The Week The Landlords Moved In: new BBC1 show makes landlords live as their tenants, but would you want to be a reality TV star?

A new reality television show aims to give landlords a taste of how their tenants live.
£463 per week: a two-bedroom flat in Molasses House, Plantation Wharf, London SW11. To let through John D Wood & Co., 020 3151 5403
Victoria Whitlock26 June 2017

So, who wants to be a reality TV star? Yes? No? Sort of tempted but not sure? Well, if you fancy it, the television production company behind Grand Designs, House Doctor and The Apprentice is making a new prime-time show for the Beeb and they are looking for landlords to take part.

They aren’t aiming to emulate the landlord- and tenant-shaming programmes such as Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords — or at least, they say they aren’t.

A researcher tells me the new show, called The Week the Landlords Moved In, will be more of a documentary in which landlords experience what it’s like to be a tenant. In a nutshell, they want you to move into your own rental property for four or five days to live in your tenant’s shoes.

You will have to live on your tenant’s budget — while the tenant is put up somewhere at the BBC’s expense — and at the end of the week you’ll get to chat about your experience, presumably on camera.

Eight landlords have already been filmed and, according to Boundless, they are happy with the edited versions of the shows, but the producers are short of two more volunteers. Boundless admits landlords are wary that this is going to be yet another landlord-versus-tenant programme that presents us as the bad guys. However, Boundless says it’s aiming to show that landlords “really do care about their tenants”, while at the same time letting landlords see “if they’re getting things right”.

If you are keen but still not quite sure you want to take part, you can chat to some of the landlords who have already been filmed, but when I asked if I could get a sneak preview of some of their performances, I was given a definite no. Personally, I’d love to spend a week living as one of my tenants and on their budgets. They’re all young, free and single, they are all professionals and probably earn twice as much as me, and they don’t have kids. So I imagine they spend most nights out on the town. Woo-hoo!

Also, I think my flats are very nice places to live and, unlike my own house, they aren’t full of teenagers’ smelly trainers and discarded clothes waiting to be picked up by yours truly. And I wouldn’t be bombarded with constant demands for food.

Also, if I’m living in my tenants’ shoes, presumably I’ll be able to do what they do and call a landlord to ask for new light bulbs, get them to come round and clean the oven, and let me in when I go out on the razz and forget my front door keys. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a very realistic experiment. However, I can’t see how my tenant swap would make interesting TV. I’m afraid viewers would think my life a bit of a yawn, and anyway, I’ve got a face best suited to radio, so I won’t be volunteering. Don’t let me put you off though.

The programme will be going out on BBC1 at 9pm on Wednesday June 28 and maybe, just maybe, it will undo some of the damage caused by some of the landlord-bashing media recently.

The makers are particularly keen to find London landlords to take part as they haven’t got anyone in the capital appearing on the show yet. All age groups, demographics and types of accommodation will be considered. Tweet me at @vicwhitlock if you’re interested.

Victoria Whitlock lets four properties in south London. To contact Victoria with your ideas and views, tweet @vicwhitlock

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