Landlord & agent blog

A notice from one joint tenant is valid, and it ends the tenancy for everybody, including the ones who wanted to stay. The Renters Rights Act 2025 confirmed it in statute. Here is what it means and how to handle the sharer who is moving out.

The tenancy does not end when the tenant does. It either passes to a qualifying successor automatically, or it forms part of the estate and continues. What section 17 of the Housing Act 1988 actually says, and the two mistakes landlords make in the first week.

A guarantee is only worth what you can enforce. What to check in the document before you rely on it, the order of steps that keeps a claim intact, and the situations where a guarantee that looked solid no longer bites.

Condensation, penetrating damp, rising damp and a leak look similar on a wall and land very differently in law. The pattern, the height and the timing tell you which one you have, and section 9A of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 decides who pays for it.

Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace, local groups, SpareRoom and OpenRent all list a rental at no cost. Since 1 May 2026 every one of those adverts must state a specific rent, and inviting or accepting a higher offer is a civil penalty of up to £7,000. The free channels, and the rule that now applies to all of them.

Letting a property on a residential mortgage without telling the lender breaches the terms, and it is the insurer as much as the bank that makes it expensive. What consent to let is, when it is enough, and when you need a buy-to-let mortgage instead.

Landlord insurance is not one product, it is three or four bought together, and the gaps between them are where claims fail. What buildings cover actually insures, whose contents are whose, why property owners liability is the one that matters most, and who insures a leasehold flat.

Let a property for the first time in 2025-26? The deadline that catches people is not 31 January, it is 5 October 2026, when you have to tell HMRC you exist. Here is who has to file, every date, and why the first January bill is often larger than the tax you owe.

Property Hawk has told users it is shutting down Property Manager at the end of July 2026 and that they should move to another platform. Before you pick a replacement, get your records out: the rent history, the certificate dates and the deposit paperwork are the parts you cannot reconstruct later.

If you let a UK property while living overseas, the rent that lands in your account has usually already been through another pair of hands. Who deducts the basic rate of tax, the £100 a week rule that puts the job on your tenant, what NRL1 approval really changes, and the cost nobody counts.

The previous landlord will not reply, and the government has just confirmed it has no plans to make them. What the minister actually said, which alternative checks prove what, and where each one still leaves you exposed.

Your tenant enters the Debt Respite Scheme and your arrears claim stops for 60 days. What the moratorium actually blocks (grounds 8, 10 and 11), the rent they must still pay, and the 20-day window to challenge it.

The Renters’ Rights Act broke the student letting calendar. Fixed terms are gone, and Ground 4A only works if you signed the tenancy no more than six months before the students moved in — which rules out the traditional autumn signing season.

Most buy-to-let stock is leasehold, and a leaseholder landlord sits between two sets of rules that can contradict each other: your lease and the Renters’ Rights Act. Subletting consent, service charges, Section 20 major works, and the pet clause problem.

How to spot tenant fraud before you hand over the keys — fake payslips, made-up employer and landlord references, borrowed ID and guarantor fraud, and the checks that catch them.

Which fire door rules actually apply to your HMO — the 11-metre line catches most landlords out — what an FD30 door needs to pass, and how to tell a useful survey from an expensive one.

A squatter is not a tenant, and the route is completely different. Squatting in a residential building is a criminal offence, so the police can act. For everything else there is the Interim Possession Order or a claim against trespassers — and one rule that never changes: never force entry yourself.

Guaranteed rent sounds effortless — until the licensing, mortgage and insurance liability lands on you. And from 1 May 2026 the Renters' Rights Act extends Rent Repayment Orders to superior landlords, so the owner can now be pursued too. How R2R works, what changed, and how to vet a deal.