The Mental Rental Review

In spite of Mr. McDowall’s warnings I think there is a clear case for the creation of a website that allows members of the public to review landlords and letting agencies. It would also contain information on all the landlords reviewed: contact details, hidden charges, checkout procedures and any other pertinent information. What I’m proposing is effectively a combination of a site like S1rentals with a feedback system like the kind found on eBay an it’s ilk. The letting agencies and landlords pay a fee to advertise their properties, but on the understanding that they can and will be subject to review by their tenants. It may even extend as far as reviewing individual properties: imagine if you knew in advance that the flat upstairs had laminate flooring and was occupied by the entire Russian folk and tap dancing team. It might make you think twice about moving into the flat in the first place. Sure this might make it impossible to let some properties, but then what’s to stop the landlord getting shot of the property or doing something about the problem.

Personally I think this would have several major benefits:

Firstly someone entering the rental market for the first time would have a place to go for information about their prospective landlord. They could see up front how good, or bad the company or individual was. They would also have access to information that’s not generally given by the letting agencies and landlords themselves. They’ll be able to see in advance if they’ll be charged a fee to extend their lease and if the landlord has a habit of increasing the rent by a fixed percentage every six months or a year. They’ll also be able to see comments from other users about

I also think that the presence of an independent review system would lead to the letting agents bucking their ideas up a bit. People would be able to see who the better landlords were, and as a result they would tend to favour them. People looking to rent out their properties through letting agents would be able to see the more reputable ones as well, and as a result the cowboys would either buck up their ideas or face being choked out of the market.

Naturally there could be downsides to this idea, and I think that Mr. McDowall’s objections are well founded. We live in an age where half the population are willing to sue over the fact that they only got two sliced gherkins in their Big Macs. It’s a big risk to create a forum that could easily degenerate into a forum filled with potentially libellous comments and information. The internet is a notoriously lawless place where people often feel free to say what they like, but I can’t find any mention of there being explicit protection for websites which act as a forum for comments by users. This page covers the subject in some detail for the United States, but the in the UK the law is typically vague.

I assume that there will be some implied, or even explicit legal requirement for someone running the website to police their users. Liable laws naturally exist to protect the reputations of companies and individuals from malicious intent, but would a website like the one I propose be liable itself for being the point of publishing for such information? In principle I don’t think so. I think the liability and criminal or civil penalties would lie with the individual responsible for posting them.

If the likes of eBay, Amazon and play.com can all include review systems both about individual products and third parties that sell through their sites why can’t there be a website that provides a similar service for the rental market.