Well, the Renters Rights Act is now law and, as so often has occurred with legislative changes in our industry, the whole World has not ended.
We’ve done our best to keep you fully informed and engaged throughout this protracted process but frankly many landlords and tenants, across the industry, are none the wiser as to what has actually happened!
As I have said on several occasions in the build-up, much of the new legislation is – and always was – covered under existing law and you, as a responsible and ethical landlord, were already compliant.
So for the experienced landlord, and indeed agent, it is more language around the industry that has altered.
That said, there are some key differences around notices and the time scales required as well as the actual detail and requirements if possession is required for things such as non-payment of rent.
I’ve summarised here for easy reference:
Non-payment of rent: In simple terms the most likely scenario of a client wishing to force an eviction would result from the tenant not paying rent.
You can only now issue a section 8 notice after the tenant falls 3 months in arrears (it used to be 8 weeks). You can then request a possession hearing through the Courts.
We previously used Section 21 notices purely for possession but these, of course, are no longer in law. The key part to this is that as an agent we were able to complete the paperwork and indeed attend Court under Section 21.
Now, under Section 8, we would have no ‘standing’ in Court, meaning you would have to attend personally or employ a lawyer.
What will this cost? Having spoken to several lawyers to get a realistic overview, we are looking at around £2,000 + VAT for lawyers to serve notices and act on your behalf to see possession cases through to a Court date and eventually regain possession of your property.
How long could it take? The rather concerning element to this is that I asked realistically as to how long we can expect to wait for a Court date and the reply was a minimum of 12-15 months! If rent wasn’t being paid throughout that waiting period, this could result in average losses of £20,000.
You would also be liable for management fees throughout the period, under our contracted terms.
How can you safeguard against this? Having many contacts within the industry I am aware of other agents taking a blanket approach to Rent and Legal Guarantee Insurance.
We now believe Town and Country have an obligation to provide this to our clients to protect you from the worst case scenario.
MOVING FORWARD
I am currently in conversation with several Rent and Legal Guarantee Insurance providers to see what we can offer in terms of price per property per month to you all.
To be clear this will be a service that Town and Country provide to our clients, with policies in our name, as we cannot legally offer advice on insurance. To give some indication on price we are currently looking at around £35 + VAT per month for properties with a rental figure of up to £2,000 per month.
For the reasons stated above we are going to offer this service as an OPT OUT service – namely that we will be adding all clients, unless they have contacted us specifically to opt out, in the coming months.
My intention is to finalise best price for you our clients and confirm this in a further update no later than the first week of July.
In this update we will provide a two to three-week window for you to OPT OUT of this service. Otherwise you and other clients will be automatically enrolled from 1st August 2026.
If you have any questions or queries and would like to discuss the content of this communication, please do not hesitate to contact me. As always, we’re here to help.
Kind regards
Stephen Chipp
