Stereotyping us?

kristymarie87

Hi

I am a 22 year old woman and my partner is 21.

I work as a Med Secretary in West London and he is a Duty Manager at Iceland. We can both afford to rent a place alone but wish to live together.

On veiwing a couple of flats, i have noticed we always get very sarcy comments or silly answers to our questions.

E.g
I asked could we redecorate, paint, wallpaper etc and the landlord said yes as long as we didnt draw silly things on the walls! I mean i want a nice place, somewhere to be proud of and im not 12 years old!

He went on about 'no partys' about 3 times during the viewing even though we told him our intentions.

I would have left it but the flat is big and very good value for money.

I feel like they discriminate against us because we are young and we also look like teens. But clearly we have full time jobs, work hard, are clean and tidy.... i just dont feel like we are being given a chance.

I'm waiting for a call now i dont think will come! Viewed friday, called them saturday (landlord not avalible) called today, agent at a viewing will call back....that was over an hour ago.

What can i do to prove we are good tenants?

Doozergirl

It's not just you hun, for some reason a lot of them seem to think you're inferior if you dare to rent from them rather than appreciating that you are keeping them in business. You're not good enough because you're young, then by the time you have children you're undesirable or if you have a pet you're undesirable... so not many tenants actually appear to fall into the 'desirable' category at all!

Don't decorate - find yourself somewhere that's nice in the first place. There will only be tears when it comes to the deposit and they decide they don't like the shade of cream you used...

You just have to get over the superiority complexes that some LAs have, unless you get very lucky. If the LL themselves has a superiority complex then I suggest you leave well alone - it will only continue.

Jowo_2

You aren't being discriminated against per se. Stop taking it so personally - the landlord may well have experienced poor behaviour from other tenants in the past, actual experience, rather than stereotyping you directly.

Your sense of victimisation doesn't make you come across as particularly mature, either. It is up to you to impress the landlord by presenting yourself as ideal tenants, selling yourself as quiet, clean and responsible and not up to him to double guess this. No-one is entitled to have a tenancy after a viewing.

It's up to you to persuade a prospective landlord that you are trustworthy - you can control his impression of you to a large degree. If you feel that you come across unfairly as young teenagers, then change your mode of dress and bearing to tackle this or offer something to mitigate the perceived risk.

A viewing of a property works very similarly to a job interview - tenants are being judged from the moment they make contact with the landlord - enthusiasm and politeness is key. After all, you are equally quick to make judgements back regarding them, believing some of their concerns to be silly (though if you owned a property worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, you'd also be concerned about receiving it back in good condition and the tenants not alienating all the neighbours with anti social behaviour).

If you are looking for property in an area of high demand, and there are bound to be multiple parties viewing it, its even more imperative that you sell yourself better to the landlord who may be making relatively subjective judgements in order to determine his preferred tenants. Sadly, like a job interview, it sometimes come down to a hunch or liking the candidate over who is the best employee.

Standard tenant screening covers things like previous landlord references, current employer references, ID check, credit check - none of this sadly is a great indicator of whether the landlord will later discover he has let out his property to a bunch of chavs with good credit records who ruin the decor with bad decoration at enormous cost to himself to remedy and who blast out music 24/7.

There is no obligation for a landlord to redecorate a property and every obligation for a tenant who receives permission to do it, to ensure they do it to a good standard and don't make it unrentable to the next set of tenants by painting the walls and ceilings black, for example, with daft murals on the walls. This kind of thing is often covered within a clause of the tenants AST. It is a landlord's worst nightmare to end up with anti-social tenants who annoy the neighbours. Again, this type of tenant like behaviour is covered explicitly in the AST that you would sign. To me, the landlord isn't bringing up topics that are daft even if you don't feel they apply to you.

Just play the game without getting so chippy - for everything a landlord mentions that is an obvious source of anxiety to them, that's a 'sell' signal where you assure them very explicitly how you intend to be good tenants and can give an example or encouragement back to assuage their fear. Getting bitter and disappointed isn't particularly productive.

dianah

if you don't like the way they speak to you, say something like 'i appreciate you may have had a bad experience with younger tenants, however, despite the fact that we're young, we both have good jobs and we'd like to find a nice place to live and it's actually quite upsetting when you suggest we'd party 24/7 and trash the place just because we're in our early 20's.'

some people don't realise they're being rude and some possibly think they're pretty funny! they won't know otherwise unless you say.

good luck!

kristymarie87

Dont get me wrong, i understand he would mention he doesnt want parties etc but he didnt just bring it up once. We assured him our intentions and he later brought it up again twice.

We dressed as you would fo a job interview, with shoes, tidy hair etc. Someone renting a flat would know not to draw over the walls!

We asked plenty of questions to let him know we'd done our research and had good intentions, we were polite and although i know he will give it to whoever he wants i felt like he was talking down to us. That doesnt make me immature, just in my opinion i think people like me and my partner - young couples - are put into sterotypes. We are not 'chavs', we arent going to paint the ceilings black but of course because we look 18 we must be that stupid we would do that.

I think everyone should be given a fair chance and not judged on their appearance. I didnt judge him when i met him did i?

poppysarah

kristymarie87 wrote: »

Someone renting a flat would know not to draw over the walls!

I didnt judge him when i met him did i?

You've just pre-judged all adults as being socially responsible. They're not. There's a big nasty, very mean world out there.

ILW

kristymarie87 wrote: »

Dont get me wrong, i understand he would mention he doesnt want parties etc but he didnt just bring it up once. We assured him our intentions and he later brought it up again twice.

We dressed as you would fo a job interview, with shoes, tidy hair etc. Someone renting a flat would know not to draw over the walls!

We asked plenty of questions to let him know we'd done our research and had good intentions, we were polite and although i know he will give it to whoever he wants i felt like he was talking down to us. That doesnt make me immature, just in my opinion i think people like me and my partner - young couples - are put into sterotypes. We are not 'chavs', we arent going to paint the ceilings black but of course because we look 18 we must be that stupid we would do that.

I think everyone should be given a fair chance and not judged on their appearance. I didnt judge him when i met him did i?

I think the fact that you find wearing shoes to a meeting worth mentioning would worry me a little.

dianah

well, while i understand that no one likes to be judged based on their appearance, unfortunately, that's how humans operate. you see something/someone and you form an opinion, not necessarily consciously.

it also works the other way - you say you dressed as if you were going to a job interview; you dressed to be judged in a positive way, as a responsible adult, rather than in a pink tracksuit (i'm not suggesting you normally wear this).

kmmr

As a general rule I'd avoid talking about re-decorating on a viewing for a rental flat. It would put me off even if the tenants were otherwise perfect!

It's a recipe for disaster one way or the other. Even if you do a great job, there will be tension and negotiation before hand, and there is always a good chance you won't do a professional job.

Jowo_2

Why would you want to live in a place where the landlord is ambivalent about you decorating it and who you find patronising? It doesn't look like this is a great basis for a landlord/tenant relationship.

Many agencies offer properties on their books where they manage the entire tenancy (finding the tenant and managing the property) where the tenants don't even meet the landlord. My understanding is that they often just rent on a first come, first served basis - so long as the tenants pass the simple tenant screening process and pays a holding deposit, they subsequently get the tenancy.

Are you looking in areas of high demand, such as central/west London?

From your previous rejections when you have asked for the tenancy but not been given it, were you given any feedback from the agent or landlord to explain why it was offered to other tenants?