Are tenancy renewal fees fair?

One thing that irks me more than anything as a landlord and also as a consumer is being charged something for nothing.

Do landlords need a new tenancy agreement every 6 months?

This analogy is most appropriate for landlords that let through a letting agent who having signed up the tenant on a 6 month tenancy then proceeds to get the tenant to sign a new tenancy agreement every 6 months and charges both the tenant and landlord for this pleasure.  WHY!  Well there are obviously times that a new contract makes sense.  If for instance the landlord wants to increase the rent every 6 months or there are changes in the occupation (for instance the tenancy becomes a joint tenancy) but for most parts a long standing tenancy just continues as a statutory periodic tenancy with rent being due from month to month.  Any minor changes such as an decrease or increase in rent can be accommodated as long as both the tenant and landlord agree by just altering the existing tenancy (get your tenant to sign the amended copy).

Are tenancy renewal fees fair or legal?

Well the answer to the 2nd part of the question is that they are legal if the agency agreement stipulates it.  So if you don't want to pay every 6 months make sure before signing up with the letting agent that they are aware of this and are happy to proceed on this basis.  Otherwise go elsewhere. 

Should a letting agent have a duty of care?

 Are tenancy renewal fees fair?  At the heart of this question is whether you believe a letting agent should be acting in the best interest of the client aka the landlord or whether they work on the basis of maximising their own profits exploiting their landlords as they would with any other customer.  Many naive first time landlords assume wrongly that they clearly act in the first way having a duty of care toward them.  Clearly renewal fees are warranted if a legitimate service is being provided with a well informed and educated letting agent acting in the best interest of their landlords.  In far too many situations this is not the case.

For more information on tenancy renewal fees

Landlord insurance - expert brokers - professional rates

Types of Residential Lettings - definitions

For us long in the tooth landlords who have seen various bits of legislation come through governing the letting of property we are well aware of the diversity of the different types of tenancy out there.

A recent post by Jeffrey Shaw of Nether Edge Law in the Property Hawk Forum is a useful reference point to the types and names of the different types of residential lettings.

Landlord insurance - professional rates - online brokers

NHF call for longer tenancies

We warned this year would bring a din of 'beefy talk on additional regulation, licensing, tenancy reform and rent caps', so here's some more.

The National Housing Federation have joined the call for longer tenancies, citing new research that shows that private renters are now nine times more likely to have moved in the past year than homeowners leading to tenants feeling uprooted and unable to plan for their futures.

The builders lobbying organisation is no doubt using the tenant dilemma argument to push Government to further relax planning laws.

David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, said:

“With house prices continuing to soar out of reach, and typical deposits for first time buyers hitting £30,000, younger generations are seeing their dream of home-ownership replaced with a life of renting.”

“It’s clear that the younger generation is being let down, and given no alternative but to move from one short-term let to the next, never being able to save enough to buy because their wages are eaten up by rent.”


“We’ve found that nearly eight out of 10 people (77%) in England don’t believe any of the main political parties will effectively deal with housing [7], but they still have the chance to put that right. With a bold long term plan for house building our housing crisis is solvable. We need politicians from all sides to commit to ending the housing crisis within a generation."


Take advantage of our discounted landlord insurance rates

ARLA's evidence for the Tenancies Bill

ARLA have put forward their evidence as part of the APPG for the Private Rented Sector's inquiry into the Tenancies (Reform) Bill 2014-2015 that is being pushed by the Lib-dem MP, Sarah Teather.

Teather's bill seeks to end the much hyped ( by Shelter anyway ) practice of 'revenge evictions'.

ARLA have gathered a lot of evidence that suggests revenge evictions are far less common than the likes of Shelter claim them to be. 

Read the pdf of the evidence that ARLA will be using to argue against the introduction of Tenancies  Bill.

ARLA have evidence that the cases of 'revenge evictions' are far from the epidemic claimed by Shelter, with ARLA's data proposing that out of 3,956,000 tenancies it may be that approximately 7,120 end due to a revenge eviction.

These figures contrast wildly with Shelter's claim, that "in the past year alone, more than 200,000 people have faced eviction because they asked their landlord to fix a problem in their home."

Others in the industry have questioned Shelter's figures, with the Residential Landlord Association accusing the tax payer funded charity of “irresponsible scaremongering".  

Take advantage of our discounted landlord insurance rates

Tenants stay longer than ever

ARLAs latest figures show that tenants are sticking longer in their rental properties.

Figures from their latest survey indicate that the average tenants stays put for 19 months, the longest period since their surveys began. ( they did only start in 2004 however, so hardly historic ).

Get multiple landlord insurance quotes  

Tenants need Trip Advisor

The consumer watchdog, Consumer Focus has called on lettings agents, landlords and deposit schemes to sign up for online feedback so that tenants can comment on how good their letting experience has been with them.

They complain that prospective tenant can usually find little or no information at all regarding a landlord before committing to a tenancy.

Consumer Focus accuse many landlord of providing a poor service and experience for tenants and are calling for the development of a "Trip Advisor" style website to help tenants pick the best and avoid the worst landlords.

What next, Landlord X Factor, Britains Best Landlord, Britains Landlords Got Talent, the Rigsbys....?

Read more on BBC

Read more on Thisismoney

Free property management software, Free tenancy agreements

Council tenant eviction proposal

Minister Grant Shapps is proposing the eviction of problem council tenants should be made easier and quicker under plans for a new “mandatory ground for possession”.

Read more in the Telegraph

The worlds of the private rental sector and social housing edge ever closer together .........

Free property management software, Free tenancy agreements

Tenants sells rental property

A tenant managed to sell his landlords London property for £1.4 million.

The tenant, Steven Rice successfully sold his Kensington rental property and was only finally caught when he attempted to transfer the sale funds into a Dubai bank account.

Rice used fake identities and falsified documents to take on the identity of his 83-year-old landlord Vernon Stratton.

Rice had also fraudulently rented a second house in Kensington and managed to obtain a £489,235 loan on the rental property but fortunately the money transfer was stopped just before completion.

Rice had also tried to a similar fraud on a £4 million rental property in Knightsbridge.

Good grief is this another worry to keep landlords awake at night.

Read more in the Metro

Reference my tenants

Renewing a tenancy

One of the most frequently asked questions I get in my inbox is "how do I renew a tenancy?"

So you like your tenants, hopefully they like you. The fixed term tenancy is just about to run out. You are managing your tenancy through Property Hawk's online property management software.

What do I do next?

Tenant issues - who's right.

There are some rotten landlords around, who'd be a tenant?

An interesting article for tenants and landlords alike outlining the rights of tenants with some commonly occurring issues over tenancies and disputes.

Read the article here in the Times

Discounted landlord insurance

Moonlight flits are landlord’s nightmares - absconding tenants

Absconding tenants are costing landlords thousands of pounds as they are forced into issuing court proceedings, to recover money due in unpaid rent and damaged property.

Therefore, tracing an absconded tenant is becoming increasingly common for landlords and letting agencies. The recession is officially over and the housing market is slowly recovering. Whilst this is encouraging for landlords who find they have buy to let mortgages in negative equity, it also a time to reflect on the realities of absconding tenants.

www.FinderMonkey.co.uk – are helping landlords trace their absconded tenants with their bespoke tracing service. Landlords can’t stop tenants from doing a moonlight flit, but what they can do is make sure they have the required information to find the tenant at their new address.

This is where FinderMonkey’s expertise is a vital resource, but what information is necessary to trace an ex tenant?. Landlords need to make sure they have as much information about the tenant as possible, for example: ·

• Full name including any middle names, previous addresses and date of birth ·
• Parents addresses
• Partners name
• Telephone numbers
• Work details

Having the maximum amount of information to pass across to a trace agency will vastly increase the chances of a successfully locating your ex tenant.

Landlords must use the power when they have it, which is before the tenant has the keys. Too many landlords require a tenant trace search when they do not have key information, such as their tenant’s date of birth. Whilst this information is not always vital it does increase the likelihood of a successful tenant trace.

Click here for more information on Tenant Tracing Services

ARLA join in the TDS feud

More on the dispute over the price hike from the Tenancy Deposit Scheme.

ARLA are now launching a working group to review the Tenancy Deposit Scheme in a bid to resolve the dispute surrounding its new fee structure.

Free tenancy agreements

Celebrity tenant defaults on rent

Actress Mischa Barton is been pursued by her landlord for three months of unpaid rent. Her letting agency claim that the actress owes $21,300 in rent and legal fees on her New York apartment.

MRA's lawyer Joseph Burden said: 'She lived there for September and October, then moved out and quit paying.'

The troubled actress who has just spent time in a psychiatric unit would probably be seen as a high risk tenant by most landlords.

Read this celebrity tenant story in the Daily Mail

Cheap online tenant references

Deposit Protection Scheme report dozy tenants

Tenants can be very dozy.

According to the Deposit Protection Service many tenants forget to update their contact details with the DPS after moving out of the rental property.

This means the Deposit Protection Service is unable to trace them to pay back their deposits.

The DPS reports that 8,000 tenants have failed to update their details and therefore are unable to have their deposits returned.

However, as someone who is moving house on Friday I do have my sympathies, the problems I've had trying to sort out all my changes of address and utilities has been a nightmare, especially my new telephone and broadband.

If my experience of TalkTalk and BT are anything to go by the Ofcom complaints line must be at melt down.

Does anyone know where they recruit the rottweilers on the BT cancellation desk from? Is it Battersea dogs home? What an incredibly nasty bunch!

Download the full report here

Free tenancy agreements forever

Landlord found guilty of letting a property he didn't own

An over-eager Coventry landlord has been found guilty of letting a property that he did not actually own.

The landlord, Charles Opoku-Fordjour was found guilty of drawing up a tenancy agreement and letting the house in Farren Road, Wyken, while he was still in the process of buying it.

The landlord had been given the keys by the properties owner “in good faith” , but had started letting the property and collected £1,000 rent from a family that he had moved into the property before he had completed it's purchase.

The landlord was found guilty and ordered to carry out 100 hours unpaid work, pay back the £1,000 to his tenants, and pay £960 costs

Free property management software, Free tenancy agreements

Tenants would be better off buying property

Most tenants would be better off buying according to calculations released by the Abbey Bank.

The bank believes that by buying a property a tenant could save an average of £52 a month.

I would question their calculations as they don't seem to have factored in the costs of property maintenance or the loss in investment returns from the moneys required for the deposit.

Read the full article here

Free property management software, Free tenancy agreements

Ending a Tenancy - and Un-Ending

Here's how our FREE Landlord Software, Property Manager, lets you end a tenancy, and advice if you realise you've ended the wrong one.

To End A Tenancy

1. Click Tenancy on the top Management menu bar


2. Select the right tenancy by clicking on the Description e.g. Flat / Tenant Name


3. Click the End Tenancy link


4. Enter the End Date and Move Out Date, then click the End Tenancy button


5. The system shows you the final rent amount. You can change this if you think if is incorrect. Then click Confirm End Tenancy


6. That's it. The tenancy is now marked as historic.

Re-instating An Ended Tenancy

This has been requested by users of our software in October 2009. We shall provide an update that allows the user to re-instate an ended tenancy.

Free property management software, Free tenancy agreements