No children, no DSS, no students: online adverts and “property guardianship”

Those seeking a new place to live – especially in the private rented sector – now head online to do so. The platforms they use and adverts they see are an important source of information about the properties they will occupy and how their owners’ seek to project them. This paper aims to argue for the importance of property adverts as a source of data, using “property guardianship” to illustrate the value in the approach.

The study draws on an analysis of 503 advertisements published on SpareRoom.co.uk – a leading property search engine – in July 2018.

The authors put forward four key areas of findings. The first two look at legal understanding, dealing with the context, the advertisement provides for eventual occupation (the “process of construction”) and any indications they provide of legal elements of occupation (“diagnostics”). The final two deal with the broader positioning of the sector, analysing the practice of excluding prospective occupiers, such as the widespread inclusion of “no Department of Social Security” seen elsewhere in the private rented sector, and how the adverts project a certain lifestyle to their viewer.

The findings demonstrate that further research into property advertisements would be valuable, particularly into other sub-markets in the private-rented sector, such as student accommodation and “professional” lets.

This study is the only analysis of property guardian advertisements and the first dedicated study of private rented sector advertisements in the UK.