I’m hoping someone can help me!
I advertised my property with open rent and they provided the tenancy agreement.
This was 3 years ago and I haven’t changed it.
Did I need to get it signed each year?
The rent I charge is around £250 less than the cheapest rent in the area.
This year I’ve put a new boiler in, put a new roof on and the insurance has gone up.
Can I increase the rent, if I do how do I go about it?
Thanks.
I take it the initial rental agreement has expired and the tenancy is just a statutory periodic one? If so, give the tenant at least a month’s notice of the new rental amount and that it is due on the usual payment schedule. Follow-up with issuing a S13 notice. As long as you are being reasonable, you shouldn’t have much issue. If contested then you may end up at the First-Tier Tribunal where you’ll have to give evidence that your proposed rent is reasonable and in line with the local market. If none of this makes sense, either get some legal advice or get some training.
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Yes it’s expired.
We signed the open rent tenancy agreement 3 years ago, does it just roll on?
I was only going to put it up by 7% as I thought this was the maximum.
Currently she’s paying over £200 less per month than other houses in the area so she will still be paying a lot less.
@Clare11 the quick answers are no, you dont sign each year and yes, you can increase the rent if the tenancy is now periodic. However, these are such basic questions that I worry about what else you dont know. The penalties for simple ommissions or admin errors can be very severe. I would urge you to do some landlord training urgently.
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Rent increase by S13, you can increase it once a year. Propose a new rent and if T not happy, they can take it to tribunal.
You tenancy agreement is a periodic one at the moment, if you do issue a new tenancy (no reason to do so), ensure you give all the correct paperwork (How to rent guide, EICR, Gas cert tc etc)
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Thanks for the reply’s everyone.
True, I probably could do with some training!
I bought the house with inheritance money as a place that my foster son could could move into when he is older ( he’s quite vulnerable) I thought we could rent it out for now.
I had all of the gas, electric, epc reports done before the tenant moved in and each year get the gas safety check. I also have landlord insurance. So I’m hoping I’ve got everything in place.
I have kept the rent very low as the tenant is a single parent. However I have spent a lot of money on the property this year, I have decided to replace things completely rather than repair them as Id rather not have the hassle of them breaking again.
When googling about rent increases I realised that if I didn’t do small regular increases that in a few years the rent would be way below the market so I thought I would just do a small increase maybe every other year.
Thanks for all of your help, it’s great to have a forum to go to for advice!
Both the National Residential Landlords Association and LandlordLaw offer excellent training courses. I would recommend taking a look
Having LL insurance does not protect you from mistakes that you might make in terms of your legal obligations. As David122 suggested (and many times before to others), get some training or read more deeply. Mistakes in this game can very very costly and not just in monetary terms.
Thanks for the advice Nilesh, I can’t think of any other legal requirements, is there any other than you can think of please?
I think because everything runs quite smoothly I’ve been quite lucky!
The tenant has social anxiety so I try to leave her alone as much as possible, she doesn’t like people going around so I keep contact to a minimum.
When she tells me of any incidents ( leaking roof, heating going off) I’ve done the repairs straight away.
The house is only 10 minutes from where we live so when heating went off I bought a radiator and dropped it off within hours.
I have a daughter the same age so I treat her as I would like my daughter treated should she rent.
Other than the roof and boiler ( which are now new) I completely refurbished the property before I rented it out so kitchen, electrics, bathroom were all new.
I can only see there being a problem if I need her to move out should my foster son need to move in but that is at least 10 years away.
I also have no intention of buying any more property’s.
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