More than one in five HMO tenants have felt unsafe because of a housemate, with renters calling for greater transparency over who they will be sharing their home with.
Research from shared living platform COHO finds 21% of tenants have felt unsafe at some point during their tenancy because of somebody they lived with.
The figure rises to 27% among tenants aged 45 and over.
Based on responses from 5,145 UK HMO tenants, the research also finds 42% received little or no information about their prospective housemates before moving in. Six in 10 say they wish they had known more about the people they would be living with.
TENANT CHOICE
More than half of tenants – 53% – want greater input into who subsequently moves into their shared home.
Four in 10 say they would be prepared to pay more to live with housemates they knew were a good fit, while 16% say they would remain in their property for longer if consulted about incoming tenants.
COHO says the findings suggest compatibility is becoming increasingly important as shared accommodation attracts a broader range of renters.
More than 40% of respondents were aged 30 or over, with 89% of this group in paid employment. Some 55% of all respondents described shared living as a lifestyle choice rather than a last resort.
One tenant surveyed, 32-year-old business analyst Sam Taylor, says the household she moved into differed significantly from how it had been advertised.
She says: “Landlords, agents and online platforms need to be much more transparent about the properties they advertise, including the condition of the home and who already lives there.
“Tenants deserve to know who they’ll be living with, likewise existing housemates should have more say over who moves in.”
LANDLORD OPPORTUNITY
Vann Vogstad, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of COHO, says landlords and operators need to move beyond simply filling available rooms.
He says: “Our research exposes a major gap in the way shared living works today. We ask people to share their homes with complete strangers, yet in many cases they are given little or no information about who they are going to live with.
“Tenants feeling unsafe in their own home, even once, is not something the sector can ignore.”
Vogstad adds: “Tenants are telling us clearly that they want more transparency, more choice and greater compatibility with the people they live with.
“Shared living should not mean accepting whoever happens to be allocated the room next door. We need to move away from simply filling rooms and start thinking about creating homes where people actually feel comfortable living together.”
