I recently met with Marks Out Of Tenancy, a new website which aims to fill a key gap in the rented housing sector.

As a renter myself, I know all too well how hard it is to make a good decision in the pressured environment of searching for a property to rent. All too often one can make the mistake of a poor home or location simply because they’ve not had all of the information. Add to that the difficulty of working out which landlords and agents are good and which are terrible, and you have a recipe for misery.

That’s where Marks Out Of Tenancy comes in -; the website allows renters to review their house, landlord, agent and neighbourhood in a similar way to TripAdvisor. Users can view all of the reviews for an agent, landlord and neighbourhood and drill down into the detail to, for instance, avoid a bad landlord without excluding a good agent.

It’s a really well designed and easy to use website, with mechanisms in place to preserve anonymity and to ensure reliability of reviews.

In my meeting with Ben Yarrow, their founder, he explained how the website started in Bishopston, but has aspirations to go global. Ben showed me how they’ve built in lots of features to make it easy to work with the likes of councils and universities too. Plus, it’s not all renter-focused -; landlords and agents can sign up, personalise their pages and even respond to reviews, promoting fairness and transparency.

Whilst Marks Out Of Tenancy won’t solve the housing crisis, it has the potential to bring some much needed sense, comparability and accountability to the often cowboy-strewn rented housing market.

If you support their idea then get on board! Why not sign up and add a review today?

www.marksoutoftenancy.com