Tenants more worried about rent arrears

Renters are increasingly searching the web for the effects of rent arrears, indicating that more are worrying about not being able to afford their repayments.

The research comes from Zero Deposit, the tenancy deposit alternative, which analysed data from Google Trends for a number of rental market search terms to see how interest has changed over the last three months.

The research shows that searches for ‘rent arrears’ increased by 8.6% over this timespan.There was also a 3.7% increase in interest for the search term ‘tenant rights’, indicating that more tenants could be struggling to pay their rent whilst also wanting to know where they stand when it comes to their rental market rights.

This is understandable given that there has been much noise around the Renters’ Rights Bill in recent months, a bill which is currently passing through Westminster having been introduced into parliament by the Labour government in September.

This is set to introduce periodic tenancies and ban Section 21 evictions, a type of eviction where landlords don’t have to give a reason – and so the bill has brought the topic of tenant rights into focus.

In fact, in the last three months alone, search interest for the term ‘ Renters’ Rights Bill’ has increased by 340%, with ‘Section 21’ also seeing a 15.6% increase.

It’s also clear that the recent Autumn Statement has had an impact, particularly where landlords are concerned, with a 594.1% increase in interest for the search term ‘Additional rate stamp duty’.

Sam Reynolds, CEO of Zero Deposit said, “The current rental market landscape is undergoing some potentially monumental changes and so it’s understandable that tenants and landlords are both growing increasingly interested in their rights and the changes that could be made as a result of the Renters’ Rights Bill.

“An increased interest in rent arrears is a potentially worrying sign and could indicate that more existing tenants are struggling to manage the high cost of renting, whilst landlords are also concerned about the protection in place to ensure they maintain a consistent stream of rental income.

“There’s an overarching worry that the Renters’ Rights Bill could drive landlords out of the sector, which would further exacerbate the current supply issues facing the rental market.

“Indeed, fewer tenants would need to worry about falling into arrears if landlords were encouraged to remain within the sector, thus maintaining a robust level of available stock and preventing rents from spiraling.”