Landlord claims tenants have too much power on GMB

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Good Morning Britain presenters Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley were joined by landlord Tina Knight to discuss the way that she felt tenants and landlords are treated given the soaring rent prices in the cost of living crisis. During the heated debate, Tina stated that she felt landlords weren’t as much to blame as the tenants for making a mess and dealing with discrepancies in their homes. This sparked fury on social media with many viewers calling her views “out of touch”.

Susanna began: “You are a landlord. Right now, we have people, in some parts of the country, a rental property comes up and 30 people go to see it, there is a competition of such intensity that people have no chance.

“And even once they do, rents are so expensive at the moment, you think that tenants already have power on their side, in what way?”

Tina explained: “Tenants definitely have power on their side and you can’t blame landlords for the housing shortage this is respective governments going back years.

“They have not addressed the problem properly so we can’t blame landlords for that and the whole point is, that landlords balance their rent.

“Everybody thinks that landlords are like rackmen, and I am sure that the Panorama-type thing, is very one-sided,” she added, referring to fellow guest Kwajo Tweneboa’s documentary on horrific living conditions for some tenants.

“It always picks on the really worst possible houses and normally, council-owned, the funny thing is your asking government to give more powers to the tenants when they’re the landlords that are causing the problems.”

Richard interjected and stated: “But you think that tenants have too much power don’t you?”

She agreed and added: “I do because, the thing is, if you get somebody who refuses to pay their rent, which a lot of them do, you can’t get them out for none payment of rent.

“[Only] until they have not paid for two months and then if you start proceedings you are looking at legal costs between £3,000 and £4,000.

“They play the game and they have learnt they can make it run until at least six months, and then at six months rent, they get evicted and start the process again.

“They normally only end up paying rent twice a month in a year and they are professional people that do that.

“The whole point is, that if there are areas where people are vandalising your property which many landlords put up with, you can’t get them out.

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“It is when people say that they are living in these appalling conditions that nobody can condone that they are frightened to say anything because they will be evicted.

“You can’t just evict people, there are laws there that you can’t evict them.”

The debate sparked strong opinions from viewers at home, with Twitter user @beautifulpop fuming: “She says it’s only a small minority of landlords we shouldn’t generalise, but then says it’s ‘most’ ‘many’ ‘lots’ of tenants that are the problem in some way… how about we don’t generalise?! #gmb”

@FlopsyPickle added: “For those saying ‘just clean it’ no amount of cleaning will get rid of mould, it just removes it superficially & until the reason for the damp is fixed it will continue to regrow.

“Mould is a health risk so should be a priority yet it isn’t being treated as such by landlords #GMB.”

@amc88ken raged: “That vile landlord on #gmb demonstrating exactly why people hate landlords. ‘Tenants have all the power’ what planet is she on?!!”

While @dinkydip weighed in: “Good grief this landlord is a tad out of touch!! Raise interest rates as the poor old landlords aren’t making much in their pension pots???? What?? #gmb.”

However, there was some support for Tina, with Stuart McKinnon arguing: “Tina, I sort of agree. And I’m a tenant. They need to have a scum landlord on the show. Cheat TV show about nothing. #GMB.”

Good Morning Britain airs weekdays from 6am on ITV.

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