Two Years On: Is The Tenant Experience Any Better?

Two years ago, I wrote a newsletter explaining what the tenant experience is and why it matters .

I wrote about some of the issues that created a poor experience for residents who rent their homes.?

These included:?

• Lack of care for properties.
• Under-reporting of problems.
• Poor communication.

I explained that switching to digital repairs and maintenance would help overcome these issues for landlords.?

That’s why solving these problems continues to guide the development of EVO’s platform.

Two years on, and we’ve seen some major changes. The Social Housing Regulation Act has been introduced and is now in full force.?

However, reforms like the Residents’ Rights Bill (previously the Renters Reform Bill) have yet to be enacted.?

The country has a new government that seems more focused on improving standards for renters. But is it taking the right approach? What legislation is most important?

Most importantly of all, what can individual landlords do to improve conditions for residents?

In this newsletter, I’ll explore the current state of the tenant experience and try to answer some of these questions.

The Current State of the UK Tenant Experience

As you’ll be aware, the UK rental market is divided into two broad categories: private renting and social housing.

Let’s look at resident satisfaction levels in each.

The private sector

Resident satisfaction in the private rented sector is difficult to gauge as there is no regulatory requirement to do so.

The last English Housing Survey, released in 2023, found that 76% of private renters were satisfied with their landlord.?

More recent research from the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) suggests that 58% of residents rated their landlord as scoring 8/10 or more. 7% gave a score of less than 2/10. 29% scored their landlord 6/10 or below.

The two biggest factors that divide satisfied private rented residents from dissatisfied ones was the landlord-tenant relationship and the landlord’s responsiveness over repairs and maintenance. Nearly half of dissatisfied renters said their landlord was not responsive to maintenance requests.?

Overall, both the private rented and social housing sectors show similar satisfaction scores that have declined slightly in recent years. While most residents are satisfied with their landlords, huge improvements still need to be made.?

There are around 4.6 million private rented homes in the UK. That means around 1.3 million of these have a poor tenant experience.?

Many of these people will have children or could have vulnerable people living with them - this number is simply too high.

Social housing?

The Social Housing Regulation Act, introduced a new requirement for all social landlords to collect data on Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs).

The results for the first year were released in June. They revealed that 34.3% of residents were dissatisfied with their landlord.

That’s around 1.4 million people, and this number is growing. In 2018-19, fewer than 25% were dissatisfied.?

The research also shows that two-thirds of residents are unhappy with their landlord’s complaint handling, while around one-third are unhappy with their repairs and maintenance service.?

Communication is also an issue. Around 40% of respondents felt that their landlord doesn’t listen to their views.

In my experience, these problems are usually the result of a disjointed repairs and maintenance system.???

The housing association, the processes for reporting issues and individual contractors are all managed separately.?

The housing association is often responsible for hitting repair KPIs, while the contractor is simply responsible for carrying out the repair.

As a result:

• Communication between residents, landlords and contractors is slow and fragmented.
• Residents aren’t sure who to communicate with.
• Contractors aren’t motivated or incentivised to go back and remedy repair complaints.

What Impact Will Government Policies Have on the Tenant Experience?

As mentioned earlier, the new Labour government took office this year and is prioritising housing sector reform.?

Regarding social housing, the government has said that it will:

• Support councils and housing associations to build their capacity and make a greater contribution to affordable housing supply.
• Prioritise the building of new socially rented homes.
• Review Right To Buy Scheme discounts to protect the existing housing stock.?

These promises are vague, and I would like to see a more specific, time-bound plan.

However, the government’s plans for a Renter’s Rights Bill in the private rented sector are more concrete.?

The Renter’s Rights Bill replaces the previous Conservative Government’s Renters Reform Bill .?

It covers many of the same policies, including:

• Abolishing Section 21 “no-fault” evictions.
• Giving residents the right to have a pet.
• Introducing a new Decent Homes Standard.
• Introducing a new private rented sector ombudsman.
• A ban on discriminatory practices against people with children or those on benefits.
• Launching a digital database of rented sector information for landlords, residents and councils.
• New investigatory powers to help councils take action against rogue landlords.

Critically, the government has said that it will extend Awaab’s Law to cover the private rented sector.?

Awaab’s Law is named after a two-year-old who died from damp and mould in his family’s social housing flat. It requires social landlords to deal with hazards at their properties within specified timescales.?

This could help improve private rented sector residents’ dissatisfaction with repairs and maintenance.?

The Solution is Digital

Government policies will provide some impetus for landlords to provide a better resident experience.?

However, unless individual landlords and housing associations put greater emphasis on improving the landlord-tenant relationship through better communication and more efficient repairs, then very little will improve.

As discussed earlier, I believe that a disjointed repairs and maintenance process is behind up to 80% of landlord-resident issues.

The solution is to use a fully-managed end-to-end digital platform. This involves a separate organisation taking responsibility for reporting issues and delivering the repairs.

This works because:

? Digital systems enable quicker, easier communication.

? Job allocation can be automated, reducing time to repair.

? The provider is accountable for meeting KPIs.

? The provider usually provides a warranty, incentivising them to do the job properly and respond to call-backs.

? Most residents like using digital systems to manage aspects of their lives - including their home and tenancy.?

End-to-end fully-managed repair and maintenance services also allow you to harness property data.?

For example, people involved in a repair to access all the information they need to carry it out correctly. For example, if a roofer knows that a property has a flat roof rather than a pitched one, then they can bring the correct materials and tools - rather than wasting time making a return journey.

Information on every repair is logged so that you can see what work has been carried out at the property in the past.?

This is incredibly useful for two reasons. First, it allows future tradespeople to see if a recent repair has failed. If it has, then perhaps there is a root cause that needs dealing with first?

Secondly, it allows you to begin spotting patterns over time that can inform your property management decisions. For example, if a certain type of boiler fails more often, perhaps you should install a different model in your properties in the future.

How do I know a digital approach works?

Because I’ve seen it first-hand.

Digital Success

Earlier this year, we completed a pilot using the EVO platform to manage repairs and maintenance for 380 properties. Our partners on the project were B&D Reside, a housing company owned by the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham.

The project achieved incredible results for the housing association:

• The average resolution time went from 28 days to just 6.
• First-time fix rate soared to 96%.
• 80% app adoption rate within 6-months.

Best of all, we improved resident satisfaction significantly, achieving 4.6/5 for work completed.??

Here are some of the comments we got from local residents:

• John O’Brien described EVO as a “game changer” that had “transformed the speed of repairs).
• Oluseyi Megwara said: “One of the things I like most about it is the multiple levels of security it offers. [You get a message] telling you the name of the [tradesperson] who is coming, so it’s not some random person who can come into your home.”
• Another resident who didn’t wish to be named described the new service as being like “night and day” compared with the old one.

Cherly Effiom, EVO pilot project manager at B&D Reside, discusses the improved tenant experience: “Customers are happy with the flexibility it offers,” she says. They’re happy with the communication they’ve received via the app. They’re happy with the overall repair and with the speed of resolution.”

Going digital isn’t a silver bullet for the private rented and social housing sectors, but it will help improve efficiency and resident satisfaction with repairs and communication. This will go a long way to improving the tenant experience.?

We’ve been talking about the tenant experience for many years now. Today, the regulations are coming into play but resident satisfaction isn’t as high as it should be.?

The technologies exist to change this - landlords just need to embrace them. I hope in the next two years I will be writing about the incredible improvements we’ve seen in resident satisfaction. Until then, make sure you subscribe to this newsletter and our email updates stay in the loop.