A tenant satisfaction survey your renters can answer honestly
Fourteen questions a landlord or property manager can send to residents today, ordered the way the one regulator that prescribes tenant survey wording requires, and straight about what a tenant risks by answering. Try it here first, then send your own.
- 14questions
- about 3 minto complete
- No name askedno email, no unit number
- Question 1the overall rating first
Your resident is answering their landlord
The person opening this survey rents their home from the person who sent it. That is the fact the rest of the page is built around.
The reply costs something to give. A landlord can decline to renew a lease, raise a rent or refuse a reference, and a resident deciding whether to say the boiler has been broken since March knows it. In a county survey of 1,051 renters, 337 said they were less likely to submit a maintenance request for fear of retaliation.[3] One county, oversampled towards lower incomes, so not a national rate. Still enough to change how a survey is written.
So say what the survey does, and what it does not. This template asks for no name, no email address and no unit number, and no field ties a reply to a tenancy. Whoever owns the survey can still open every response, a written answer can identify its author, and twelve homes produce twelve replies anybody who knows the block can read. No setting fixes that, so it goes in the invitation instead.
Which decides how you report. On a small portfolio, report totals and stop: cutting fourteen answers by building, floor or unit type turns an anonymous survey into an identified one, and residents work that out faster than landlords do. The sample size calculator gives the arithmetic for how few is too few.
This is a survey about a home. People who occupy a building for work rather than live in it need questions about cleaning, air, access and shared facilities, and the facility survey questions ask those instead.
The 14 tenant satisfaction survey questions
Every question, its answer format, and what a weak answer points at. Copy one block or all 14.
Overall, and the home
Question one because the regulator that prescribes this survey requires the overall item first,[1] then the home on its own, so a good building with a bad flat does not read as a good result.
- Taking everything together, how satisfied are you with the home you rent from us?The only number to track unchanged from year to year. Reword anything else here; leave this one alone or you lose the comparison.
- How satisfied are you with the condition your home is in right now?Read it beside question 4. Condition low with repairs high means the fabric is beyond what a repair queue can fix.
Repairs
Three items in a fixed order: how much repair work there was, the work itself, then how long it took. The regulator requires repairs before timeliness.[1]
- In the last 12 months, how many times have you asked us to repair something?The split that makes the next two readable. Somebody who has asked four times is answering a different question from somebody who asked once.
- How satisfied are you with the repairs we carry out?Everybody can answer this, including people with no repair, because it asks what they believe about the service rather than what happened to them.
- How satisfied are you with the time a repair takes to finish?Kept apart from question 4: a repair done well after eleven weeks and one botched on the same day are different failures with different fixes.
Safety and shared space
The two things a resident cannot fix themselves and cannot walk away from.
- How safe does your home feel to you?A score here is about the home, not about the neighbourhood. If people write about the street in question 13, that is a different budget and worth saying so.
- How satisfied are you with the upkeep of any shared space you use?Written as "any shared space you use" so that a house with no communal area is not forced into an answer. If nobody has shared space, cut the item.
Dealing with us
Four items about the relationship rather than the building, because this is the part a small landlord can change this month.
- How easy is it to reach someone here when you need to?The cheapest of the fourteen to act on. A low score here is a phone number and an answering routine, not a capital programme.
- When you tell us about a problem, how well do you think we listen?Being heard and being fixed are different, and this item is the one that separates them from question 4.
- How satisfied are you with the way we keep you informed about things that affect your home?Low scores here beside high scores at question 4 point at the notice you give rather than at the work you do.
- How fairly do you feel you are treated here?The item with the widest spread between groups. Look at how it varies across your buildings before you read the average.
What you pay
Asked as a judgement about the exchange, not as a question about the number on the lease, which the landlord already knows.
- How reasonable does your rent feel for the home you get?Read it against questions 2 and 4. A low score with a well-kept home is a market complaint; a low score with an unrepaired one is not.
Closing the survey
One optional box, then the renewal item, so a blank field never blocks the last question.
- What is the one thing you would most like us to put right?Sort these by the answer to question 3 before counting them. A written answer can identify its author, so quote nothing back verbatim.
- How likely are you to renew when your lease ends?Not a forecast of occupancy. People renew homes they are unhappy with because moving costs money, so read it as a ranking of groups.
Three swaps before you send. Cut question 7 if nobody here has shared space, change "renew" in question 14 to whatever your agreements are called, and put a real month in the invitation. There is no unit number field and no building field: adding one undoes everything the invitation promises.
Why the overall rating is question one
The one design decision on this template with a real answer, and the two national instruments that answer it in opposite directions.
In England, a housing regulator prescribes it. Registered social landlords must run a tenant perception survey, and the requirements are explicit: overall satisfaction must be the first question in the questionnaire, satisfaction with repairs must come before satisfaction with the time repairs take, and each measured question must precede any other question on the same topic.[1] The reason given is that preceding questions can have a significant impact on the answers that follow.
In the United States, the national housing survey does the opposite. Its two ratings, one for the home and one for the neighborhood, sit at the end of the interview and are introduced as a judgement made considering everything already discussed.[2] Deliberate too, for an instrument built for a considered summary rather than an untouched one.
Both are defensible; mixing them is not. The two placements produce different numbers from the same residents, so moving the question between years breaks your own comparison. Write down which one you use.
| The choice | What it gives you | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| Overall rating first, as here | A summary judgement taken before the repair and rent questions have framed it. | A less informed rating: some residents answer before remembering the thing that actually annoys them. |
| Overall rating last | A considered rating that reflects everything the survey has just walked through. | Every question in front of it has shaped it, so a survey heavy on repairs produces a rating heavy on repairs. |
Reading fourteen answers about a home
There is no score here. Fourteen questions produce counts, and the ones that matter most mean something only in pairs: start with questions 2, 4, 5 and 9.
| What you see | What it points at | What to do next |
|---|---|---|
| Question 4 high, question 5 low | The work is good and the queue is long. | A scheduling and communication problem, not a contractor problem. Tell people when, before they ask. |
| Question 4 low, question 5 high | Fast visits that do not fix the thing. | Look at first-time fix and at who is being sent, not at the calendar. |
| Question 2 low, question 4 high | The fabric is past what a repair queue can hold. | This is a capital question. Reactive repairs will keep scoring well and the condition score will not move. |
| Question 9 low across every group | People do not feel heard, whatever the work looks like. | Read question 13 before writing anything. This is the score that a newsletter makes worse. |
| Question 12 low, question 2 high | A well-kept home at a rent people find hard to justify. | A market judgement rather than a service failure. It will not respond to a maintenance plan. |
If the repairs answers point at the firm doing the work, the supplier satisfaction survey asks from the contract side.
Before you send it to residents
Three things to settle, and the note to put in front of people.
Send it once a year, at the same point each year. This is a perception survey, defined by the regulator that requires it as one capturing general views rather than one triggered by a recent interaction.[1] A note sent the day after one repair measures something else, and mixing the two gives a number that means neither. If you want that second instrument as well, the post-service survey is the one to send after a job is closed.
Say what happens next, with a date. The regulator also requires that respondents are told the purpose and the approximate length before they start.[1] The invitation below does both, names who reads the replies, and commits in writing to reporting totals only. A landlord who promises that and then circulates a per-building breakdown has taught every resident what the next survey is worth.
All 14 questions are already loaded in the online survey builder, so the only editing left is your name and your dates.
Do not ask what you will not answer. Question 13 invites somebody to name the one thing they want put right, and if nothing visible follows, the next survey is the one nobody fills in. If the answers keep pointing at a support service rather than the housing, the program evaluation questions ask the people it reached.
What to put in front of residents before question one
Before you start This is a survey about the home you rent and about dealing with us: repairs, safety, how easy we are to reach, and whether the rent feels reasonable for what you get. We are asking because [ORGANISATION] sets next year's repair and maintenance plan in [MONTH], and we would rather build it around what residents tell us than around what we assume. We do not ask for your name, your email address or your unit number, and there is nothing on the form that ties an answer to a tenancy. [NAME] is the person who reads the replies. Because there are [NUMBER] homes in this survey, we will report totals only and will not break the results down by building. Fourteen questions, about three minutes. It closes on [DATE], and we will write to everyone by [DATE] with what we heard and what we are changing.
Tenant survey FAQ
What questions should be in a tenant satisfaction survey?
Six things: an overall rating, the condition of the home, repairs and how long they take, safety and shared space, how easy you are to deal with, and whether the rent feels reasonable. Fourteen items covers all six.
Should the overall satisfaction question come first or last?
First, here. The one regulator that prescribes tenant survey wording requires it as question one, so the summary judgement is taken before the repair questions colour it.[1] The national housing survey in the United States asks its two ratings at the end instead.[2] Both work. Pick one and never switch: the placements do not produce comparable numbers.
How many questions should a tenant survey have, and how long should it take?
Fourteen, about three minutes. Lists of thirty and forty tenant questions are menus to choose from, and one of them states a ten-minute completion time, which is a different kind of document.
Can a tenant satisfaction survey really be anonymous?
Partly, and the honest answer matters here. This template asks for no name, no email address and no unit number, and nothing ties a reply to a tenancy. But whoever owns the survey can open every response, a written answer can identify its author, and on a block of a dozen homes one reply is readable by anybody who knows the building. Report totals only.
Why would a tenant not answer honestly?
Because the person asking can decline to renew the lease. In a county survey of 1,051 renters, 337 said they were less likely to submit a maintenance request for fear of retaliation.[3] A survey from the same landlord sits under that shadow, which is why the invitation names who reads the replies.
How often should you survey residents?
Once a year, at the same point each year so the answers compare. This is a perception survey, which the regulator defines as one capturing general views rather than one triggered by a recent interaction.[1] A note sent after a single repair does not belong in these totals.
Does this work for commercial or office tenants?
No. A business renting floor space is judging a workplace service: cleaning, air, access and shared facilities, not repairs to a home or the fairness of a rent.
A landlord asks about the property. When somebody is also receiving care in that home, the service and the housing are separate judgements, and the home care survey questions keep them apart.
Methods and sources
What this template is based on
One overall item, one on the condition of the home, three on repairs, two on safety and shared space, four on dealing with the landlord, one on rent, one open box and one closing renewal item. The placement of the overall item and the order of the repairs items follow the requirements a housing regulator places on tenant perception surveys.[1] Separating the home from its shared surroundings follows the national housing survey, which rates the home and the neighborhood as two items.[2] The closing item is a renewal question rather than a recommendation score, because a resident cannot recommend a home that is already occupied.
Question licensing
The Kingsley Index (Grace Hill) is a proprietary benchmark under no public licence, so it is named and linked and no figure from it is quoted. STAR, the Survey of Tenants and Residents, is owned by HouseMark, which grants the right to copy STAR questions to social landlords and their subcontractors; that grant does not reach a commercial template site, so no STAR item is reproduced, adapted or used as a structure. The regulator's requirements carry an Open Government Licence v3.0 grant printed in the publication itself, so they could be reprinted with attribution; this page still lifts no item wording and takes only the ordering and method rules.[1] The national housing instrument is a United States federal work in the public domain; two item names and their placement are described, and the wording here is our own.[2]
Limits and disclosure
The ordering requirements come from a regulator whose remit is social housing in England, so they are a well-argued standard rather than a law that reaches a private landlord elsewhere.[1] The retaliation figure is one county, collected between June and October 2023 through community partners rather than by random sampling, with lower-income residents deliberately oversampled, so it is quoted as a count and is not a rate for renters generally.[3] The two national ratings are a 1 to 10 scale asked by an interviewer, and this template uses a 5-point scale on a form, so the numbers are not comparable.[2] The survey carries no score. It produces counts, and there is nothing to add up.
SuperSurvey builds the editor this template opens in. Nothing on this page depends on using it.
References
- Regulator of Social Housing. Tenant Satisfaction Measures: Tenant Survey Requirements, April 2023. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk (Open Government Licence v3.0)
- U.S. Census Bureau. 2023 American Housing Survey Instrument Items, items HOWH and HOWN. www2.census.gov
- University of Kansas Center for Community Health and Development. Douglas County Tenant Experiences Report, 2024. communityhealth.ku.edu
Send the tenant satisfaction survey, and mean the invitation
Fourteen questions, about three minutes, and an overall rating that comes first on purpose. Put your dates in and send it.
Use this template