the top frustrations of landlords (with a few quotes):
- Tenant attitudes (eg ‘tenants who expect me to do a 50-mile round trip to change light bulbs for them’)
- Non-payment of rent issues
- Keeping on top of new regulations (‘constant changes in law due to meddling governments!’)
- Tax issues
- Negative attitudes towards landlords (‘The constant vilification of landlords by the press and government despite the majority trying to provide a good service for a reasonable fee’)
- Problems with repair issues
- Paperwork (‘What happened to the ‘paperless’ society we were working towards?’)
- Letting agents (‘Agent not acting properly on my behalf’) and their fees
- Finding good tradespeople
I also quite liked this comment:
‘I am not a landlord, and indeed it was your informative blog site that put me off becoming one until and unless I had significant time to devote to it as a business.’
The question about people’s worries for the future are very similar, and can be summed up by this comment:
“Too many legal requirements. Everything seems loaded and stacked against the landlord. Very little ever seems to be said or legislated against tenants they always seem to have the whip hand. Even local authorities treat landlords with contempt.”
The next question was where we asked what would make landlords lives easier. ‘Better tenants’ was one popular answer, others included fewers problems with tax, less new legislation, benefit paid direct to landlords, or from one person:
Getting rid of my investment properties altogether.
Mind you many others were fairly upbeat about things and said you did not have any particular problems.
Training
The next section was on training, and rather worryingly 46% of you have not done any training at all.
People marginally preferred online training to face to face, although most (43%) had no preference.
People tend to prefer online so they can work at their own pace, in their own time and don’t have to travel. However, face to face was preferred by some as it is more personal and focused.
Technology
More of you still use a PC than any other method but many of you also use mobile/smartphones, with tablets next in popularity with Macs in the last place. Most of you (90%) consider that you are fairly competent or good with computers.
Those of you with PCs are mostly (52%) running Windows 10 with 17% running Windows 7. Only a VERY small number, 0.63% are still using Windows Vista. Worryingly 7% are still using Windows XP.
So far as browsers are concerned, Chrome is now the most popular (59%) followed by Internet Explorer (35%), Firefox (29%), Safari (27%) and MS Edge (15%).
And the Winner is:
As well as the free book download we also had a prize draw for £180 worth of our training. The winner of this is private landlord Richard Harris.
Thanks again to everyone who responded to the survey,
Thank you for taking the trouble to write up the results.