Tenant Satisfaction Measures: Does One Statistic Tell the Whole Story?

Statistics are part of the picture, not the entire picture. Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) give residents, housing providers and the Regulator of Social Housing a valuable view of landlord performance.

In the Regulator of Social Housing's 2024/25 results, 71% of tenants across large landlords said they were satisfied with the overall service provided by their landlord.

That is useful information. But does one statistic tell the whole story?

Behind every percentage are individual residents, homes and experiences. Numbers can help us identify patterns and compare performance, but they cannot always explain why something is happening.

What do the Tenant Satisfaction Measures tell us?

Tenant Satisfaction Measures cover areas including repairs and maintenance, complaints, respectful and helpful engagement, building safety and how residents perceive the services they receive.

They provide a consistent framework for understanding performance across social housing and can help residents scrutinise their landlord's performance.

The Regulator of Social Housing also describes TSMs as a source of intelligence about how far landlords are meeting the outcomes of the consumer standards.

That makes the data important.

But the regulator itself cautions against looking at TSM results in isolation. Context matters when interpreting what a number means.

What does 71% satisfaction actually mean?

The 2024/25 sector-level results found that 71% of tenants were either very satisfied or fairly satisfied with the overall service provided by their landlord. The same results showed that 18% were dissatisfied.

A headline percentage helps us understand the overall position, but it immediately creates another question:

Why did residents answer the way they did?

A resident may be satisfied because repairs were completed quickly.

Another may value how well their landlord communicates.

Someone else may have a very different experience because of an unresolved repair, complaint or problem with their home.

The percentage records the response. It does not necessarily explain the experience behind it.

Who contributes to Tenant Satisfaction Measure data?

Tenant perception measures are based on surveys rather than every resident being asked at the same moment.

For the 2024/25 TSM results, almost half a million tenant perception surveys were completed across the sector.

That provides a substantial source of resident feedback, but survey results still need to be understood alongside their methodology and context.

Factors such as collection method can affect results. In 2024/25, for example, the majority of landlords used telephone surveys as their main collection method.

This doesn't make the data less useful. It means good interpretation requires understanding how the information was produced as well as the headline result.

Social housing data needs context

A single number is a snapshot.

Housing organisations operate with many different kinds of information: repairs records, inspections, complaints, property condition information, resident feedback and operational data.

Individually, each source can tell us something.

The greater opportunity is understanding how those pieces relate to one another. We explore that challenge in more detail in Housing Data Integration: Why Connecting the Picture Matters.

For example, a satisfaction score may show that perceptions have changed. Repair information might show what happened operationally. A resident's account may explain what they experienced inside the home. Our guide to what “repair complete” tells a housing provider explores that distinction in practice.

Together, those signals can provide a richer picture than any one data point on its own.

The difference between a statistic and a signal

A statistic summarises information.

A signal can help draw attention to something that may need to be understood.

For housing providers, useful signals might include a repair repeatedly returning, a change in property condition, recurring complaints, patterns across similar homes or feedback from residents about what they are experiencing.

One signal should not automatically determine a conclusion.

But when different signals are considered together, they can create valuable context for decision-making.

This is where housing data can begin to move from simply recording what has happened towards helping organisations understand what may be happening now.

Why resident insight matters

Residents experience their homes every day.

They can notice when something changes, when a repair has not lasted, when a problem returns or when the condition of part of the home begins to deteriorate.

That makes resident-originated information an important potential source of context alongside operational and property data.

A number can tell us what is happening at a broad level.

Resident insight can sometimes help explain why.

That does not mean replacing formal performance measures or operational data with anecdotal information. It means recognising that different sources of evidence can complement one another.

From housing data to better intelligence

The real opportunity is not to choose between statistics and resident experience.

It is to connect them appropriately.

When housing organisations can bring together reliable property information, operational records, condition data and permissioned resident-originated signals, they can develop a more current and useful understanding of their homes and services.

That is the distinction between simply having more data and being able to create useful intelligence from it.

At Krowd, we describe this broader idea as property intelligence: creating a connected and evolving understanding of an asset from relevant information and signals, with appropriate permissions and provenance. Read our explainer on what property intelligence means.

Looking beyond the headline statistic

Tenant Satisfaction Measures remain an important source of information for the social housing sector.

They allow residents to scrutinise performance, help landlords understand where services may need improvement and provide intelligence to the regulator.

But no single statistic can capture everything happening within a home.

The strongest understanding comes from looking at the number, understanding its context and considering what other reliable information can add to the picture.

A statistic can show us part of the story. Connected information can help us understand more of it.

How Krowd sees it

At Krowd, we believe the built environment needs more than fragmented records and isolated data points.

Property information becomes more useful when relevant data and signals can be connected around the asset they describe.

Resident experience can form part of that picture, alongside property, operational and external information, creating a clearer understanding of how homes and services change over time.

That is why we see resident voice not simply as feedback, but as a potentially valuable part of the intelligence surrounding a home.