How are rent increases going to work?
So the new legislation is really based on a valid section 13 notice, which advises that the landlord intends to increase the rent. There is no set limit on how much a landlord can increase the rent, but the rent should be around the same as similar homes in your area.
This is often called market rent, and can only be considered once a year.
You don't have to agree an increase in rent as a tenant, if you think it's too high, you can refer and go to a tribunal that may involve a small fee, and the landlord cannot implement that notice until the tribunal in that case has been completed.
Graham Hayward, Housing Hand
What does it mean when we say there will be an end to rental bidding?
Under the new law an estate agent or landlord has to publish the asking rent and can't ask for or accept anymore.
Tarah Welsh, Housing Correspondent
Are more landlords selling?
Yeah, absolutely. I think more landlords are selling, but it's important to understand who are selling and how they are selling. So, I think, it's over 80% of landlords in the sector are over the age of 45 and going into retirement. They normally have one or two properties and are doing that sort of after dinner. They're what we call an amateur landlord. They're certainly looking at selling, but they're also aware that they currently have good tenants that they don't want to make homeless.
So what we're actually seeing is an off-market transaction. So larger, more professional landlords are actually snapping up these tenant in situ properties, so these properties don't then come back onto the rental market, but also that tenant doesn't lose their home. So yes, we have seen a huge spike in landlords selling, but certainly not tenants being evicted because of it.
Julie Ford, Lettings Advice Service
What are the rules on pets?
It's not a blanket acceptance of having a pet. It's that a tenant has the right to request a pet, and a landlord cannot say no unreasonably.
So a landlord has to consider that request reasonably. That feels quite wide and I think will need to be some common sense here. I think if it's a studio flat and someone wants a massive dog, and there's no garden that may select reasonable grounds to refuse that request, but if it's a gerbil in a five bedroom house, a judge, if it got that far, might think that wasn't reasonable.
If it is a house share and someone else has an allergy that, again, common sense that a landlord will be able to refuse. If the landlord is a lease holder and the freeholder doesn't allow pets, that would be another reason. But I think we might have to see until some of these actually get into the courts, to see what were the reasons for allowing or not allowing a pet.
Tarah Welsh, Housing Correspondent
If contracts have no start and end date, what is the possibility of short term lets?
With the new changes from today, all fixed terms will become periodic, and they will continue until it's either been ended by the landlord, if they've got a specific legal reason to rely upon, or by the tenant by just giving two months notice at any time. So really, I mean, as far as we're concerned, these are long-term tenancies until it's ended by either party.
Nadeem Khan, Shelter
What are the rules for joint tenancies?
Notice by one tenant will be noticed for all so if you're sharing a house with several other parties, in particular, an HMO, if you give notice, it will be noticed for everybody. Now, clearly there's some practicality around that, in that if one person gives notice and the other parties want to stay. There's an opportunity to talk with the landlord, but legally, that tenancy will end after two months, unless there's a different arrangement put in place.
Graham Hayward, Housing Hand
Will there be rules for conditions and standards in private rents?
Yes, there will. So at the moment, we have the decent home standard in the social sector, and that's been in operation since about 2000 and they are looking to bring the decent home standard in to the private sector.
Now, what this aims to do is have a minimum standard of condition across the board, so at least you know when you're renting a property, what the minimum you can expect. Now there are recent consultations where the government have come back and stipulated that actually the decent home standard won't be implemented into the private sector until 2035 or 2037 so we've got nine years to wait, and unfortunately, we don't know how many governments we might have had in that nine years, and what the decent home standard would then look like for the private sector.
But that doesn't mean that there aren't anything out there at the moment for the tenants, we have the fitness for human habitation act. We have section 11 of the landlord and tenant Act, which sets out the landlord's obligations. And of course, tenants can always go to the council and get support from the environmental health officers. So there is support out there for condition but the decent home standard itself isn't coming in for another nine years.
Julie Ford, Lettings Advice Service
Will the new Renters' Rights Act affect Council and Housing Association tenants?
No, it doesn't. Council tenants already have strong, secure rights that are not changed by the Renters' Rights Act. So the new law affects primarily tenancies in the private sector, where the property is your main home, your landlord doesn't live with you, the tenancy started after February 1997 and the rent is under about £100,000 a year.
Housing Associations also known as social landlords, and they're not councils, because sometimes people get confused with them. They also give a short tenancies, but the changes won't be applying to them until late 2027.
Nadeem Khan, Shelter
