There are approximately 2.6 million landlords in the UK operating right now, leasing as many as 5.45 million homes. Those are impressive figures, and they only look set to increase as house prices continue to soar, and tenants are left with little choice but to spend their lives in the rental market.
With this many landlords in the UK, some are more experienced than others and as a result, there are a large number of landlords who are not aware of their responsibilities in order to keep their properties / tenants safe and abide by recent legislation.
This is causing widespread introduction of landlord licensing in the UK which is a fee that is paid yearly per property that a landlord owns. This is due to the fact that landlords are mistreating tenants either knowingly or unknowingly, and as a result, landlords have to know their obligations.
What are my responsibilities as a landlord?
Tenancy Agreements
Let’s start at the point of having found tenants. We would highly advise that these tenants have been thoroughly reference checked by a reputable credit reference agency. Anyways, back to the next steps:
Depending on the type of tenancy you’re going to be signing for, you will have to have in place a tenancy agreement. This will have to be a tenancy agreement that is legally abiding to laws and regulations based on the area of the UK that your rental property is based in. Now, you can get this drafted once and for all from a solicitor, but that can prove to be quite costly in the short-term. There are sites online where you can access draft tenancy agreements but since laws are always changing, you will have to ensure that your template includes any new laws, and this can be a headache to keep on top of.
Managing agents like Aksum Lets Ltd can help with drafting a tenancy agreement for you and your tenant with an online signature feature that makes it much easier and saves time compared to signing tenancy agreements in person, all whilst being legally binding.
Deposits
Once your tenancy agreement is in place and you have it signed, you will have to ensure that once you collect a deposit from the tenants, it is registered and sent to a tenancy deposit protection scheme. You can find a list of government approved tenancy deposit protection schemes on the government website.
Once you’ve picked your scheme, added the property on to their system and sent the details for the deposit, you must provide your tenant a copy of the certificate issued by the tenancy deposit protection scheme so that they can hold this for their own reference.
Safety & General Documents
If you own a rental property, more often than not, the property has a gas and electric supply. It is by law that before you are allowed to rent your property, you have to ensure that your safety documents are up to date and sent to the tenants.
GAS Safety
You will have to provide your tenants with a copy of a gas safety certificate which has been provided by a plumber or gas engineer who is on the GAS SAFE REGISTER. A gas safety test consists of the gas safe engineer testing the gas appliances in your property to ensure that they are in a good and safe condition. This document needs to be renewed once per year. We do recommend, (although not a legal obligation), that anytime there is a changeover in tenancy, you instruct a new gas safety test to be carried out.
ELECTRICAL Safety
An electrical installation condition report is also one of the documents that need to be provided to your tenants and a qualified electrician is the person that needs to carry out the condition report and sign it off. The electrician needs to be part of one of the two registered bodies (NAPIT or NICEIC). This is a document that is valid for 5 years, but it is our recommendation that anytime there is a changeover in tenancy, instructing a fresh electrical installation condition report to be carried out.
ENERGY Performance Certificate
A valid energy performance certificate or EPC will need to be provided to your new tenants. This is a low-cost test and an energy rating surveyor will visit the property to assess the quality of your property’s insulation, heating source, glazing of windows amongst a whole host of other details they will check to depict the energy rating of your property.
The reason this is a legal requirement is because currently by law, you are not allowed to rent your property if your energy rating is an F or below. A being the best, G being the worst. In 2025, it will become a new legal requirement that all rental properties will have to meet a rating of C or better as a minimum standard. You can check your rental property’s energy rating on the government website.
How to rent checklist
Last but not least, it is your duty as a landlord to provide your tenants with a government approved ‘how to rent checklist’. This can simply be downloaded from the government website as a PDF and sent by email to your tenants!
Landlord Licensing
If you have a rental property that has recently been deemed by the council as an area where landlords need to have a landlord license in place, then make sure to get this done. A landlord license requires that a landlord shows that they are a suitable person and show that the property they have to rent is actually fit to be lived in. This type of property licensing usually only applies in designated areas.
If you do not get a license in an area that requires landlords to get a license, the consequences could be severe so make sure to check with your local authority.
Once all of this legal ‘stuff’ is in place, you need to make sure you inspect your property often, respond to tenant and maintenance issues promptly, and make sure your tenancy agreements and safety documents are renewed at the necessary times.
PHEW! That is a lot to take in. Once you know what you need to do, it gets easier. Aksum Lets ensures that all of the above is in place and verified before tenants occupy your property to help ensure that you, as a landlord, are meeting all of the requirements. Take a look at our tenant find and property management sections for our list of services and pricing.
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