Rating Rentals: Inside Marks Out of Tenancy

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Rating Rentals: Inside Marks Out of Tenancy"

Podcast: This is Housing
Host: Richard Mahal, Housing Team
Guests: Ben Dobson & Ben Yarrow (Founders, Marks Out of Tenancy)
Date: March 26, 2024

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Episode Overview

In this episode, the team dives deep with Ben Dobson and Ben Yarrow, the visionaries behind Marks Out of Tenancy—an online platform designed to empower renters by letting them share honest reviews about their rental experiences, landlords, properties, and neighborhoods. The discussion explores how the platform works, the challenges it faces, its impact on the UK's private rental sector, and why both tenants and landlords can benefit from greater transparency.

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Key Topics and Insights

1. Inspiration and Purpose of Marks Out of Tenancy

[01:19]

• Ben Dobson created the platform out of frustration with bad landlord experiences in Bristol and the lack of an outlet for tenant voices.

“What he did, as any sane and normal person would do, is create an entire website and business devoted to allowing people to share their experiences.”
— Ben Yarrow [01:19]

• Its mission: to provide a safe, independent space for tenants to review landlords and properties, addressing information asymmetry in the market.

2. Unique Features and Neutrality

[02:03]

• Marks Out of Tenancy doesn’t facilitate transactions or property listings, setting it apart from platforms like TripAdvisor or Checkatrade.
• Detached from commercial interests, which allows it to remain an impartial third party.

"We're not beholden to any particular party... it's quite unique within the review platform industry."
— Ben Dobson [02:03]

3. Leveling the Playing Field

[04:21], [05:08]

• The platform helps balance the power dynamic by enabling tenants to learn about landlords—something previously skewed in favor of landlords.
• Not “anti-landlord,” but “anti-bad landlord,” working with good landlords to promote best practices.

4. Industry Impact and Feedback

[06:04], [07:05]

• Sharing experiences puts pressure on poor-quality landlords to improve, creating a “market memory” akin to TripAdvisor: reviews become institutional knowledge.
• Cited Professor Alex Marsh’s viewpoint:

“They allow the market to develop a form of memory...”
— Ben Dobson quoting Prof. Alex Marsh [07:05]

5. Benefits for Good Landlords

[09:41], [11:04]

• Landlords with good reviews can demonstrate professionalism—envisioning a world where “Rated 10 stars on Marks Out of Tenancy” is a badge of honor.
• Constructive feedback helps landlords identify areas for improvement, similar to the restaurant or hospitality industry.

6. Challenges: Funding, Sustainability, and Regulation

[14:00], [14:27]

• Platform is free and doesn’t monetize data; primary challenge is financial sustainability.
• Initial self-funding, now supported by “Impact on Urban Health,” emphasizing the link between housing quality and health outcomes.

"Poor housing leads to poor health outcomes. That might be mental health, that might be physical health, ... and good housing leads to good health outcomes."
— Ben Yarrow [15:31]

7. Privacy, Data Protection, and Review Authenticity

[15:55], [16:11], [18:16]

• Platform collects minimal user data, employs modern tech and works with the ICO.
• Strict moderation, verification, and review validation to prevent fake reviews and “brigading.”
• Landlords can reply publicly to reviews and challenge inaccuracies.

"We live and die on the validity and trustworthiness of the data..."
— Ben Dobson [18:16]

• Sometimes landlords try to post fake positive reviews, which are usually easy to spot.

"A review would be written for them which has 10 out of 10 and said that they're really, really, really lovely. Yeah, that happens..."
— Ben Dobson [19:48]

8. Success Stories and Tangible Impact

[24:39], [26:18]

• Many stories of tenants avoiding bad situations or finding good properties thanks to the site.
• Marks Out of Tenancy serves as both a review platform and an educational resource for tenants about rights and legal protections.

"People who were being threatened with illegal eviction and weren't evicted, people whose landlords were trying to increase their rent illegally ... we've done that."
— Ben Yarrow [26:18]

9. State of the UK Rental Market

[30:46], [32:22], [32:55]

• Deep systemic issues like a lack of social housing, which force more reliance on the private rental sector.
• Multiple overlapping legislations exist, but true improvement may come from market self-regulation via transparency, not just more regulation.

"Is another piece of legislation going to magically fix the private rental sector? We don't believe so."
— Ben Dobson [32:55]

10. Advice for Tenants

[34:16], [35:30]

• “Read, for the love of God, read everything you get your hands on.”
• Tenancy agreements should be carefully reviewed, and tenants should research landlords, licensing, and complaints.
• Knowledge, preparation, and use of platforms like Marks Out of Tenancy can reduce vulnerability.

"The stakes are really, really high ... This is your home."
— Ben Yarrow [35:30]

11. Most Common Tenant Complaints

[37:58]

• Most frequent issues: Mould/damp (mentioned 500+ times), lack of repairs, landlords not giving notice to enter, non-responsiveness.
• Lack of accountability and financial incentives for landlords to improve when demand is extremely high.

12. Collaborations and Future Plans

[47:53], [48:06], [50:20]

• Collaborative work with organizations like Impact on Urban Health, Safer Renting, Justice for Tenants.
• Providing data to local authorities to identify bad practice and support enforcement, such as unlicensed HMOs.
• Future: “Profile pages” for every PRS property, aggregating reviews, energy data, transport, schools, and more.

"The vision is every PRS property in the country nationwide will have a profile page."
— Ben Yarrow [51:37]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We're not anti landlord, we're anti bad landlord ... we want those people to promote themselves, to be able to demonstrate that they are doing a good job.” — Ben Yarrow [05:08]
• “They allow the market to develop a form of memory ... and that's what reviews do on Marks Out of Tenancy.” — Ben Dobson quoting Prof. Alex Marsh [07:05]
• “If you were a landlord, how do you prove that you're a good landlord?” — Ben Dobson [10:06]
• “Poor housing leads to poor health outcomes... good housing leads to good health outcomes. How do you change the PRS? That's what we're here to do.” — Ben Yarrow [15:31]
• “We live and die on the validity and trustworthiness of the data that's written on our website." — Ben Dobson [18:16]
• “A review would be written for them which has 10 out of 10 and said that they're really, really, really lovely. Yeah, that happens.” — Ben Dobson [19:48]
• “The stakes are really, really high and we want people to recognize that ... this is your home.” — Ben Yarrow [35:30]
• “If only all landlords were [as responsive as Airbnb hosts]...” — Manjin Natwell [39:52]

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Key Timestamps

• 01:19 – Origins of Marks Out of Tenancy
• 02:03 – Platform independence from property transactions
• 05:08 – Not anti-landlord: promoting good practice
• 07:05 – The “market memory” concept
• 14:00 – Sustainability and funding challenges
• 15:31 – Housing’s impact on health
• 16:11 / 18:16 – Data security and authenticity verifications
• 19:48 / 21:30 – Fake positive reviews and landlord responses
• 24:39 / 26:18 – Success stories and tenant education
• 30:46 / 32:22 / 32:55 – State of the UK rental sector and legislative discussion
• 34:16 / 35:30 – Practical advice for tenants
• 37:58 – Trends in tenant complaints: mould, repairs, respect, responsiveness
• 47:53 / 48:06 – Collaborations with charities, local authorities
• 50:20 / 51:37 – Future vision: property “profile pages”

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Conclusion

Marks Out of Tenancy is not just a review site—it’s a catalyst for transparency, better decision-making, and higher rental standards. The founders reject an adversarial, “anti-landlord” approach, and instead promote fair, verified feedback as a route to industry-wide improvement. Their advice to tenants: know your rights, do your research, and use the platform as a tool for self-empowerment. Their vision: a rental sector where knowledge, not secrecy, governs the market—driving up standards for everyone.

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For further discussion or to share your view, tweet @DLHousingLaw.

Transcript

[Richard Mahal]

Foreign. Hello.

Welcome to another edition of the this Is Housing podcast with me, your host, Richard Mahal. Today I have. We have the great pleasure of hosting the founders of the innovative online rental rating platform Marks out of Tenancy, a platform revolutionizing the way tenants share their rental experiences. And as I said, I'm joined by the founders, Ben Yarrow and Ben Dobson. Ben and Ben, the visionaries behind the innovative platform. They bring a wealth of insight into the world of housing reviews and tenant empowerment. And without further ado, let's dive into the conversation with Ben and Ben. Welcome to the podcast, both of you. How are you?

[Manjin Natwell]

Yeah, good.

[Ben Dobson]

Thank you very much for the invitation to have a chat with you today. Well, we're all good. I'm good.

[Ben Yarrow]

I am also good.

[Richard Mahal]

We're all good. So I was looking at your website and this is a really interesting, unusual thing and I'm surprised that someone hadn't done this before now. So can you just tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind the creation of Mark's out of tenancy?

[Ben Yarrow]

Yeah. I'm going to stop Ben from speaking because I've heard this story lots of times and I want to tell it. Ben was renting in Bristol and had had a series of unpleasant, unsatisfactory experiences and interactions with his landlord. And he realized that there was no outlet, there was no platform, there was no way that he could share those experiences. So what he did, as any sane and normal person would do, is create an entire website and business devoted to allowing people to share their experiences.

[Manjin Natwell]

Hi Ben, it's Manjin Natwell. We guys have been speaking about your platform. What's the key features that distinguish marks out of Tenancy from other review platforms?

[Ben Dobson]

One of the key features, if you were to compare marks out of tenancy to say, a platform like TripAdvisor or check a trade or any of those sorts of platforms, is that we have no, we don't deal with the transactions between a customer and a supplier. Supplier. So we don't, we don't list properties that are for rent. So in that we don't deal with, as I said, any of the commercial transactional aspects. So we're able to take this like a really pure third party perspective because we're not beholden to any particular party. It's that being commercially separated from all of the parties involved and that I think allows us to have this quite unique position within the review platform industry to not be under pressure from any particular party to do something.

[Manjin Natwell]

So do you think the platform aims to improve the rental experience for Tenants.

[Ben Dobson]

Oh, God, yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's the core at the purpose of what we do. Yeah. We want to make improvements and those improvements come from a number of different places as a knock on effect to someone just talking about their experience. The improvements really come from what we term this information gap. When you as a landlord, if you're renting out your property, you ask your prospective tenants a wealth of questions, asking them about their financial stability. There's some, some landlords request tenant CVs. You also be asked for references. The landlord has to do various checks and I understand the purpose of those and I understand why those need to happen. What we do, what the, what the, what the reviews on marks out of tenancy do, are to provide prospective tenants a little bit of information about who they are going to rent from or the properties that they're intending to live in or the neighbourhoods that they're looking to move to. And by doing so, by creating a platform to help tenants to share their experiences, we can help tenants to make better choices. And that's the improvement aspect of it.

[Richard Mahal]

Maybe I just come in here at this stage, it sounds like this is almost. It constitutes a leveling of the playing field between landlord and tenant. Tenants are always having to show that they are going to be good prospective tenants when they apply. And we know that there are so many more tenants and so few properties in the private rental sector. So people are competing, tenants are competing, there's a lot of competition to show you're going to be the best tenant. And I suppose this is really interesting because this gives tenants the opportunity to know a little bit more about their prospective landlords before they enter into a transaction, a binding agreement from which they may not be able to escape, you know, and they may not have entered into, had they had this information in advance about the particular landlord. Do you think that's fair characterization, leveling of the playing field?

[Ben Yarrow]

Yeah, absolutely. It's not an expression we use and I think that's because, you know, one of the things that we really, really want to importantly communicate or need to communicate constantly, is that we are not anti landlord. We understand that landlords provide a crucial service. And yeah, we don't. We're not, we're not anti landlord, we're anti bad landlord and we work with lots and lots and lots of good landlords. We want those people to promote them, be able to promote themselves, to be able to advertise themselves, to be able to demonstrate that they are doing, because they're doing a job. And yes, the leveling of the Playing field I guess is, is accurate. Yes, but it's not really what we're trying to do. What we're trying to do is get a, give tenants a voice and allow people to learn from other tenants experiences, good or bad.

[Richard Mahal]

I guess what you just said there, that's essentially the impact that you're trying to have on the whole industry through your platform, is that right?

[Ben Yarrow]

Yeah, I think so. So there are always going to be bad landlords. There's a supply and demand, a very, very simple supply and demand issue. I think we've joked before that in some parts of London you could stick a house number on a bin and rent it. You know, that's the reality. So we can't transform the private rental sector overnight but what we can do is I suppose forces the word landlords to raise their standards if they are providing a substandard product and a substandard service because at the end of the day the landlord is the business and the tenant is the customer. If they're providing a substandard service then it should be recognized and if enough people do that then it will inevitably require those landlords to drive up that, to improve, to drive up standards and, and it's a kind of a bottom up approach I suppose.

[Ben Dobson]

Can I throw something into there as well? Professor Alex Marsh, who used to, I'm not sure if he is be the chair of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence. It's a group that is a combination of eight institutions, mainly universities and their housing studies departments. So this guy knows what he's on about. He wrote about Mark's out of tenancy a while ago and I'll just quickly read the quote. He says a long standing characteristic of the sector, the private rental sector, is poor information and communication. Small scale landlordism coupled with transient tenants, compounded in many areas by high demand, means that there is a market for poor quality and the market does not discipline poor quality providers. The arrival of websites like Mark's out of Tenancy may eventually herald a substantial shift in this dynamic. They allow the market to develop a form of memory and I love that because if you use the same model, the same commercial concept on TripAdvisor reviews or like any other review platform, when you think about reviewing your holiday or a book you've read or the kettle you've used or whatever, that's what a review is, right? You're leaving an expression of your memory that you've had about a particular product or a service and you're helping someone else to access that memory and that's what reviews do on Marks out of tendency. They help one person who's had an experience share their memory in the hope that someone else will read that and make a better informed decision about where they want to live. So, yeah, that's the concept.

[Manjin Natwell]

That's a wonderful feedback for your platform. We shared it on your website.

[Ben Dobson]

Yeah, it's on there. They've written loads about Marks that pretend to stay the. They also talk about the way that we work with local authorities, which we can delve into a little further, and the way that we are not a government body, but we still play a really interesting role in kind of as a third party to help rebalance the scales a little bit. Which goes back to the point that was made earlier about, you know, rebalancing and readjusting the private rental sector. But it's not like we don't do this with malice and we're not, we're not a militant. We're not a militant group and we're not kind of like, we're not activist. We're just here as a platform to help people share their experiences.

[Richard Mahal]

That's really helpful. And you said that you're not anti landlord generally, you're just anti bad landlord. And what I wanted to ask is there's obviously naturally it's called Marks out of tenancy. One might think that it was. There was a tenant focused approach to your initiative, but is it possible for landlords and property managers to benefit from participating in Marks out of tenancy as well?

[Ben Dobson]

Yeah, you're right. We do have a tenant focused approach and there are good and there are bad tenants. Right. That's certainly something that we see and we hear a lot of. So I guess my question to you guys would be, if you were a landlord, you may be, how do you prove that you're a good landlord?

[Richard Mahal]

Your platform, something like your platform will be great because you do get honest feedback. I think the idea is that, you know, they don't have to worry about, you know, speaking to your landlord directly or for fear of repercussions because it's a genuine sort of review.

[Manjin Natwell]

It's feedback trustworthy for the landlord.

[Richard Mahal]

Yeah, effectively that. And I suppose there's no way for the landlord to hide because if, if the landlord isn't. If I, for example, am a landlord, I'm not doing repairs to my home and I'm leaving in a really bad condition. Everyone can see it. And whoever I do wish to rent to out in the future, it's always going to be on their mind. And I suppose it's a nice, it's a really good reference point for tenants as well as landlords, if they're good landlords, then you might get positive feedback on the same tenancy. Yeah.

[Ben Yarrow]

So conceptually, I suppose, like it's. I don't think reality allows for it, but conceptually the idea is, you know, you go to a hotel or you go to a restaurant or you go to a cafe and there might be a sticker, there might be a sticker in the window that says rated five stars on TripAdvisor.

[Rita]

Okay.

[Ben Yarrow]

Because that's a badge of honor, conceptually. We would love every rental Property in the UK to have rated 10 stars on Mike's our tenancy and that to be that to be the goal that landlords strive to achieve. Obviously the person that lives there probably doesn't want that sticker in their window. But as I say, conceptually, if you're the best landlord in the country, you want to be able to shout about that. Why wouldn't you?

[Manjin Natwell]

Of course, it's like with restaurants, they get a five star, they want to shout about it. They want people to come to that restaurant. And it's exactly like with renting, if they're getting five stars as landlords, then they know, you know, that that property is up to standard. I think it's a brilliant platform for both landlords and tenants and I think it will probably benefit landlords and property managers if there is some negative feedback. At least they know what needs to be done in order to rectify that issue. It's like giving feedback, but via platform. And as we all agreed, positive feedback. They will probably have more viewings in that flat. You know, they'll probably have more people wanted to rent that place. So I guess it is beneficial, definitely for landlords.

[Ben Dobson]

Yeah. How do you improve? Right. We're part of the feedback cycle of person buys. Thing person interacts with thing person has a problem. How were those problems resolved? If problems were resolved at the end of the process, then how does the person, how does the person that provided that service continue to improve that service? We read the English housing survey, do some deep dives into how many Category 1 hazards there are that could literally kill people. And we can see that conditions in the PRs stand out like a sore thumbs up. And if tenants, if we manage to reach more tenants, which is obviously our objective, who then leave reviews, then hopefully we can be part of that feedback cycle. A commercial tool for property managers, for letting agents, for landlords to be able to work on. Okay. This property hasn't been. Hasn't been revamped for the last 15 years. Okay. The kitchen needs to be ripped out. Okay. The boiler needed to be repaired, replaced or whatever. So, yeah, it's about providing information to tenants and also helping property managers and letting agents and landlords at the same time to understand how things could be improved.

[Rita]

Thank you, Ben. That's really insightful. Oh, sorry. I'm Rita. In managing this team, I'm a solicitor. On the topic of problems, what would you say in terms of challenges and obstacles that you may have faced or currently facing in establishing and running the platform marks out of tenancy?

[Ben Yarrow]

I tell you, the biggest problem is we don't ask for money, we don't charge to leave reviews, we don't sell user data, we don't share user data, we don't monetize anything. We do and running the countries and probably the world's biggest platform for private rental sector reviews is expensive. So the biggest challenge we face is funding the operation.

[Manjin Natwell]

How do you fund the platform?

[Ben Dobson]

From its inception back in 2017, 1617, something like that, it was all self funded. I funded it myself because I believed in the. In the power of creating something which was ultimately useful to improve conditions in a sector which really needed improvements. Latterly, though, we've been working with one of the UK's largest health charities. They're called Impact on Urban Health. They in turn, are funded by guys and St. Thomas Foundation. And so we are working with them to create a playbook, a framework of how we can generate more reviews and then usefully kind of roll out that playbook region by region, city by city, borough by borough. So, yeah, that's what we're working on at the moment. We are eternally grateful for their assistance and their fund.

[Ben Yarrow]

The underlying sort of concept there is poor housing leads to poor health outcomes. That might be mental health, that might be physical health, you know, that might be, in extreme cases, death. It's a burden on the nhs, it's a burden on the local authority. And good housing leads to good health outcomes. So how do you change the PRs? And that's what we're here to do.

[Manjin Natwell]

Amazing.

[Rita]

Definitely. Ben, you mentioned about privacy and data security. What steps does the platform actually take to protect user privacy and data security? I think that's quite important for tenants as well as landlords.

[Ben Dobson]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's vital. One of the elements of running the. Running the project, along with like the tech things and the marketing and the financial elements, the privacy and security of user data, is Paramount. So there are technological things that we have in place to ensure that the website is always kept up to date. The latest security patches are rolled out. You know, we use very modern technology to do that. In terms of our kind of data protection obligations, we've worked with the ICO on a number of occasions to review what's happening on marks out of tenancy to ensure that we look after user data. There's two real things, I guess. First of all, we take a very, very limited amount of information from users who sign up to the website. You know, limit the surface area, basically. So we do that by not taking lots and lots of information. And secondly, the part that tends to be highlighted quite often, particularly by landlords who have got bad reviews and bad ratings, is that they want to be able to use GDPR and the debt protection regs to get their review removed. So we have a, we have a legitimate interest in processing landlords information without their express consent because we play a role within an industry, a vital role within an industry that cannot get away with providing that information. That information is a review without including the landlord's name. It's a really vital element of the process.

[Ben Yarrow]

But in terms of that landlord's personal data, the entirety of it is their name and the property address that they're renting out. That's it.

[Richard Mahal]

Can I just ask, at this stage, what steps do you take, if any, to ensure the reliability and authenticity of reviews then on Mark's adult tenancy?

[Ben Dobson]

Yeah, great question. So we're a tech company, fundamentally we're a prop tech company that uses interesting tech to try and solve problems. One of those problem is verifying that the person who's writing the review actually lived in the property. So we have a number of different checks and measures in place that flags to us whether review was likely written by somebody that didn't live in the property. They're quite good, they work pretty well. If a review is flagged by the system, we'll then investigate and then contact the person that wrote the review, asking them to supply some kind of basic information that shows that they did actually live in the property. So there is a, there is a. As there is with, with all review sites, there is a process of checking and validating because remember our, our, we kind of, we live and die on the validity and trustworthiness of the data that's written on our website. So yes, it's, it's of paramount importance to us.

[Ben Yarrow]

We capture, we capture certain keywords, we don't allow offensive language. We, there is a moderation process. And additionally, over the course of the years, it's become increasingly easy to identify a review that's not real. And in a multitude of cases that's immediately identifiable as a landlord that's leaving a fake review of themselves.

[Manjin Natwell]

Have you seriously come up, have you seen that?

[Ben Yarrow]

Yeah.

[Ben Dobson]

Oh my goodness. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of like a knee jerk instinctive reaction. Quite often a landlord will. And we're talking about like the, the, a really slim subsection of landlords here, right? Like the sort of landlord that tends, that tends to have a negative review on the platform. Their knee jerk reaction is immediately fire off an email, have a massive, have a massive rant. I would then provide them with information about, you know, our day protection regs and quite often the defamation stuff that comes into play as well. And then I would put money on the fact that within 15 minutes a review would be written for them which has 10 out of 10 and said that they're really, really, really lovely. Yeah, that happens as a matter. Happens as a matter.

[Zveyz]

Of course.

[Ben Yarrow]

They constantly refers to the landlord by their name. They were, you know, you see, you come to see it and recognize it.

[Manjin Natwell]

Mr. Blogs is a brilliant landlord with a fantastic property

[Ben Dobson]

and directly addresses all of the issues that were raised in the original review by the person that was legitimately a, a customer of that landlord.

[Manjin Natwell]

So yeah, classic.

[Ben Yarrow]

I don't think that's unique to us either. I think every review platform will have that experience. You know, restaurants, they'll get, they'll get, I think it's called brigading. They'll get a bunch of people to leave them a positive review to try to counteract the negative review. And it's just reality. But yeah, you do you recognize it? It's not difficult. I mean I'm sure there are, I'm sure there are reviews on there that might not be 100 authentic, but we're, we're pretty good at not allowing that to happen.

[Manjin Natwell]

I'm pretty sure the review platforms probably have the same. Where they pay someone to give positive reviews.

[Ben Dobson]

Yeah, absolutely. We know it's an issue, right. There's some legislation coming out least be mooted about it being the review platform's responsibility to ensure that fake reviews are dealt with. Yeah, we have responsibility to do that. We've been doing that since day one. And it's a really important role to ensure that we continue to be seen as a legitimate source of information.

[Ben Yarrow]

And sorry, one more thing to add to that is it's really, really, really important to know the landlord has a right to reply. It costs the landlord nothing to sign up and contest publicly the things that have been said. So, you know, there's no, we're not, again, you know, we obviously we're a tenant focused platform. The genesis, the origins of the platform, of that. But it's very, it became very clear to us very early on that alienating landlords, alienating letting agents, alienating all these people, it's not the way to achieve change, it's not the way to achieve improvement. And we're entirely focused on being balanced, being impartial.

[Manjin Natwell]

Yeah. So you said the landlord can reply. How is a landlord notified of a negative review?

[Ben Yarrow]

They aren't because we don't know. We don't have any mechanism for notifying them because we don't, we don't collect contact details, we don't collect email addresses for other people because that's a data protection nightmare from our point of view. If a third party is giving us someone else's data, that gets us into all sorts of trouble. So the only way a landlord finds out is probably they Google their own name or somebody else says to them, have you seen this? And at that point, and it's always for negative reviews, the landlord will consistently and entirely immediately weigh in with threats. You know, this view, this review is false and I require it to be removed within 13 seconds of receipt of this email or whatever. And that's when, as Ben said, we'll direct them to our data protection policies, our policy on requesting removal, our policy on defamation, and the landlord will go, no, not doing any of that. Remove it now and we'll say no. If you would like to contest the review, then here is the process for doing so. But yes, I suppose to actually answer your question, no, there's no way of, there's no mechanism by which we can notify a landlord that a review has been left unless they're already registered on the site. And that's why it's in the landlord's interest to register on the site to take ownership of their name and then to have the ability to know when they are being reviewed. Exactly like you would with Google businesses. Exactly like you would with trustpilot. You would take ownership of that so that you know, and it's, the concept is completely consistent with that.

[Manjin Natwell]

Okay, good, thank you.

[Zveyz]

Hi Ben, it's Zveyz. What I wanted to know is you've mentioned a lot about the user reviews on the platform, whether they're positive or negative towards the landlord, are there any specific success Stories or positive outcomes for tenants or landlords alike from the platform's existence since 2016.

[Ben Dobson]

Yeah, we've addressed and spoken about the landlords interactions and the way that the landlords emotively contact us to talk about their reviews. The flip side, we are contacted on a regular basis by tenants who have read a review on Mark's out tenancy and then decided not to rent from a particular landlord or not to live in a particular property who are kind of overwhelmed with doing something as simple as reading a review and realising that they dodged a bullet. We get feedback from various places speaking to people in person who had found out about Mark's out tenancy, contacted on a regular basis by companies that would like to do some kind of, you know, have some kind of commercial interaction with us, that love the concept and want to help it to kind of progress. So one of those I guess is impact on urban health. The people that are currently funding us to create this playbook, they realized that there needed to be a more market driven approach to making improvements in the private rental sector, did some basic research, found marks out of tenancy and were overjoyed about the fact that it existed. So even conceptually it's a good thing, you know, ideologically it's a good thing, but it's also, it's also we get contacted by people who are extremely happy about the fact that they've managed to either find a place or avoid a place or find a good landlord or avoid a bad landlord after reading reviews on the platform. So yeah, there are countless, countless, countless

[Ben Yarrow]

stories and I think, you know, just to add to that, we. One of the things Ben mentioned earlier was the information gap, the knowledge gap, tenants. I wouldn't put a percentage to it but I would say the vast majority of tenants don't know what their rights are, don't know where they stand legally, don't know, you know, and I'm sure you see this across all aspects of, you know, legal situations and landlords. Poor quality landlords will utilize that lack of knowledge to oftentimes or sometimes act illegally when the tenant doesn't know that that's what's happening. They have no power, they have no agency, their home is under threat. And one of our biggest, we're not just a review platform. We have lots and lots and lots and lots of articles about tenants rights, about landlords responsibilities, about what bits of legislation relate to a situation. You know, about illegal evictions for example. So one of our biggest goals and aims is to educate tenants so that they know where they stand legally. So that if they receive, for example, a Section 21 eviction notice, they know the basis for challenging that if their landlord wants to force them to sign a new tenancy agreement, if they're on an assured shorthold tenancy, they know that legally actually they don't have to do that. And if tenants, we say often because it's. And it's. It's cliched, but knowledge is powerful. And if the tenant doesn't know and you know, on very small scale with individual interactions with people, we have helped people change their situation in a very real sense. People who were being threatened with illegal eviction and weren't evicted, people whose landlords were trying to increase their rent illegally. And, you know, we've done that. But that's quite small scale compared to the overall idea of, you know, forcing the market to change at scale.

[Manjin Natwell]

I totally agree, Ben. I think that's the main concept behind the podcast, you know, is to let people know that their rights, and we've discussed this before, many people, tenants are scared to do or say something to their landlord because they fear the repercussions. They might be evicted or the rent would go up. So what your platform's doing, what we're doing, you know, we're making people aware. And I think it's a brilliant platform and you should be so proud of what you have created.

[Ben Yarrow]

We are, we absolutely are.

[Ben Dobson]

Thumbs up. I like that comment. What, why do you. Why do you think it's good?

[Richard Mahal]

Well, to be fair. Sorry, I just want to pick up on that part because the knowledge gap, like you were saying, that knowledge gap, there is a massive gap and it is more accessible now with everyone having access to the Internet and have a lot more facilities and a lot more things available. But that knowledge gap is massive. The education of tenants knowing their rights, what they can do, you know, what landlords obligations are, you know, literally on the flip side, it's such an important thing and it's one of the things that's overlooked. And your platform is brilliant because it allows general tenants from everywhere to actually give their honest reviews. It allows landlords to get honest feedback, you know, real criticism, but constructive criticism. And should tenants feel, like Manjan has said, intimidated by, you know, raising an issue. There are these places, this podcast, your website, you know, shelters, a sheltered website, is brilliant for this sort of stuff as well. What they can do and what responses they have or sort of powers they have in the face of, you know, unscrupulous landlords. Because not all landlords are Bad. Some landlords are brilliant, you know, some people homes so Well, I think, I

[Ben Yarrow]

think we would, we would actually suggest that the, the majority of landlords are providing an essential service and they're doing a good job. But there's a clear distinction in my mind. Some landlords see what they're doing as an investment opportunity where their tenant is financing their appreciating asset and they are going to get as much money as they possibly can. And then there's another class of landlord that sees that they're providing a service to a customer and it's profitable, but they have a responsibility to provide that service ethically and legally and responsibly. And that's obviously a black and white type distinction and there's people that, you know, exist in the middle. But yeah, it's as simple as that. Am I running a business for profit at the expense of everything else, or am I providing a critical service?

[Richard Mahal]

Yeah, with that in mind. So what are your thoughts on the actually current state on the housing, the property market at the moment, and what advice would you have for tenants going forward about the rental market and things to look out for? I know that's a massively wide question, so it's like, it's one of those sort of things that I think might help or pointers that you might think help tenants going forward.

[Ben Yarrow]

I mean, we're not a political organization, we are not. We're not trying to change policy, we are not trying to influence, you know, as Ben said, we're not activists, we're not, we're not trying to change what the government does, we're not trying to change what the local authority does. And questions like this veer inevitably into the political. But I think whatever your politics are, you can't argue that there is a critical shortage of social housing in this country. That alone is what's forcing all of these local authorities into bankruptcy, because they're having to utilise the private rental sector to fill the gaps in social housing, which in turn exacerbates the problem of supply and demand in the private rental sector. Because if I'm a landlord with 10 properties, it's much easier for me to just rent them all through a housing association or to the local authority tenants than it is for me to work in the PRs. So you end up with this sort of compounding set of problems. It's supply side shortage at its most fundamental. Not enough homes, not enough supply of rentable properties, which allows the market to, as Ben said, supply. What's the quote from Professor Alex Marsh. It doesn't discipline poor quality providers because it doesn't need to.

[Ben Dobson]

With, with a bunch of solicitors in the room, can you rattle off the names of discreet pieces of legislation that have some kind of application to the private rental sector? How many, how many can you count? We've got the Housing and Planning Act.

[Richard Mahal]

Lt@ the Land Tenant Act, Laute Tenant Act.

[Manjin Natwell]

I know for Eviction act we've got the Protection from Harassment act, obviously your standard housing acts.

[Ben Dobson]

There are a lot what we, what we. On, what's that? Six, seven, something like that?

[Manjin Natwell]

Yeah, yeah.

[Richard Mahal]

Probably a couple of handfuls. Yeah.

[Ben Dobson]

So our, our point quite commonly is, is another piece of legislation, one more piece of legislation going to magically fix the private rental sector? We don't believe so. Right. We don't believe that adding some more regs, legislation, whatever, is going to transform the private rental sector. There are systemic issues, as Ben has spoken about, and that's the role that we see marks out of tenancy and reviews and passing memories and filling that information gap as helping to kind of help the market, to regulate itself through market forces and not applying any more kind of like legislative power, not putting any more regs onto landlords and onto tenants. Because we, we don't believe that or we believe that there is another way of helping the private rental sector to do a better job and it's by filling that information gap from one customer to the next.

[Manjin Natwell]

I mean, even with all these legislations, it's clearly not working because we are where we are today.

[Ben Dobson]

Exactly.

[Rita]

Yeah.

[Manjin Natwell]

Just going back to advice for tenants. What advice for tenants who are navigating through the rental market would you give based on the insights from your platform?

[Ben Dobson]

Read, for the love of God, read everything you get your hands on. Read through your contract, find out who your landlord is, do a bit of research, contact the local authority if you need to, to find out whether they've had any complaints or issues raised against them because they might not have reviews on Mark's house that tenancy. Is the property licensed, do they have the correct license, you know, all of those things to try and arm yourself. How many times again, as solicitors, have you seen it where somebody has entered into a contract, tenancy agreements, contract, entered into a contract without having done some kind of fundamental research? Because there were more important things to do at the time, right? They wanted to move house, get out of a bad situation, they just split up from their partner. They wanted to, you know, they've just got a new job and you have these external pressures put on you and you, you know, at the time, don't have enough resources or time or whatever to go out and do some basic research. And it's, it's again, filling that information gap that we are looking to help tenants to, to equip themselves with the information that's. That's really vital. That's, that's there to be. That's be used.

[Ben Yarrow]

Yeah, I think, and I'm sure everybody in this discussion has, is guilty of agreeing to something without bothering to read it. Every time you visit a website, for example, or you get an Amazon Kindle or an iPhone or whatever, and you just go scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. Agree. The difference here is this is your home. This is the place where it's not a place that you're renting. It's not an appreciating asset for a landlord. It's none of those things. This is your home. This is the place where you want to be safe and comfortable and secure. So on this occasion, maybe don't scroll past the small print and understand what your rights are, because the stakes. If I don't read my iPhone rights and Apple come back and take my iPhone away, well, costly but silly mistake. If I don't read my tenancy agreement, I could lose my home. Now I'm homeless and I have no mechanism, I have no means of solving that problem. So, you know, the stakes, the stakes are really, really high and we want people to recognize that and as Ben said, arm themselves, equip themselves, educate themselves, because it's all there. The information's all out there. Go read it.

[Manjin Natwell]

Yes. It's understanding. I find clients, I mean, some of the tenancy agreements we've come across are just full of legal jargon which can be simply simplified, but are not for some reason. And I think simplifying.

[Ben Yarrow]

I think there's a template. I think there's a template they all download.

[Manjin Natwell]

Yeah, probably from W.H. smith or something.

[Ben Yarrow]

So many of rent increases are only allowed to be this or that. And it's always the same numbers and it's always the CPI and it's always that. But tenants don't read that. And then the landlord increases the rent by more and the tenant doesn't know that the landlord's not allowed to do that and they're scared to say something and it. Or ev. All the time. Yeah, all the time.

[Manjin Natwell]

And tenants just assume it's like they have to pay that increased rent and. Or sometimes they agree to it because they don't want to lose a roof over their head knowing they can't afford it, so they agreed to it in any of it.

[Ben Yarrow]

That's the power imbalance. The knowledge gap is one thing. The power imbalance is the entirely different thing.

[Manjin Natwell]

Exactly.

[Ben Yarrow]

But yeah, can't fix that.

[Zveyz]

So when. When you mention about the information gap and there's this void between self regulation and legislation, do you find or are you able to share any interesting trends that you've observed in tenant reviews? What normally is like, the main thing that a lot of tenants show concerns in terms of their landlords.

[Ben Dobson]

There's a feature we recently built and have launched on the site where you can search for any phrase or words that have been noted in reviews. One of the biggest, I think there's 500 mentions of this word and the variations of it is the word mould. So that in terms of, in terms of issues within the private rental sector, you know, damp and mould are certainly, certainly high up there in terms of landlord interactions with their customers. It tends to be not giving enough notice to enter the property, not respecting the tenants right to live in a home that's private.

[Manjin Natwell]

Yeah. Breaching the employment. Yeah.

[Ben Yarrow]

And I think another one is non responsiveness. When somebody raises an issue like their boiler doesn't work, like they've got no hot water, like, you know, they can't lock their door, the landlord will go, oh, yeah, I'll get some around next week. If they even reply, they'll say, I'll get some around next week. And it's like, well, no, that's just my. I have to live here, I got children. It's December 29th.

[Manjin Natwell]

Wow.

[Ben Yarrow]

And it's minus seven degrees outside. Like, no.

[Ben Dobson]

Can I give you an example of that? I was in the Lake District a couple of months ago, turned up this place, booked it through Airbnb, got there and there was an electric shower downstairs and there was a mains compiler shower in the other room and there was no hot water. Messaged the person that was the host through Airbnb and said, we got their hot water. They came around very quickly, arranged for a plumber to come out and we were only staying there for two nights, three nights maybe. The issue was resolved within a matter of a day, I think, and we were out most of the the following day, so it didn't matter. And then the host sent us a message saying they were going to knock £50 off the, off the price of the Airbnb.

[Manjin Natwell]

If only all landlords were like that.

[Ben Dobson]

So like, where does that, where does that happen? Right. The host on Airbnb didn't want a negative review, wanted us to have an enjoyable time, wanted us to have hot

[Ben Yarrow]

water and felt an obligation, felt an obligation to provide a quality product for whatever reason.

[Ben Dobson]

Yeah. And like where does that happen? Where does that happen on a regular basis to tenants in the private rental sector? Does their landlord knock 50 pound off their rent? Don't hear of many cases of that. But that's the sort of role that we're looking to play. We understand that it's a slow process, we understand that it's a tectonic change. We understand that every single review takes a long time and the interactions and the transactions last a long time. But that's the aim of what we're doing is to provide a rebalancing where landlords realize that tenants feedback and reviews and responses play a really integral part to their as a tool in the private rental sector. So that a landlord would go yeah sure, you know, take, take 100 quid off next month's rent because I wasn't able to get there in time.

[Ben Yarrow]

Well and like an extension to that, we survey our, we survey the people that have. We, we do quarterly surveys because we want to understand trends in the private rental sector and so we survey our users and overwhelmingly we're seeing people's rents going up. Well, yes, because interest rates, interest rates go up, the landlord's costs go up, they pass on those costs to their tenant. This is an age old story but I don't remember, I don't remember hearing when interest rates fell to record lows. I don't remember hearing everybody's rent going down. That didn't happen.

[Manjin Natwell]

I think the problem is, is sometimes, I think sometimes landlords probably get a little bit greedy so to see what the market trends are like. And right now what are we? February 2024, the, the rental market is, is booming in the sense of a lot of people are wanting to rent. So as a result landlords are pushing their rents up sky high which become unaffordable to many people or the start off of being that they're able to afford it, but then thereafter when the rents keep increasing every year, then it becomes unaffordable and that's when they then either approach the local authorities for, for homeless assistance but again there's not enough supply, there's not enough suitable accommodation out there to, to help everyone. I think that that is a problem.

[Ben Yarrow]

Absolutely. And there's a, we often reference, there was an article on the BBC last year that said that nationwide 20 people are competing to rent a home and in Certain areas, that's as high as 30 people that are competing to rent a home. So what possible reason or motivation financially is there for a landlord to improve their service? Because they know.

[Manjin Natwell]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Ben Yarrow]

There's a queue of people behind them. There's a queue of people waiting to take their property.

[Richard Mahal]

Yeah. And the rents payable now are just sky high. If you look comparison to the LHA rates, the local housing lounge rates, if you look at where they are, they've been capped and staggered. So. Yeah. So long. And, you know, out prices, anyone that may be able to get the assistance, you get people that can afford the rent. And like you said, there's 20 or 30 people even higher in certain places looking for the same property. The landlord knows they can get that. Why would they look to make something more affordable for, like a wide range of people? And then it goes back to your original opinion earlier on, where there's just not enough social housing, there's just not enough being built. There's nothing. There's not enough affordable housing, not social housing. It's unfair. But just.

[Ben Dobson]

We can't do anything about that.

[Ben Yarrow]

Right.

[Ben Dobson]

We can't build more social housing. We can't improve LHA rates. We can't do. We can't. There aren't many ways that we can tweak knobs to try and make improvements, but one of the things that we can do, and that's like, goes back to our purpose, is like, we can help tenants to access better information. Like, that's like. That's like our role as we see it.

[Ben Yarrow]

Yeah. Drive change completely independently from the government, from local authorities. You know, the one that sticks in my mind at this instant is the AWABS law. Right.

[Rita]

Yeah.

[Ben Yarrow]

Hazards and social housing have to be fixed within. I think it's 24 hours is the new law. But then the decision was made not to extend that to the PRs. So to us, that's a missed opportunity. But, you know, we're not a political organization. But.

[Richard Mahal]

But you also have such a good impact and what you guys are doing, it's such a good. It's such a good platform, having the impact that you guys can have in a sector that is, you know, unfortunately known for having really poor accommodation in certain parts of it. You can't change policy. Neither can we. You know, we're. We're at the mercy of what's going on around us. We are just, you know, we're playing catch up effectively. So what you guys have done in your platform is brilliant in the sense that you give People that voice. You give people that idea that, you know, if there is someone that is not doing what they should be doing by their own obligations, they can be held accountable to an extent. And I think it's a really good, easy concept. It's a good concept. Like Richard said, it's surprising someone that's done it before. You know, the motivation behind it's great, the purpose behind it's great, the intention behind it's great. And so it does give a lot of people a right and a voice that they didn't, you know, they may not have had before.

[Rita]

And it definitely allows landlords to actually improve their services through constructive criticism.

[Ben Yarrow]

Also, there's more. There's more than that. We don't just collect reviews when we identify legal issues, when we identify tenants that are at risk or, you know, having problems, we partner with organizations and we direct tenants to resources and services that can help them. We're not a legal authority on anything, but, you know, we have and we consistently do, you know, even to the local authority. This. This is a. This is an unlicensed hmo. You need to deal with that. This is. Ben, what were the stats for Nottingham for unlicensed HMOs?

[Ben Dobson]

Yeah, the last check, the last lot of data I had through was 12%. So 12% of reviews that were written in Nottingham, in the Nottingham City Council area, were for properties which were being rented out as HMOs but didn't have the correct license. We can flag that through to the housing officers, enforcement officers, licensing guys at local authority level to say someone's written a review. We've checked our systems. It doesn't have a. Doesn't have the correct license. Gonna have a look and then that information is available for them to do their decentered regulation. That's the phrase. That's another phrase from the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence. They use that phrase about the role that we play. We can't impact legislation, we can't. You know, we're not a legal team, but we can help those with the power to do enforcement to enforce changes, to have better access to the information. It's a little bit like, what was the analogy if. If there was a city that needed Airbnbs to have a license and Airbnb worked with local authorities or housing teams within the local authority to help them identify which properties were being rented out without a license, that. That would be a helpful. That would be a helpful loop to close for the local authority authority. And that's what. That's the role that we play as well.

[Ben Yarrow]

Except the fundamental differences. Why would Airbnb do that? Because they have a vested financial interest in as many properties as possible. And that's where we fundamentally differ from other review platforms. We don't have a vested financial interest, so we will do whatever it takes to connect people or to resolve problems. Because we've got. No, we don't have. You know, it's not going to hurt us by doing that. We can't fund a local authority, an underfunded local authority, to do enforcement, but we can help them to be more efficient in how they use their existing resources.

[Richard Mahal]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just identify. All you can do is help to identify and they can actually take active

steps at this point. Can I just ask, go back to something you said earlier. You said you work with Urban Health. Do you have any other collaborations or partnerships within the housing industry?

[Ben Dobson]

Yeah. So the. Over the last few months, we've started to do. We've started to work with a lot of. A lot of landlords, a lot of the good landlords that understand the value of having good tenant feedback and that's a really positive thing.

[Ben Yarrow]

They don't want to be tarred with the all landlords are bad brush because they're not bad and they want to disassociate themselves from this all landlords are bad rhetoric.

[Ben Dobson]

Yeah. Go back to that question earlier, which is like, how do you prove. Well, to really. How do you prove that you're a good landlord? And secondly, I don't think I've used this question yet, but if you go into a restaurant and have a meal, who is it that decides whether that experience at that restaurant was a good one or a bad one? It's not the restaurant. They don't decide whether. Whether, whether. Whether your experience was good or. It's not down to trading standards and health and safety guys to tell us whether you had a good experience? It's the experience of the customer. And so that's another kind of driver for us to be able to provide this platform for tenants. But come back to your point about working with other organizations. There are orgs like Safer Renting that work out of Cambridge House, that do a lot of tenant relations work with local authorities, with tenants and with landlords. There is justice for tenants who do a lot of rent repayment order training for local authorities and help tenants to claim their rent back if they've been renting from somewhere that's particularly dodgy. Yeah, Lots of organisations that we're aligned with, you know, as a very values led organisation, we like to work with people who have the same kind of mindset as us, but we work across all of the divides. Right. It's the hands across the divide thing that we try and impress upon everybody that operates within the industry.

[Richard Mahal]

Fantastic. And I think we'll probably at this stage start to wrap up because you've given us a lot of your time and we're really grateful for all of your time and all this very, very useful information I'm sure that our listeners will now use. What are your future plans for Mark's out of tenancy? Do you have any future plans?

[Ben Dobson]

World domination. Yeah, future plans. We've not really kind of delved into this yet, but we work with local authorities to provide them with data. The data is not generated from reviews. We've recently created a service which helps local authorities to find properties which are being used by a high churn of renters. We're also helping them to find empty properties to, to turn those back into useful places for people to live and to rent. And also a system that helps to identify whether a landlord is continuing to rent out a property when they are in breach of a prohibition order. So that's like a separate system to reviews. That's an ongoing service that we're offering to local authorities. We're starting to build out a lot more of the tech elements of, of the website, writing more articles to be, to be seen and used as a more useful service for tenants and also starting to work with, letting agents to provide them with better quality data as a commercial operation so that they can improve their levels of service. That's, that's also a big focus for us in the coming months.

[Ben Yarrow]

And one more thing I'd add to that is that we are rolling, we are rolling out what, what are effectively a Facebook profile page to summarize it for a property so that you, you can see how many on there now, Ben? 300,000 or something like that. Doesn't matter. The vision is every PRS property in the country nationwide will have a profile page so that when you Google the address of that property, you will be able to see including but not limited to the energy efficiency, the potential energy efficiency, how much it's going to cost you to heat it, what are the transport links, where's the nearest green space, air quality, pollution, NHS pharmacies, the nearest schools and the quality of those schools, like the Ofsted stuff, broadband speed, flood risk, noise and a whole bunch of other stuff. And we, we, this exists already and we're adding to it all the time. We're coming up with new ideas all the time. So imagine if you're going to like, forget the review of the landlord, forget the review of the neighborhood, whatever. Imagine like having that granular level of. Obviously you can find all of these things out, but you go, you know, if you want to know these things, you do have to go and do 9 or 10 or 15 different Google searches. Or you could just click on the link, click on the page profile and see pretty much everything you could ever want to know about that property to help you decide if you want to live there.

[Richard Mahal]

Now, that's a brilliant idea. That's a brilliant idea that gives so much information to everyone.

I don't think a lot of tenants would be that proactive in looking for all this information in different places or even know what information, particularly if you're a newer or younger renter, what kind of information you might want to know about or what might be important.

[Ben Yarrow]

Well, I get that, I get that. But one of the things we consistently say is renting is being a PRS tenant is there's no demographic, you know, there, there's no, doesn't matter what ethnicity you are, what religion you are, what, you know, how old you are. If you're renting, you're renting. You know, the PRS is united in the equivalency. We used is pharmacies.

[Rita]

Right?

[Ben Yarrow]

Doesn't matter how rich you are or how poor you are or who you are, if you need medicine, you go to a pharmacy. And likewise, if you're, if you're renting, you're renting and you're, you're part of that community. And the way that you empower that community is by leaving reviews and by building the memory and by allowing the market to regulate itself. That was a bit of a sales pitch at the end there.

[Richard Mahal]

And to be fair, your collaboration with the local authority sounds really interesting as well.

[Rita]

Actually.

[Richard Mahal]

I think that's a really, that's a really interesting collaboration. Local authorities do get a bad rap. They're. They're hamstrung as well in their own sorts of ways. So having.

[Ben Yarrow]

Well, they're under resourced, they're under resourced, they're overworked. And we understand those things, but we, our message to them is we can help you to utilize the resources you have more efficiently and potentially generate revenue, issue fines, get, get licenses where they're missing, you know, all of those things. That's the, that's up to the local authority to decide what to do with the information we give them. There's a story. Was it Plymouth, the guy that rode around on his bike looking for empty properties?

[Ben Dobson]

Yeah. I can't remember which local authorities it was.

[Ben Yarrow]

That's not even a joke. The guy, his job, literally, he would ride around on his bike and he would look at whether bins had been put out or whether curtains had been opened and he would flag it and say, that looks like an empty property. We can do a postcode, for argument's sake, Plymouth, and say, well, look, here's what we think are 300 empty properties. So you know which one is a better utilization of their resources.

[Manjin Natwell]

Exactly. I like to see how many calories he burns.

[Richard Mahal]

Well, I think at this stage, then thank you, both of you, for your time. You've given us a lot of your time and it's been very, very informative and we hope you enjoyed sharing some information about your. And promoting your. Your platform. So at this stage, I think we'll, we'll.

We'll call it a wrap.

[Ben Dobson]

Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks for the opportunity to talk to you about what we're doing. Yeah, we look forward to continue to work in with you to help tenants to exercise their rights.

[Ben Yarrow]

We don't mind talking about what we do because we're in. Not unique, but we're in the fortunate position that what we're doing is genuinely impactful and, and making the world a better place. And how could we not approach that with joy and optimism and passion?

[Manjin Natwell]

Amazing. No, I love it. Thank you so much, guys.

[Ben Yarrow]

Thank you,

[Manjin Natwell]

Sam.