Hi all, I am planning to increase rent, my tenant has been in property for some years without an increase. They are on a month by month. Initial AST states I can only review on anniversary once per year.
My first question is do I serve a Section 13, or can I do it by email? I know that once they start paying the increase they are then in agreement to the raise, but what happens if you email and they don’t respond?
My second question is, although I can find similar properties to mine in the area, mine is in a much nicer area/position to other properties, with a much bigger kitchen as we added an extension. How do I work out the increase if I have nothing to go by?
Yes, you can do it by email and this is normally better than formally doing it with a section 13 notice. If they dont respond then call or send tge notice if you prefer.
There is no right answer on what to increase by. Market rates for new tenancies have increased circa 15% while existing tenancies(which make up 75% of tenancies) have only gone up by 4% so looking on rightmove wont necessarily give an accurate figure for what most existing tenants are paying.
Personally for long term tenants ive started to use inflation and maintenance costs to justify rent increases, this is likely to be better received than just increasing it because you can. If the tenants have been there several years and you haven’t done any significant maintenance then its normally fair to increase below inflation over the whole period as wear and tear will have made it a bit less desirable. Equally if you have done lots of maintenance a higher increase can be justified.
Thanks Richard. Where do I find accurate inflation records? I was looking at below link yesterday, and I worked out the average over the past year, although I wouldn’t put it up by that much, i thought it was a good source to get an idea. What do you think? https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/czbl/mm23
I use the above. There are 2 main measures of inflation, cpi is main official one, rpi is an old measure which while still used for some increases there are issues with how it is calculated and generally gives a higher reading.
The link gives index figures so for percentage increase since start of tenancy just divide the current figure by the figure for the month at start of tenancy and then saying you are deducting an amount from thevinflation increase you feel is appropriate for them being a good long term tenant assuming they are.