Owners in UK more happy with their home than private rented sector tenants

Overall 83% of home owners said they were happy with their home compared to 54% of tenants renting from a private landlord, according to the survey from TheHouseShop.

Renters were also much more likely to be unhappy with their current property. Some 21% of private renters said they were either fairly unhappy or very unhappy compared to 8% of owners. This means that tenants are more than twice as likely to be unhappy with their homes.

According to Nick Marr, the firm’s co-founder, with a lot of negative press about rogue landlords and campaign groups like Shelter and Generation Rent calling for better standards and protection for tenants, the findings are perhaps not surprising.

‘For home owners, the commitment to a property is much more permanent than it is for renters, and buyers will spend a lot of time and effort choosing their ideal property and carrying out improvement works over the years to perfect it,’ he pointed out.

‘Tenants, on the other hand, are rarely allowed to make even superficial changes or improvements to their homes, so it is highly unlikely that they will ever achieve the same level of happiness as home owners,’ he added.

The research found a clear divide between older and younger age groups. Over 55’s in particular were by far the happiest with their homes at 85% and were more than twice as likely to be very happy when compared to any younger age group.

At the other end of the spectrum, 25 to 34 year olds were the least likely to be very happy with their properties, with just 16% selecting saying they were. While just 1 in 20 over 55’s said they were unhappy with their property, there were more than three times as many people aged under 55 who said the same.

Kindly shared by PropertyWire