Residential tenancy law is a minefield. Not complying with precise law can invalidate parts of an agreement and leave a landlord powerless to gain possession or control tenants.
Our agreements provide you a document you can trust. When your house or flat has such high value, you need a written contract that keeps you in control and your tenant paying the rent.
This agreement can be used to let any type of residential property: a flat or a house; furnished or unfurnished.
It is a master version, ideal for landlords with property portfolios or for letting agents. Because it has not been tailored for a single type of property, it can be reused easily for multiple properties.
This is an assured shorthold agreement (AST) to let a single room. It provides for sharing and maintenance of common areas like the kitchen and the bathroom.
This is an AST agreement to let a single room to a student.
It includes optional paragraphs relating to:
A deposit is not taken, so the landlord does not concern himself or herself with deposit protection schemes (TDP), which are unlikely to be practical when letting to students.
Use this notice to comply with the requirement of the Tenancy Deposit Protection Scheme Regulations that certain information is provided to the tenants within 30 days of signing a residential tenancy agreement. This document is an easy way to ensure that you as a landlord cover provide all the information necessary. It is suitable for all residential tenancies.
Bring in a guarantor for your tenant using this agreement. It supplements any residential tenancy agreement, including AST agreements.
Talk to us about writing an ASTWe are happy to answer any questions you have. Arrange for us to call you.
If the document isn’t right for your circumstances for any reason, just tell us and we’ll refund you in full immediately.
We avoid legal terminology unless necessary. Plain English makes our documents easy to understand, easy to edit and more likely to be accepted.
You don’t need legal knowledge to use our documents. We explain what to edit and how in the guidance notes included at the end of the document.
Email us with questions about editing your document. Use our Lawyer Assist service if you’d like our legal team to check your document will do as you intend.
Our documents comply with the latest relevant law. Our lawyers regularly review how new law affects each document in our library.
Each of these documents creates an assured shorthold tenancy.
To make property management easier, each of our agreements includes another 11 commonly used notices, forms and letters, each with its own notes and the notices with draft completed text.
That makes the pack of property documents convenient for private landlords and agents and extremely good value.
With each assured shorthold tenancy agreement template, we include:
Residential tenancy law favours the tenant rather than the landlord. The key to letting safely is to have a tenancy agreement that protects your rights as strongly as possible within the framework of landlord and tenant law.
Your tenancy agreement is jargon-free, written in plain English. It is easy for you and your tenant to understand.
Using plain English in no way reduces the legal effect. In many cases, it strengthens it since if your tenant understands, they will have no excuse not to comply.
We also include guidance notes that explain each paragraph.
There is no restriction on your use of this document. You may standardise it and re-use for every property you let.
The basic qualifying conditions for an AST are:
If an AST is not suitable, you might use:
The Assured Shorthold Tenancy Notices and Prescribed Requirements (England) Regulations 2015 have changed residential tenancy law.
The documents in this pack comply with those regulations, the Housing Act 1988, the Housing Act 1996 and the Tenancy Deposit Protection Scheme introduced in April 2007 amended by these Regulations.
The Tenant Fees Act 2019 prevents landlords and agents from charging tenants fees for services that a tenant cannot refuse to take, such as referencing. All our rental agreements comply with this Act.
Every tenancy agreement template specifies that if there is more than one tenant, they are jointly liable, in particular, for the total rent, even if they decide between themselves how to split payment of it.
The advantage to the landlord of renting on a joint and several liability basis is that you can pursue any of the tenants for any unpaid rent. Effectively, the risk that one of the tenants might not pay the rent is transferred to the other tenants, not you.
No letting is quite the same - each situation requires different terms. In these tenancy agreements we give you a choice of over 35 tenant promises and restrictions.
You can choose to keep in or take out terms that you would expect to be in such a template but might not need (such as a provision for guarantor and provision to use a separate managing agent) and you can select which tenant deposit protection scheme you will be using.
Private landlords using an AST agreement are required by law to use a deposit protection scheme. (You can also use ascheme if you rent a room to a lodger in your own house under a residential licence agreement.)
To avoid arguments about what was in the property at the start, the parties should agree a detailed schedule of condition (an inventory), listing every item of fixture, fitting and furniture and providing a note of its condition.
Thousands of rooms are let every year under a simple residential licence to occupy, rather than an AST.
It is often better to let under an AST than a licence. We offer alternative agreements for letting a single room: one is explicitly for students and the other for anyone else.
The student version is constructed around the academic year, so that you ask for rent at a time when the student can pay. This is the best insurance against a student leaving before the final payment has been made and when you cannot re-let for a short period.
The alternative single room version closely follows the model of the other versions.
The guarantor provides a promise to pay rent unpaid by the tenants and also for any loss or damage. We include provisions for a guarantor within each document. You do not need a separate rent guarantee document.
In these agreements, we place the guarantor on the same basis as the tenants. So if the tenants are jointly and severally liable, the guarantor will be as well.
ASTs are usually issued for a fixed period of 6 or 12 months. Six months is the minimum initial fixed term possible.
If a landlord decides not to renew a tenancy, they issue Form 6A as under section 21 of the Housing Act 1988.
Landlords can terminate a tenancy before the fixed period elapses. However, to regain possession, they must obtain an order from a court after issuing the tenant with a Section 8 Notice. This notice states that the landlord intends to seek possession of the property and the grounds on which possession is sought.
