Rate Your Landlord is live — with over 500 reviews from Durham students!
Looking for your next place, or just curious about how other students have found theirs? Rate Your Landlord is here to help you make confident housing choices.
The site allows student tenants to share honest reviews about their rental experiences — the good, the bad, and everything in between. It's kind of like a renters' trip advisor! You can see what others have said about landlords and properties around Durham, and even leave your own review to help future students.
It's all about making renting fairer, safer, and less stressful for everyone. Reviews are anonymous, landlords can respond, and the more students get involved, the more powerful the tool becomes.
Durham SU joined Rate Your Landlord after students asked for more transparency in the housing market, and now, with hundreds of local reviews already live, it's easier than ever to learn from real experiences before you sign.
👉 Check out Rate Your Landlord today and see what Durham students are saying about their renting journeys.
Students are asked to rate their own housing experience on 8 indicators. In each case the student are presented with a 1 to 5 scale (5 the highest). The 8 ratings are:
All reviews will have a right of response once the review has been moderated by our expert team. Students will be restricted to submitting only one review per academic year and will have to make a declaration that it is honest and truthful and that they have lived in the property.
Rate Your Landlord is committed to giving landlords a right of response. Comments and general impressions can be answered to and landlords can make any general comments they wish under their right of reply. As students are limited to 140 characters, so are landlords. There will be moderation of comments, and any longer than 140 characters will simply be cut off at the character limit.
Before the site’s go-live date, landlords will be notified of any reviews with an opportunity to reply (the reviewers name/contact details are never shared). Once the site is live following a review being submitted, landlords will be automatically notified via email (where available) or SMS (if requested), with a link to reply to the review within a given timescale. If any users of the website have a concern about a live review they can use the ‘report a review’ function at the side and the moderation team will investigate.
The site has been operating successfully in Leeds since 2016, followed by rollout in York, and is soon to launch in Newcastle. It has become a popular tool in the house hunting process, allowing future tenants to consider the reviews and make savvy, informed decisions, whilst driving up standards in student accommodation as landlords respond to their consumer feedback. Each year, Rate Your Landlord holds the Rate Your Landlord Awards, recognising outstanding landlords and agents and celebrating the good work already being done.
Rate Your Landlord provides good landlords with good testimonials and marketing material that will help students to make more informed choices and positively choose to rent from a trustworthy provider. Rate Your Landlord is also an effective tool for recognising problems with particular landlords or agents and highlights trends of consistently good and poor landlords in the Landlord Rankings area.
In submitting a review to the site:
Student reviewers:
All reviews submitted by students to Rate Your Landlord are moderated by a small team of trained staff and reviews will either be amended to comply with the moderation protocol, approved or rejected.