RENTERS have hit out over misleading property adverts.

Some 80 per cent of prospective tenants have been put off renting a property due to a bad experience when viewing it, according to new research.

A new survey of 33,000 tenants has highlighted what prospective renters want and what letting agents give them.

Tenants generally found that in adverts, the size of properties, particularly the size of bedroom, were wildly overstated.

Renters were also said to be put off by unappealing property photos.

In general, they will not visit a property if the photos are dark and don’t show what the home is really like.

“Show me all of the room inside the house, where I’m actually going to spend my time, instead,” said one respondent.

“I’m not really interested in what the property looks like from the outside, but most adverts seem to have loads of these and to be honest I tend to just skip past these when searching.”

The research was carried out by online lettings agency Upad.

Examples of other things that put off tenants is seeing a property advertised in the headline as a family home and then further down in the details it says “no children”.

Rooms described as double bedrooms that don’t actually have room for a double bed also put off prospective tenants.

“These results show that not only are there still elements of overbearing and downright misleading salesmanship going on in the private rental market, but that tenants still aren’t buying it,” said Upad chief executive officer James Davis.

“It’s quite frightening that there are 20 per cent of tenants who still move into a property having had an experience such as this, as they may feel they have no choice but to choose from the best of a bad bunch,” he pointed out.

“While there are large numbers of letting agents and landlords out there who do an exceptional job, I’d encourage anyone involved in renting out properties to consider their approach.

“By trying to oversell, all letting agents and landlords are doing is keeping properties empty for longer.”