Do landlords have a victim mentality?

Fighting fires

The NLA press office often receives feedback from members who rightly ask for more to be done to highlight the good work of landlords. But while we dedicate a lot of time to doing just that, we spend an equal amount of resources fire-fighting and reacting to the latest developments in the sector, essentially balancing out what is almost always inherently negative media coverage.

So is it a realistic goal to expect media outlets to give valuable column inches or air time to the good work of landlords and the positive impact of private rented housing, when we all know that salacious headlines are what really makes for intriguing news?

To find out the answer, we asked the experts…

In the latest episode of the NLA Podcast Inside Property, presenter Richard Blanco is joined by journalists from two of the UK’s leading national media outlets, as well as the editor of one of the UK’s most successful property TV shows:

• Patrick Collinson, Money and Personal Finance Editor at The Guardian
• Sarah Davidson, Mortgage Reporter and Knowledge and Product Editor at This is Money/The Mail Online
• Simon Greenwood, Series Editor of Channel 5’s Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords.

During the half-hour podcast we ask our panel to chew through a number of issues including:

• How balanced is the portrayal of landlords and tenants in the media?
• Is the press guilty of revelling in landlord and tenant conflict?
• Are benefit tenants demonised within the media?
• Do politicians pander to stereotypes with short-termist, populist housing policies?
• Have TV makeover shows fuelled the housing crisis?
  Does coverage of the sector ultimately fail landlords and tenants?

Listen now

The answers make for interesting listening so grab a coffee and fire up the podcast now at Inside Property, or subscribe on iTunes or Audioboom.

For more information about the NLA, visit www.landlords.org.uk