Many tenants spend over £1,000 decorating landlord’s property - claim

A lettings platform claims a substantial number of tenants spend over £1,000 on decorating their landlord’s property. 

Flatshare platform SpareRoom claims that with renters spending more time at home, and rising house prices making ownership less likely, some 34 per cent of tenants in a survey have spent their own money making their landlords’ houses feel like homes. And some 14 per cent of these have spent over £1,000 to put their stamp on a house that doesn’t belong to them.

SpareRoom claims that the research demonstrates how tenants’ willingness to splash their cash on other people’s properties began and grew throughout the pandemic, with 79 per cent of those who spent money on their rental property only doing so since 2020. 

For over half of respondents who have spent money doing up their place - 51 per cent - a major motivation to do this was down to spending more time at home. And one in five chose to make their rental feel more like their own home simply because they can’t afford to buy a house.

What renters have been spending their money on:

-       Decorating (49%)

-       Furniture (48%)

-       Soft furnishings (e.g., cushions, curtains and throws) (8%)

-       Homeware accessories (e.g., vases, mirrors, wall art) (3%)

-       New appliances (3%)

-       New fixtures and fittings (e.g., new doorknobs, cupboards, light fittings, etc.) (2%)

-       Other (2%)

-       Houseplants (1%)

-       External alterations eg garden landscaping or planting, balcony painting (1%)

Matt Hutchinson, SpareRoom director comments: “It’s not surprising that people want to make their rented properties feel like home, given how much time they’ve spent at home over the last two years.

“As people rent for longer, we may well see more and more tenants wanting to have a say in how their properties look. What’s interesting is that more people would be tempted to spend money doing up their rental property if they were offered a longer-term tenancy. 

“In some European countries tenants can decorate their rentals however they like, but shorter tenancies in the UK mean people have traditionally been more reluctant to spend on a property they may need to move from in a year’s time.”

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