Hello,
I hope you can help.
I need your advice on the legal wording I refer to in the Assured Shorthold Tenancy agreement (“AST”) I last used in July 2023 for renting my flat, and that I am planning to use again shortly. By using the below wording, would I be compliant with the most current legislations on renting?
“This is an agreement to create an AST as defined in Section 19A of the Housing Act 1988 or any successor legislation as supplemented or amended from time to time and any other applicable and relevant laws and regulations. If there is a conflict between any provision of this Agreement and the Act, the Act will prevail and such provisions of the Agreement will be amended or deleted as necessary in order to comply with the Act. Further, any provisions that are required by the Act are incorporated into this Agreement.”
The wording you post is fine, but why not use an up to date tenancy template? The Government one is free. The Openrent template may also be free. The landlord associations also have models that are free to members.
Thanks, David. I couldn’t find any free government AST apart from the Model Agreement for AST i.e. explaining what an AST should include.
I normally customise the clause re end-of-tenancy professional cleaning (I had various bad experiences on this matter). When I looked at standard templates I couldn’t edit.
Never “customise” a legal document unless you have a good amount of legal knowledge. Your comment about end of tenancy professional cleaning suggests you might not.
Make a claim for a deduction against their deposit (held at an approved place) with evidence of condition at start of tenancy from an agreed inventory. Either tenant can settle directly with you or go to adjudication. I’ve never had to go to adjudication so can’t advise on that process.
From your comments and your questions, you do give the impression that you’d benefit from some training and to not make amendments to ASTs in the main body. Maybe put in additional clauses in an appendix? Most standard ASTs allow for this.
As Mark says, you can make a claim against the deposit to pay for professional cleaning if you have evidence it isnt clean to the agreed standard. You just cant make that compulsory in advance.
Thank you, all, for your valuable advice.
Related to the end-of-tenancy cleaning (or damages) topic, would you think that sending pictures of the flat at the start of the tenancy (as part of the Inventory) by email is acceptable? I would ask the tenants to acknowledge receipt and agreement of the attached pictures by return email.
Thanks!
If the tenant is reasonable then sending by email would normally be fine. Its when they don’t behave reasonably that you have a problem. emails are not immutable. The attachments can be changed or removed if the tenant was minded to do so. You could improve the situation by stating the number of attachments in each email and asking the tenant to confirm by reply. Its not foolproof, but the deposit schemes go on the balance of probabilities so if you inventory is detailed and your processes thorough, they are more likely to side with your version of events. If you want foolproof, you would need to use one of the inventory companies that have more sophisticated methods.
Based on this and your initial comment about adding cleaning to the AST, I would very much recommend you join a LL association and do their training. It will pay for itself in preventing you from making errors which could be very costly and stressful.
You will definitely need training when the Renters’ Rights Bill reaches its final stages and seminars start being organised to explain what we will all be doing differently in the future.
Would you know if courses/seminars re new Bill are organised by OpenRent next year or is a Landlord Association (NLRA?) better suited for this purpose?
I don’t think it’s appropriate to advise you on a legally binding contract. Rather, I think you should take a professional approach to being a LL and get some training. This will not only protect your tenants, who you have legal responsibilities to, but it will also lessen your chances of having what you term “various bad experiences”. You are clearly not fully aware of how ASTs work, the Tenant Fees Act or best practice with inventories and these are all covered fully by LL association training courses. Joining a LL association and doing training is far cheaper in both time and financial cost than many issues that LLs can run into so it more than pays for itself.
Yes, this is only my opinion, but it is widely shared by LLs who have far more than my 26 years’ experience managing multiple properties.
Sorry I should have specified that the AST end-of-tenancy clause is now a closed topic. You and others have expanded on my need for training sufficiently on this, thanks.
I referred to my follow-up question re pictures sent by email as part of the inventory whether you had additional, new comments in addition to David’s helpful advice.
Don’t worry about having to moderate your own topics. These forums have mods who close topics for various reasons, but they’re generally left open for anyone to comment on if they happen to have relevant information to add or anyone else has similar questions to those you raised.
For training I personally would look first at anything organised or endorsed by Tessa Shepperson (https://www.landlordlawblog.co.uk/). I left the NRLA a long time ago after they gave me some incorrect legal advice.
I think your response about not answering your original question was addressed to tatemono but I’ll answer it. There was no need to answer your original question because other people have already done so, notably David122 who is very experienced. Your subsequent posts led me to conclude, rightly or wrongly, that you don’t really have enough knowledge to be doing this by yourself. I accept I may be wrong about that. But I think it’s a fair comment that the days of the amateur landlord are coming to an end. In fact after listening to every minute of the public Bill committee stage of the Renters’ Rights Bill I think the government takes the same view. If they survive they are likely to mandate qualifications for managing agents and it will not surprise me if they eventually mandate the use of qualified managing agents by private landlords, bringing DIY buy-to-let to an end.