Tenant Says Letting Agent Adverts are Misleading

One tenant says that letting agent advertisements are often misleading, especially in London. She has found that three-bedroom flats shown on Rightmove and Zoopla only have two bedrooms.

Tenant Says Letting Agent Adverts are Misleading

To form the third bedroom, the living room will have been converted.

Katie Morley says that this is not acceptable. She has been searching for somewhere to live with two flatmates.

She explains: “Most adults paying a big chunk of their salary on rent want a proper home – not one room to eat, sleep and socialise in. For that reason, communal living space is essential, not optional.”

She has discovered that two-bedroom flats are often unaffordable for two sharers.

Morley calculated that if three people moved into a two-bed flat, converting the living room into a bedroom, they would pay £733 per month, or £8,796 a year, each.

However, if two people moved in, they would pay £1,110.50 a month, or £13,326 per year, each. To afford this, they would both need to earn an annual salary of £60,000.

Morley believes that “thousands” of homes in London are being advertised misleadingly; by saying they have three bedrooms when they have two, or four when they have three.

This is normal, she has found, and is being pushed by landlords and letting agents.

She says: “In this day and age it should be illegal to misleadingly advertise rental properties and encourage tenants paying market rent to go without a living room or a kitchen.

“Sneaky practices as demonstrated by these examples are masking London’s escalating housing crisis. When young professionals with good jobs are being cattle herded into box rooms in run-down hovels with no communal living space, there is something very wrong with the system.

“A clear minimum standard for renting must be enforced without delay.”¹

¹ http://www.propertyindustryeye.com/tenant-says-letting-agents-adverts-are-misleading/