02/06/2012 
admin
Here is an article written by Edinburgh Private Tenants Action Group. ( EPTAG ) Can You Trust Your Landlord With Your Personal Details? April 4th, 2012 | Posted by admin in News
I have written this addressing some of the relevant quotes. I believe that It is important for landlords and tenants to work together to understand what we are doing and why Lifestyle referencing @ landlordreferencing.co.uk will not only help landlords but also good tenants who wish to have homes in better communities in the future .
This article is written and based on the fact that EPTAG beleive that lifestyle referencing is an intrusion on tenants privacy.
EPTAG have written the article which says to tenants that “If you live in rented housing, then there’s a chance that your personal details are being stored and shared without your knowledge. It has recently emerged that landlords have been setting up websites to share records about their previous tenants, effectively giving them the ability to create a blacklist”.
EPTAG go onto say that they can “see how this might be tempting for a landlord who has had tenants disappear on them before, but the suggestion that all tenants should be treated this way is a little creepy to say the least. If you’re thinking about moving, is it any of your landlord’s business? I’m not suggesting that a moonlight flit is the right way to end a tenancy, but it does occasionally happen, and this is the kind of risk that landlords have to accept. Landlords are making an investment, and that always involves risk, but it’s the nature of the game – the value of your investment can go down as well as up” They go on to say ” A rental property isn’t a magic cash machine, and landlords shouldn’t be able to use questionable surveillance methods on their tenants to try and turn it into one”. Surveillance? since when did taking a reference become surveillance.
I wonder how EPTAG can consider our investments and having our properties trashed as “the nature of the game ” however they do recognise that Landlordreferencing.co.uk is the best and safest web site when they go on to say “Of the three sites featured on You and Yours, Landlord Referencing is probably the least invasive one, as it keeps a list of the tenant’s previous landlords so that they can be contacted, rather than an address history. However, it’s still a little creepy, particularly as it specialises in what creator Paul Routledge calls “lifestylereferencing” and is designed to send out notifications to members when someone who has been identified as a “problematic tenant” is moving house”.
Lifestyle referencing is the process which landlords who socially network achieve together. the “notifications” mentioned above to members are the tenant alerts and again they seem to have got their wires crossed on what we do and how we do it.
In the penultimate paragraph EPTAG say “ The issue here is that the definition of a “problematic tenant”, and whether their lifestyle is considered to be objectionable, can be highly subjective”. Again I say, landlordreferencing.co.uk does not store any subjective comments on the website or in fact any comments at all. We report on evidenced rent default and property damage and that is it!.
EPTAG carry on to offer a assumption that “What about the tenant who inconvenienced their landlord by insisting that repairs were carried out, or took them to small claims court over a deposit that had been unfairly withheld? There are some landlords who would consider that to be “problematic”, and giving them the power to harm the tenant’s reputation for years afterwards would unfairly punish an innocent person. This comment is so far away from what really happens in the real world, landlords do not try and ruin a tenants reputation just because they ask for the sink to be unblocked and it shows why people who are naive to the letting industry should not write articles that they are not well versed on.
I think first and foremost EPTAG need to understand what a problematic tenant is. If EPTAG believe that a landlord thinks a tenant is a problem just because a tenant asked for a repair to be carried out they are very misguided and must have had some bad landlords. The majority of the 1.5 million PRS landlords know exactly what a bad tenant is and wish to protect themselves from getting another one . So unfortunately I reiterate, this article has been written by someone who truly does not know the first thing about being a landlord.
One of the biggest problems I have with this article is that it is factually incorrect when EPTAG say “There’s also no way of even verifying that the people who sign up for the site are even landlords,and not just a random person with a grudge. This statement is tantaumount to libel.
EPTAG then conclude the article and say “Landlord Referencing’s blurb makes the point of telling the reader that tenants can’t be trusted to give the correct information about where they used to live, and if a landlord has bought into the idea that referencing sites are the only reliable source of information, who are they going to believe if the details held by a prospective tenant doesn’t match what is held in the database?” Once again EPTAG have shown utter ignorance to how our systems work.
Landlordreferencing.co.uk has never said because tenants are tenants they cannot be trusted as implied in the article, we simply point out that those with a previous history of bad tenure cannot be trusted to give their last landlord. I have been a landlord for 15 years and have had 1000′s of tenants. I speak from experience when I say that many many tenants do not give you their last landlord if there is a history of bad tenancies and/or have a debauched lifestyle and the only way a prospective landlord will find out is to socially reference with their peers FACT.
I did reply to their post to put the record straight but they took my reply down so it is here below for you to see. Obviously If you don’t agree with them they remove your posts.
You can read the full article here Can You Trust Your Landlord With Your Personal Details?
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Hi EPTAG
A very informative post. Thank you for recognising that our systems are the safest and we pride ourselves on making sure that we are in no way invasive and always maintain the highest standards to ensure that we offer the safest and most comprehensive lifestyle referencing.
I think you are slightly missing the point, being a landlord is not about taking a gamble, it is about giving people a good home and unless we can carry out thorough checks on all tenants, we are negligent in looking after those who live next door.
Lifestyles are very important in a tenancy as, unlike someone who owns their home, a landlord, in law, is responsible for his tenant and what that tenant does within the property. It is a duty of care which, in law, cannot be offset to a third party.
I think if you look around, we all want a peaceful lifestyle and I can assure you that landlords do not rave and party all night and then slag off good tenants just because they can! Tenants are their clients.
I think when you understand that landlords are not they enemy and only want to make sure they get the true facts before letting, rather than a fictitious made up story that are given by some tenants, then you will understand that lifestyle referencing means simply finding out whether a tenant has offensive or violent behaviour which may be detrimental to other people in the community.
You are right, I myself abhor automated systems used by others and that is why we are growing so fast because we are the only manual data control system which cross references information which we deem to be insignificant and judgemental and, as you say, never pass out details of any kind to a third party.
Quite frankly I do not know how the ICO has let others operate in the manner they do but that is not my business.
I understand that no one likes new things or change, but the world is moving faster and we need to move with it. Lifestyle network referencing has been going on since we did cave paintings on the wall to pass our knowledge onto the next generation. The only difference now is that with the internet it moves just a bit faster…
My telephone number is 01934 645237 and if you feel that there is any way which we can work to create better environments for both good landlords and good tenants, I am at your beck and call.
I have a duty of care as a Landlord, especially as most of my properties are HMO’s. I need to know that I am moving a quiet, well behaved tenant without drug, alcohol or violence problems into the neighbouring flat of my existing tenants.
There is not one prospective tenant who will admit to have drug, alcohol or violence as a background and therefore unless I check thoroughly I could be making another tenant’s life hell by moving them in.
However, if there was a fail safe way to ensure that the history that was being given to me by the prospective tenant who is purporting to be a quiet person with no personality disorders – then, as a responsible Landlord – I have to use whatever means I have available to me to ensure my HMO runs smoothly and I have happy Tenants.
The rubbish about a Landlord’s property being an investment and therefore risks are taken with investments is utter tripe (or should I say haggis!!) and can only be written by someone who has not had the opportunity to purchase their own property and is therefore tinged with sour grapes.
I am a professional landlord and my properties are not an investment, they are my sole source of income and as such I look after my properties with great care and I never consider a tenant who asks me to repair something as problematic. A problematic tenant is one who does not pay, who trashes the flat, who upsets local residents whether they are mine or in a neighbouring property and these are the tenants who we wish to guard against and this is why we use Landlordreferencing to search our prospective tenant and to upload our existing to ensure their database is extensive and comprehensive.
Well whoever wrote this article must, it strikes me, have recently been evicted from their tent at St Pauls in London and taken their belongings up to Edinburgh to write a load of anarchist garbage about something they are ill educated on – so archetypal!!!
I do wonder what the creator of this article would do to ensure that a tenant is telling the truth and that they are not a violent drug dealers, drunkard or just plain filthy.
Can you imagine if we had no credit referencing agencies. “do you have any previous loans” No No NO, never sir not one.. I do not know what world they live in but if a landlord put a really bad tenant into a property (Or tent as suggested by Elizabeth above) next door to them without doing every possible check, I think the next article we will see from the Edinburgh Tenant Action Group is on about the; “Negligent landlords who fail in their duty to be diligent”.
Hi All,
Alyson who wrote the article has done a good job of trying to portray what we do, albeit, some of her information is not right but that just a revision before writing issue.
What I find mostly disappointing is that she does not realise that the reason for lifestyle referencing is to protect communities that suffer so dreadfully from tenants who have such anti-social lifestyles.
Alyson refers to what we do as creepy, I wonder if she would find a visit late one evening from the tenant who stabbed me 5 times and left me for dead as creepy.
Especially when I made him her neighbour and could have avoided doing so. Most people who are objectors to something that helps others socially, do so because they themselves have never either suffered at the hands of the problem or don’t want it because it selfishly doesn’t affect them. NIMBY’s
Whatever the reason is, I know one thing for sure, Alyson would not wish to have the 6’4″ drug dealing and drug induced tenant that stabbed me in the head move in next door. So I hope that although she finds us creepy her landlord or agent do not and check a tenants lifestyle which will add another layer of making sure she is safe in the future.