i have had rental properties in central scotland for the best part of twenty years now and i do not think i have ever seen a shift like the one in the last twelve months or so. used to be that when i listed a two bed flat in stirling i would get maybe fifteen to twenty enquiries in the first week and could pick from a reasonable pool of working tenants with references and deposit ready to go. last time i listed one in march i had over sixty enquiries in four days / half of them were on housing benefit or universal credit / a good number had no references at all or were coming out of temporary accommodation. i am not saying anything against those people because everyone needs a roof but the practical reality of it is that i am now spending three times as long screening applicants and the ones who do have decent employment and references are being snapped up by the bigger agencies before they even get to me because the agencies have waiting lists now. i had one tenant who was earning about 38k a year and had been renting from me for six years leave in january because he bought a flat through shared ownership and honestly i was happy for him but the replacement process took nearly two months. ended up with a good tenant in the end but the void cost me about 1400 in lost rent plus the refresher decorating. the other thing i am noticing is that more applicants are coming from england / not sure if that is a trend or just coincidence but i have had three in a row from manchester and birmingham area who are moving up for work. anyone else seeing this kind of shift or is it just my part of the world
Seeing exactly the same down here in the North West. Last property I listed in Salford in February had 80+ enquiries in under a week and probably 60% were UC or no references. What’s changed for me is I now front-load the screening before I even do viewings. My checklist before I’ll book someone in:
- Employment confirmed or guarantor in place
- Minimum 6 months in current role (or 12 months self-employed with accounts)
- No CCJs in the last 3 years
- Previous landlord reference available, not just a mate
That filters it down to maybe 10-15 realistic applicants out of 80. Still a decent pool but nothing like it was three or four years ago when you could be pickier. The void risk is the killer… I budget two weeks between tenants but it’s been averaging five to six weeks recently because the good ones are juggling three or four offers.
The England to Scotland migration thing is interesting. Not seen it in reverse but wouldn’t surprise me given the rent gap.
interesting to hear it is the same story down south / i had assumed it was partly a scottish thing because of the rent cap legislation pushing landlords out and reducing supply. the last two flats i listed in stirling and falkirk respectively went up on rightmove and within four days i had over 100 enquiries on the stirling one alone, which sounds great until you start filtering them. of those 100 i would say maybe 15 had verifiable references and a deposit ready, the rest were a mix of UC applicants with no guarantor / people wanting to move in yesterday with nothing in writing / and a fair number who had clearly not read the listing at all and were asking if pets were allowed when it said no pets in the first line. i do not discriminate against UC tenants as a blanket rule but the reality is if someone cannot show me a rent payment history of some kind i have nothing to assess them on and the tribunal process in scotland if things go wrong is painfully slow. what i have found works best now is word of mouth, my last two tenants in falkirk both came through existing tenants who recommended them and those have been the best tenancies i have had in years. i do not know if that scales up for anyone with more than a handful of properties but for my size portfolio it has been a revelation honestly. the portal route is just noise at this point unless you have time to sift through it all which most small landlords do not.
It is not just Scotland. I have two properties in the Midlands and the last time I advertised one in April the quality of applicants was noticeably worse than when I last did it in 2023. Plenty of demand, no shortage of enquiries, but a much higher proportion with no references, gaps in employment history, or wanting to pay everything in cash with no paper trail. The few decent applicants who did come through all had multiple offers from other landlords, so you are effectively competing for the good tenants now rather than the other way round. That said, the rental bidding ban under the RRA has made the process simpler in one narrow sense, you advertise a price and that is it, no back and forth. Whether it is actually helping tenants is another matter. From what I can see the main effect is that landlords are just advertising at a higher starting price to build in a buffer, which achieves the opposite of what was intended.
the references point is the one that gets me / i used to rely on employer references and previous landlord references as a basic filter but they are close to worthless now. had a tenant last year who came with a glowing reference from the previous landlord saying they were wonderful quiet paid on time etc / moved them in and within three weeks there were complaints from the neighbours about noise and rubbish in the garden. rang the previous landlord back and he admitted he had given a good reference just to get rid of them which i suppose i should have seen coming but it still annoyed me. the employer reference was genuine but the employer had no idea the person had county court judgments against them because why would they. i now do a full credit check through openrent which costs the tenant £20 and run my own companies house check on anyone who claims to be self employed / it adds a week to the process but it has saved me twice in the past eighteen months. the other thing i have noticed in scotland specifically is that because of the rent cap legislation a lot of the better tenants are staying put in their current places because they know they are paying below market rate / so the pool of people actively looking is skewed toward people who have been asked to leave or cannot afford where they are. that is not true of everyone obviously but the proportions have shifted noticeably. i do not know if the same dynamic applies in england where there is no rent cap as such but i would guess the renters rights act freezing tenancies as periodic will have a similar stickiness effect over time