Journal

Three months in, the clearest lesson is not that managing your own property has become impossible. It is that the cost of a small mistake has risen, and the landlords who treat the new rules as admin rather than risk are the ones most likely to get caught out.

What has actually changed

• Rent can only be raised once a year, using a Section 13 notice, and the tenant now gets two months' notice rather than one. Rent review clauses written into older tenancy agreements no longer count.
• A tenant can challenge a proposed increase at a tribunal for a fee of £47.
• Pet requests must be answered in writing within 28 days, with your reasons given. You can no longer ask a tenant to insure against pet damage.
• Every advert must state a specific rent. Neither you nor your agent may invite or accept an offer above it, and you cannot ask for more than one month's rent in advance.
• Rent arrears must now reach three months before you can begin the process on that ground, up from two.
• Tenants who were already in place on 1 May should have been given the government's prescribed information sheet by 31 May. It is a specific document rather than a summary you write yourself, and it is the item we find missing most often.
• Fines now reach £7,000 for breaches and £40,000 for offences, and a tribunal can order a landlord to repay up to 24 months of rent to a tenant, double the previous maximum.
   

Higher fines are only half of that last point. Councils now have a legal duty to enforce these rules rather than a choice about whether to, and the money from any penalty they issue stays with the council instead of going to the Treasury. Enforcement now pays for itself, which tends to mean there is more of it.

If you might want to sell

This is where the new rules bite hardest, and it needs planning much further ahead than most landlords expect.

If you need your property empty in order to sell it, you now have to use a specific legal ground called Ground 1A. Three conditions come with it. You must give the tenant four months' notice. You cannot use it at all during the first year of a tenancy. And once the tenant has moved out, you are barred from letting the property again for twelve months.

That last condition changes the decision. Before, a landlord could take a property back, test the market and simply re-let it if the sale did not go to plan. Now, if you take possession to sell and then change your mind, the property sits empty for a year. Selling has become a commitment rather than an option you keep open, so if an exit in 2027 is on your mind, the planning starts now.

The rent review detail landlords keep missing

Two changes work together here, and together they matter far more than either does alone.

Before 1 May, if a tenant challenged an increase and the tribunal decided the proposed rent was below market value, it could set the rent higher than the landlord had asked for. That is no longer possible. The tribunal can accept your figure or reduce it, so challenging has become a one-way bet for the tenant.

And a challenged increase does not begin on the date on your notice. It begins on the day the tribunal decides, and tribunals are currently working in months rather than weeks. The cost of a challenge is therefore the gap between the old rent and the new one for the whole of that wait.

So the figure you propose, and the evidence behind it, now carry real financial weight. An increase that stands up against comparable local properties will usually go through unchallenged. One that looks ambitious invites a £47 objection that costs you months.

What one missed review actually costs

Rents across all three council areas covering our branches rose faster than the South East average over the past year, according to Office for National Statistics figures. In Eastleigh borough, which covers Hedge End, Fair Oak and Bishopstoke, the average rent rose 3.4% in the year to June, while the region as a whole rose 2.3%.

Take a property at that borough average. Twelve months ago, market rent was £1,173 a month. Today it is £1,213. So market rent on that property has moved by £40 a month.
Skip the review and you are £480 down over the year. That part is obvious. What catches landlords out is the year after.

To show why, it helps to look ahead, though what follows is an illustration rather than a forecast. Nobody knows what rents will do next year.

If rents were to rise by another 3.4%, market rent on that property would reach around £1,254. Your own rent, though, would still be £1,173, because you never made the first increase. You would now be £81 a month adrift rather than £40. And because you only get one increase a year, catching up in a single step would mean proposing a rise of almost 7%.

Which is exactly the kind of increase a tenant challenges.

The rate is a guess. The pattern is not. A missed review does not cost you one year of income. It moves your starting point for every year that follows, and the longer it goes unaddressed, the harder the correction becomes to defend.

What is coming next

The private rented sector database arrives later this year, with one detail that bites immediately. A landlord who is not registered on it cannot seek possession of their own property, and possession is already slow, averaging around 27 weeks from the point a court accepts a claim.

Awaab's Law, which sets fixed deadlines for investigating and fixing hazards such as damp and mould, is expected to reach private landlords from 2027. That will arrive sooner than it sounds.

Where to start

The landlords who have found these three months easiest are not the ones who read the legislation most carefully. They are the ones who are no longer the person who has to.

If you would like someone to look over where your property stands, whether the information sheet was served, whether your rent is where it should be, and what a fully managed arrangement would take off your hands, get in touch with your local White and Guard branch in Hedge End, Bishop's Waltham, Bitterne or Fair Oak.