My tenants are on the usual six month contract. What sort of notice should I give with regard to an increase in rent?
Hi @Lawrence2,
We have a dedicated article on proposing rent changes here which should help. Let us know if this doesn’t cover your case.
if they’re still in a fixed term, you can’t increase it without their agreement (unlikely)
Your contract will have a rent review clause
It’s usually one month’s notice after the AST ( rental month not calendar month )
Just noting that if this tenancy was set up through Rent Now, our standard contracts do not include a rent review clause by default.
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typically ASTs don’t have one thus allowing the LL to increase the rent annually once it goes periodic
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Thanks everyone for replying. I’m going to give them two months notice
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I increased the rent for one of my tenants recently. Instead of the usual months notice I gave 2 months along with my justification for the rise to fall inline with the soon to be Renters Rights Bill which we all have to get used to doing.
There is nothing in the RRB about having to increase in line with anything, so I’m confused by your reasoning.
The following text has been copied from the governments guidance dated 16 January 2025. I am not aware of any changes.
“Landlords will be able to increase rents once per year to the market rate – the price that would be achieved if the property was newly advertised to let. To do this, they will need to serve a simple ‘section 13’ notice, setting out the new rent and giving at least 2 months’ notice of it taking effect.”
So nothing really changing. Rent increases currently are once per year,
Karl11
It’s the notice period which has increased from one month to two…
They can’t literally mean that?
What level of increase would you suggest…
the way that’s written gives LLs a free hand to go from a potentially very BMV rent to market rate in one go. That’s likely to be unsustainable for any T in situ which seems to go against the very nature of the RRB.
tatemono
I agree.
I can recall, the very scenario you describe was happening to a number of landlords after the Liz Truss mini budget which resulted in steep mortgage interest rate rises. Landlords who hadn’t increased their rents for a number of years were then forced to suddenly hike their rents to keep their businesses viable. For me, I don’t see it as being too much of a problem because my rents are increased annually to market rate. However, I do understand that there are landlords that operate in different areas of the market and the RRB will affect everyone differently.
At the moment rents can be increased more frequently than once a year if both parties agree. After the RRB becomes law the only way to increase rent will be using a s13 notice a maximum of once a year. There is no proposal to limit the increase, so this can be from a low base to the market rent. The tenant can challenge the increase, but as long as it not above market rent, it should be approved.