This article is an external press release originally published on the Landlord News website, which has now been migrated to the Just Landlords blog.
An interesting new piece of research has revealed that as many as one in five buy-to-let landlords are too embarrassed to admit they are one!
The National Landlord Association’s Quarterly Landlord Panel quizzed 777 investors. Of these, 21% of landlords said they were too embarrassed to admit their role before.
Regional reluctance
In different regions of Britain, landlords in the East of England and the East Midlands were found to be most reluctant to disclose their role, with 29% and 28% of landlords in these regions respectively.
On the other hand, the English locations with the least embarrassed investors were the South East and Yorkshire and the Humber, with 18%. Only 13% of landlords in Scotland said they were reluctant to tell people, which was the lowest in the UK.
Mr Richard Blanco, a landlord in London and the East Midlands, admitted he hasn’t always been truthful about his role. He said, ‘before becoming a landlord I thought long and hard about it because I had always disliked landlords as a student due to a bad experience I had over my deposit. These days I’m more upfront about it, but I tell people I work in property instead, because I still assume people won’t like me if I tell them what I do.’[1]
‘I always say that I work for the National Landlords Association and that we campaign to improve the private rental sector, which tends to go down a bit better,’ he added.[1]
One in five landlords is embarrassed
Satisfaction
Findings from the report indicate that 400,000 UK landlords avoid telling people what they do. However, the National Landlords Association believes that despite the bad press, the majority of tenants are satisfied with their current landlord and tenancy agreement.
Richard Lambert, Chief Executive of the National Landlords Association, noted: ‘The number of people looking to invest in property is rising all the time yet the stigma attached to being a landlord never seems to diminish. It’s the minority of rogues and criminal landlords that make the headlines and this has a negative impact on everyone else. The majority of landlords are hardworking individuals who put their own money into providing homes for others and they should not be ashamed to say so.’[1]
[1] http://www.propertyreporter.co.uk/landlords/are-you-embarrassed-to-be-a-landlord.html
