If a tenant has moved in on the 15th January 2025 & pays their rent of £1000 on the 15th of every month & is now leaving at the end of this month is it correct they pay £500 this month?
typically Ts pay rent in advance i.e. pay the first month’s rent before moving in. If that’s your arrangement, then you need to give them a refund because they should have already paid you £1000 last Sunday (prob Monday with banks being closed).
If they haven’t yet paid you and you are happy with £500 even though it should be £1000/31*16 i.e. £516.13p then yes, that’s fine.
Document this with two signed copies of a receipt outlining what this payment is for, one for them and one for you.
you need to check your contract. OR’s contract says people [once it is periodic/rolling] have to give at least a month’s notice, to end on the next final day of a rental period, which in your case would be the 14th of may, given today is 18th march [so one month from now is 17th april and next end date of a rental period beyond that would be 14th may.] So they would have to pay up to 14th may if they are on the standard OR contract.
If they are leaving on 31st March you might choose to reduce what they pay to only be half a month (15th march-31st march), but you dont have to. That’s up to you.
You might instead charge them up to the end of the current rental period [14th April] even tho it’s less than a month away. Or you might agree with tenant that they pay up to 14th may or an earlier date if you manage to find a tenant who moves in earlier than that. Either of these would be more generous than what the [OR] contract they have signed says
A lawyer can tell you how to draft the ‘deed of surrender’
Good luck
he doesn’t need a deed of surrender if everyone’s cool about the T leaving now. They’ve only been there two months so there must be some fixed term the T’s breaking. The fact that the OP hasn’t even mentioned that leads me to think he’s happy.
OP said
-jan 2025 is more than a year ago, so may well be a periodic by now
As you say, if @benjani100 is happy to let them leave with less than a month’s notice, and not pay the full rent that was due on 15th march, that’s up to them. We dont know if that’s what tenant has proposed or @benjani100 ‘s idea so if @benjani100 is happy with that or not
I should have clarified that if an agreement to pay ‘up to’ 14th may but dependent on whether gets a new tenant sooner, then a deed of surrender by a lawyer is apparently a good idea [as advised by others here previously] but of course everything can all always be done by an exchange of emails or a handshake/written agreement [or smoke signals I guess 
] if that’s what a LL and tenant want to do
best
Just to make it clear, yes they’ve given me enough notice so we are all good on that front. I just wanted to make sure as they have said that the payment of £1000 covers 15th February to 15th March & the £500 covers them until the end of March from that date? They moved in & paid the first months rent along with the deposit on 15th January 2025.
If the tenants notice expires on 30 March then its invalid. You can make it valid by formally accepting it if you wish. £500 for half a month sounds about right. Are you happy with this?
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@benjani100 so
a) the first months rent of £1000 was 15th jan 2025 to 14 feb 2025,
b) you have had over a year of monthly payments,
c) their latest payment of £1000 was covering 15 february 2026 to 14 march 2026
d) they have given at least one month’s notice [when exactly did they give notice?]
e) they wish to leave on 31 march
f) you want to know what you should charge for the period 15 march 2026 to 31 march 2026, the proposal is £500
is that correct?
ah yep sorry I misread it as this Jan
Yes that is all correct, they gave notice that they would be leaving at the end of March in January.
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In which case as @David122 says, it’s not strictly valid (if it’s the openrent ast) as their notice period should end on a 14th, but assuming you have accepted 30th March so made it valid then £500 for 15th -30th March seems right to me too
Always nice to hear tenants behaving well by giving enough notice (not using deposit as way to pay last month)
Best