Money Grabbing Rogue Landlords Are Parasites

It’s all well and good moaning about headlines like the one above and the bias of anti landlord media which leads to increased legislation and higher taxes but what are we doing about it?

Ah yes, we are going to pass on all the costs to our tenants because they should foot the bill – right?

Erm, are we not missing the point here?

Won’t increased rents just make the perceptions worse?

Where is the resistance moment?

Who is fighting for landlords?

A reply from a journalist to a landlord’s complaint to about lazy and biased reporting really struck a chord for me earlier this week …

“When it comes to journalists saying things that appear ‘anti-landlord’ – well, I might be accused of being self-serving here but often it’s a case of journalists reporting what others say rather than journalists reporting their own views.

For good or for bad, landlords haven’t really organised themselves very well – as a journalist, my perception is that the two main landlord organisations, for example, often seem more determined to score points off each other than really defend the sector. They don’t put the effort, focus or resources into getting their message across to the wider public that some of the industry’s opponents do.

By contrast, organisations like Shelter, Citizens Advice and so on are more focused and successful, at least sometimes, at getting their messages across. When these organisations say things, journalists can’t ignore them – but the inadequacy of organisations on behalf of landlords can make it appear as if it’s one-sided.”

This pretty much sums up how most of of think doesn’t it?

The question is; what are we going to do about it?

Are we going to bury our heads in the sands and hope it all goes away?

Not on my watch!

To mount an resistance movement we need funding though. Not to buy guns and bombs of course, all we really need is a few thousand landlords to chip in £10 a month each and we can employ a small army of gladiators in suits. Press agencies who have the high level contacts with the media so that we can respond to articles and get the benefits of a healthy private rented sector back onto the front pages of the media. It may take a while just to persuade the media to report our views and to invite us to respond or quote our opposing views in their articles, which are otherwise anti-landlord and biased, however, if we don’t start we will never complete the task and things will only get worse.

When have you ever seen one of the landlord trade bodies ever quote the opinions of their rivals on issues affecting landlords?

When we have enough contributors to start the PR process we all know we need, rest assured, we will be asking our media agency contacts to seek commentary from the NLA, RLA, DPS, TDS, MyDeposits, ARLA, NALS, SAFEagent and many more organisations when preparing our press releases and responses to articles written by our true opponents. We are not precious about pure self promotion, which is why we want any commentary we put into the media to consider the views of all the key bodies reliant upon a healthy PRS.

So where do YOU fit in?

Chances are, regardless of how strongly you might feel about improving the media reporting of the private rented sector, you probably can’t afford to pay for a full time media agency. However, you can probably afford to chip in £10 a month and find the time to persuade another 5 or 6 landlords to do the same. If we all do that a powerful resistance movement will be born in no time at all.

So are you with us?

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