Rules and how it works

Last updated: October 2026.

Who can write a review

• Anyone aged 18 or over who genuinely lived in the home in the last 3 years: a tenant, a joint tenant, a lodger, a lawful subtenant or a student.
• Only about your own experience. You can’t write a review for someone else, or about a home you didn’t live in.
• One review per person per tenancy. People who shared a home can each write their own review.
• You upload a tenancy agreement or a proof of address for that home. You can edit or delete your review later with the private link we email you.

What “✓ Verified tenant” means

• We checked a document showing that the writer lived at this address, around the dates they gave.
• It doesn’t mean we checked every statement in the review. A review is the writer’s own experience and opinion, not JJ Agency’s.
• Reviews written by JJ Agency are marked “Review by JJ Agency” instead, and are never shown as tenant reviews.

Your name and your document

• They are used to check that you lived at the address, and kept as proof that you were entitled to write your review, for example if someone disputes it. Only our moderators can see them. They are never shown on the site or given to landlords or agents.
• If you delete your review yourself, or we don’t publish it, they are deleted straight away.
• While your review is online, we keep them. If we take a published review down (for example after a complaint), we keep them for 1 year after that, in case of a dispute, then delete them.
• Your name is never shown, but people who know you may still recognise you from the details of your review, such as the home and the dates. So we can’t promise complete anonymity.
• Landlords’ and agents’ documents are deleted as soon as our moderator has checked them.

What a review may contain

• Your honest experience of the home, the building, the area, repairs, the deposit and how the landlord or agent dealt with you. Good and bad reviews are equally welcome.
• Opinions should read as opinions (“I felt”, “in my experience”). Facts should be accurate to the best of your knowledge.
• Serious accusations, such as a crime, fraud or a stolen deposit, only if they are true and you can back them up. Our moderator reads every review like this before it goes live and may ask you for evidence or to reword it.
• No personal names (we hide them automatically), phone numbers, emails or other private information.
• No insults, threats, harassment, discrimination, advertising, or anything that isn’t about living there.

Fake reviews are not allowed

• Reviews that are made up, misleading, or about a home the writer didn’t live in.
• Reviews written by landlords, agents, their staff, family or friends pretending to be tenants, or reviews of a competitor’s homes.
• Reviews written in return for money, a discount, a gift or any other reward. If anyone offered you something for your review, you must say so in it.
• Organised campaigns of reviews or reports, and several reviews of one tenancy by the same person.
• JJ Agency’s staff don’t write tenant reviews. When JJ Agency invites past clients to review a home, it asks for an honest review, good or bad, and never offers anything in return.
• To stop fake reviews we check a document for every review, allow one review per person per tenancy, limit how many forms can be sent from one place, and look at every report. Fake reviews are removed, and we may refuse further reviews from the same person.

Moderation

• Automatic tools help us check documents, translate reviews into English, hide names and spot reviews that may break these rules. They can make mistakes, so anything they are unsure about, every serious accusation and every report goes to a person.
• We keep the original text of every translated review, so we can check that the translation kept its meaning. We may ask the writer to explain something before we publish it.
• We record every moderation decision and apply these rules the same way to every home.

Reports and removal

• We don’t remove a review because it is negative, or because a landlord or agent disagrees with it.
• Anyone can report a review or a reply with “Report this review”. While we look at a complaint, we may hide a review for a short time.
• We may ask the writer to explain or (with their agreement) reword a review, or remove content that we reasonably consider unlawful, defamatory, fake, misleading, a breach of someone’s privacy, or against these rules.
• Nobody, including landlords, agents and JJ Agency itself, can pay to remove, hide or move a review.

If you disagree with a decision

• If we don’t publish or we remove your review, or turn down a landlord’s or agent’s request to reply, we email the reason.
• If you disagree, reply to that email within 30 days and tell us why, with anything that helps (for example a document). Someone who didn’t make the first decision looks at it again, where possible, and tells you the result.
• For any other decision (for example about a reply or a report), email johnny@jj-agency.co.uk.

Legal complaints (defamation)

• If a review says something untrue that harms your or your business’s reputation, press “Report this review”, then “Make a legal complaint”.
• We follow the Defamation (Operators of Websites) Regulations 2013. We pass your complaint to the writer within 48 hours (not counting weekends and bank holidays), and tell you we have done so.
• The writer has until midnight at the end of the 5th day to answer. If they don’t answer, or if they agree to remove it, we remove the review and tell you.
• If they stand by it, we tell you. We give you their name and address only if they agree, or if a court orders us to.

Landlords and agents

• A landlord, a managing agent, or someone authorised to act for them can reply publicly to reviews of the property, after proving their connection to it (for example with a HM Land Registry title, a tenancy agreement naming them, or a management agreement).
• One reply per review, which they can update, for example to correct something or add news.
• Replies follow the same rules: factual, relevant and polite. No personal names, nothing private about tenants or anyone else, no threats and nothing that looks like retaliation.
• Replies can be reported and are moderated in the same way as reviews.
• Landlords and agents must never pressure, threaten or offer anything to a tenant to change or remove a review, or treat a tenant worse because of one. If this happens to you, tell us at johnny@jj-agency.co.uk. We may remove their replies and their right to reply, and tell the authorities where the law requires it.

Independence

• Flat Reviews is run by JJ Agency Limited (company no. 15218044), which also provides lettings and relocation services.
• Our business relationships never affect whether a genuine review is published, how it is rated or shown, or how a complaint about it is decided. Reviews of homes JJ Agency let or found for a client follow exactly the same rules.
• Reviews written by JJ Agency, for example about a home we found for a client, are marked “Review by JJ Agency”.

Energy certificates (EPCs)

For homes in England and Wales we show the most recent energy certificate available in the government’s Energy Performance of Buildings Register, so tenants can understand how energy efficient a home is before they rent it. A certificate shows the home as it was when it was assessed, which may be different today, and an older certificate may have expired. We match it to the address you type; we don’t show the register’s address lists. For homes in Scotland, which has its own register, our moderator may add the rating by hand from the Scottish EPC Register. Northern Ireland is not covered yet. The certificate data is published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Gas safety records, electrical reports and deposit details are not in any public register, so we can’t show them.

Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail Copyright and Database Right Notice. This data contains address data (address 1, address 2, address 3, postcode) processed against Ordnance Survey’s AddressBase Premium product, which incorporates Royal Mail’s PAF® database (Address Data). MHCLG has published the address data with the consent of Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail Group Limited; Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail Group Limited reserve all their respective copyright, database rights, trademarks and other intellectual property rights.

Contact

Questions, privacy requests or complaints: johnny@jj-agency.co.uk. These rules are part of our terms of use; how we look after personal data is in our privacy notice.