Thousands of ads for rental homes say children and pets are not welcome. The BBC has analysed adverts posted by private landlords or letting agents.
According to BBC News:
There are no laws explicitly stopping this, but MPs are considering more protections for renters in England.
Under existing equality laws, blanket bans on children have been shown to indirectly discriminate against women.
A single mother of three told the BBC she was shocked many of the properties she looked at specified no children.
“I suppose they think that they’re going to have wild parties, or that they’re messy, but my children aren’t like that,” said Sara from Sussex.
Estate agent body Propertymark said a government cap on deposits in England made landlords more wary of damage – specifically in relation to pets.
The National Residential Landlords Association said it recognised how important pets were to many tenants and that any bans on children reflected “the actions of a minority of rogue landlords”.
BBC News created software that collected private rental listings from property websites OpenRent and Zoopla over a four-day period in May, then removed adverts for rooms in shared accommodation.
We found:
Almost one quarter (24%) of OpenRent adverts showed a preference that said families were not allowed to rent the homes – about 1,800 of just under 8,000 in our sample
Over 300 Zoopla listings explicitly said children were not wanted, although this was less than 1% of those we looked at
Some 73% of sampled OpenRent listings said tenants with pets were not welcome, compared with 6% on Zoopla
OpenRent – an online agent – allows landlords to tick a preferences box to specify whether children and pets are welcome, whereas Zoopla listings are posted by property agents and only sometimes mention the subject.
Housing charity Shelter said the full scale of the issue was not clear, because it was only after enquiring about a property than prospective tenants were told they were not welcome.
