Legal help, services and support for private residential landlords
Note that housing law in Wales has changed with effect from 1 December 2022. Find out more on our New Wales PageTessa’s Top Ten Tips on Signing up New Tenants
- Get as much information as you can from prospective tenants. It’s best to have a standard form such as our Tenants Information Form. You should also check their identity, and you will need (in England) to do a ‘right to rent’ check.
- Take references and follow them up. However, these can be forged so double check them. You can also do online searches against applicants’ names and any referees. You should also get a report from a credit reference agency and ask for copies of applicants’ last three months’ bank statements.
- Remember that references may not tell the whole truth, so do not be afraid to trust your ‘gut feeling’. If you feel uneasy about someone, think twice before letting them into your property. It may take you a long time to get them out again …
- Be on your guard against fraud and fraudulent documents which are on the increase. Consider using a credit reference company which provides a fraud checking service.
- Do not take more than the amount allowed for a holding deposit before the tenancy agreement is signed, and make sure you follow the special rules for holding deposits.
- Under new rules, rent in advance of the tenancy agreement being signed is now illegal and landlords can then only take one months worth of rent before the tenancy starts.
- Make sure that the tenants (all the tenants) (or in Wales, the contract holders) have signed a proper form of agreement before you hand over the keys and allow them into occupation. You can be fined (in England) and tenants can claim compensation (in Wales) if you don’t do this.
- If you are letting to someone on any sort of benefit, try to get them to sign up to a credit union ‘jam jar’ account (if you can find one – they are less common than they used to be). This will ensure that the money is ringfenced for your rent and cannot be spent by the tenant on other things.
- Make sure you serve all relevant documents, such as the gas safety certificate, to the tenants before they move in, otherwise, you may have problems if you want to evict the tenants later.
- Be wary of ‘desperate’ applicants who want immediate accommodation and who ask you to take them in before all the various checks have been carried out, or the documentation signed. Experience has shown that these often turn out to be nightmare tenants who are best avoided.
Some further information and resources:
- We have special checklists – our New Tenant checklist and the New Tenancy checklist which have guidance on all the things you need to do when sourcing a new tenant and signing them up.
- We have a detailed article on checking and referencing tenants, and
- An article on meetings with new tenants and questions to ask them
- We have a special ‘ tenancy receipt form‘ you can use to ensure you don’t forget any of the paperwork and which you can get tenants to sign to prove that they received it
- There is also a separate meter reading notification form
- We have Welsh versions of some of these forms, others are applicable to both England and Wales.
This is an important topic – more content may have been added since this note was drafted. We also have a large amount of information on the Tenant Fees Act.
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Tessa Shepperson of Landlord Law is an accredited trainer with the
Property Investors Bureau.
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