How Do You Find Good Tenants for Your Rental Property?

What makes a tenant worth having?

A good tenant pays on time, reports faults early and leaves the property roughly as they found it. Everything you can measure before signing is a proxy for those three behaviours.

The three signals worth testing

• Income that clears the rent comfortably, evidenced by payslips or accounts checked against bank statements.
• A rental history a previous landlord will confirm, not just the current one who may want them gone.
• Willingness to be verified: consent to a credit check, original ID, and a landlord’s details offered without prompting.

Why screening carries more weight since may 2026

Section 21 is gone, so every possession claim runs through a ground and a hearing, and the mandatory arrears ground needs three months of unpaid rent rather than two. A defended claim routinely costs £2,500 to £6,000, which is why legal expenses cover has become a standard purchase.

How do you advertise without breaking the new rules?

Publish one rent figure, describe the property honestly, and keep every reference to benefits, children or family status out of the copy. The advert is now a regulated document rather than a sales pitch.

Step 1: set one rent figure and publish it

Section 56 of the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 requires the advert to state a specific proposed rent. You must not invite, encourage or accept an offer above that figure.

Breaching it is a civil financial penalty of up to £7,000 imposed by the local housing authority under section 57, not a criminal fine. Price the property once, using comparable lets on the same street, and hold the figure.

Step 2: write a listing that filters for you

Photograph every room in daylight, then give the EPC rating, the council tax band and the availability date. A listing that admits there is no parking and one small bedroom saves you six pointless viewings.

Step 3: choose where to list

Rightmove and Zoopla reach the largest audience, and you reach them through a letting agent or a portal-listing service such as OpenRent. Agents charge roughly 8% to 15% of the rent for full management, or one month’s rent plus VAT for tenant-find only.

What you cannot say in a rental advert now

Sections 33 and 34 make it unlawful in England to treat an applicant less favourably because they have children or receive benefits. The maximum penalty is £7,000 under section 40, and it applies to the advert, the enquiry, the viewing and the decision.

Why your insurer or lender no longer gives you a defence

Section 38 voids any term in an insurance contract that requires a landlord to refuse tenants with children or on benefits, and section 37 does the same for mortgage conditions. A buy-to-let mortgage clause banning benefit claimants no longer binds you.

So “my insurer will not allow it” has stopped working as a reason to decline. If you want cover written specifically around housing benefit tenancies, a DSS landlord policy does that job properly.

What should you look for at a viewing?

Use the viewing to test the story the enquiry told you, not to form an impression. Consistency, questions about maintenance and a willingness to be checked are the signals that matter.

Step 4: pre-screen before you hand out slots

Ask every enquiry the same questions: move-in date, number of adults and children, employment status, pets, and whether a previous landlord can be contacted. Record the answers against a written script.

Step 5: the five questions worth asking in person

• Why are you moving, and when does your current tenancy end?
• Who will be living here, and is anyone else likely to move in later?
• What is your total household income before tax?
• Can I speak to your current landlord and the one before them?
• Has a landlord ever served you notice or taken you to court?

Questions that will cost you £7,000

Do not ask whether an applicant is pregnant or plans to have children, and do not treat benefit income as a reason to reject. Section 41 expressly preserves your right to take income into account, so ask about the amount rather than the source.

How do you test whether an applicant can afford the rent?

Most landlords want gross household income of at least 2.5 times the annual rent, which is the same as 30 times the monthly rent. Test it against documents you have verified yourself, never against figures typed into an application form.

Step 6: run the affordability sum

At £1,200 a month the annual rent is £14,400, so the threshold is £36,000 of gross household income. Employed applicants should give three payslips and three months of statements showing the salary landing.

Self-employed applicants need two years of accounts or HMRC SA302 tax calculations. A new business with one good quarter is not a track record.

Why you cannot take rent up front any more

Section 9 of the Act inserted a new section 5A into the Tenant Fees Act 2019, making any rent payable before an assured tenancy is entered into a prohibited payment. The old fix of six or twelve months up front for a thin credit file is no longer available.

You can still take a holding deposit and a tenancy deposit within the caps. The first rent payment falls due once the tenancy has started.

When a guarantor fixes the gap

A guarantor should meet the same income test, be a UK resident, and sign a deed accepting joint and several liability. Reference them exactly as you referenced the tenant.

Where no guarantor is available and the sums are tight, rent guarantee insurance is the alternative, and it is a different thing from the loss of rent section of a let property policy, which pays only when insured damage makes the property uninhabitable.

What does proper referencing involve?

Verify every reference at source. Contact the previous landlord as well as the current one, confirm employment through the employer’s own switchboard, and run the credit check through a referencing agency rather than a free score app.

Step 7: landlord and employer references

Ask the previous landlord four things: was rent paid on time, was the property looked after, were there disputes, and would you let to them again. The landlord before the current one has no incentive to flatter.

For employment, ring the company’s published number and ask for HR or the named manager. Confirm job title, salary, contract type and start date.

Step 8: credit and background checks

An agency check reveals County Court Judgments, Individual Voluntary Arrangements, bankruptcy and payment history. Expect to pay £20 to £50 per applicant, and to pay it yourself rather than charging the tenant.

How to spot a fabricated reference

Application fraud is the fastest-moving risk in referencing. According to letting platform Goodlord, fake employment references rose 226% and false landlord references 146% over the last year, with the average fraudulent tenancy costing £9,601.

• Never call the number printed on the payslip. Find the employer’s switchboard yourself and ask for the person by name.
• Check the employer on Companies House and that its registered address matches the letterhead.
• Compare the payslip net figure with the credit landing in the bank statement on the same date.
• Use an open banking check to see rent leaving the account monthly, which no forged document can imitate.

Step 9: work through the screening checklist

Run every applicant through the same sequence and keep the evidence. The file shows a decline was about affordability, not a protected characteristic.

How do you carry out a right to rent check?

Check every adult who will live in the property before they move in, whatever their nationality. Checking only the people you assume are not British is itself unlawful discrimination.

Step 10: check every adult aged 18 or over

The duty applies in England to everyone who will occupy the property as their only or main home, whether or not they are named on the agreement. The government’s right to rent guidance sets out who counts and when the check must happen.

Where someone’s permission to stay is time-limited, the check must be done in the 28 days before the tenancy starts. Diarise the follow-up check for the day it expires.

The three ways to get a statutory excuse

• A manual check of original List A or List B documents, made in the holder’s presence, with a dated copy kept on file.
• The Home Office online service, using a share code the tenant generates and their date of birth.
• A certified digital verification provider, for British and Irish citizens who hold a valid passport.

What the penalties are, and what changes on 1 october 2026

The Home Office code of practice for landlords caps the civil penalty at £5,000 per lodger and £10,000 per occupier for a first breach, rising to £10,000 and £20,000 for a repeat breach.

A replacement code takes effect on 1 October 2026 and keeps those amounts. It renames the digital route, so from that date you appoint a certified right to rent digital verification service provider rather than an IDSP.

What can you take before the tenancy starts, and what must you give?

You can take a holding deposit of up to one week’s rent and a tenancy deposit of up to five weeks’ rent, and nothing else. In return you must hand over a written statement of terms before the tenancy begins.

Step 11: take the holding deposit correctly

A holding deposit reserves the property while you reference. The deadline for agreement is the fifteenth day after you receive it, unless you both agree a different date in writing.

If the tenancy goes ahead you apply it to the first rent or the deposit. If it does not, you repay it within seven days unless the applicant withdrew, gave false information or failed the right to rent check.

Step 12: protect the deposit and serve the prescribed information

Put the deposit in one of the three government-backed schemes and serve the prescribed information within 30 days, as gov.uk sets out for deposit protection. Miss it and the tenant can claim one to three times the deposit.

Step 13: give the written statement of terms

Every new tenancy from 1 May 2026 needs a written statement of terms before it begins, in the form set by the 2026 written statement regulations. Part 1 of the Schedule lists eighteen items you have to include.

Those cover the names of every landlord and tenant, an address in England or Wales for serving notices, the rent and payment day, how increases work, bills, repair duties, gas and electrical safety, and deposit protection. Tenancies already running on 1 May 2026 needed the government information sheet by 31 May 2026.

The rest of the move-in pack

• Gas safety record, dated within the last twelve months, from a Gas Safe registered engineer.
• Electrical Installation Condition Report, no more than five years old.
• EPC, plus evidence of the minimum energy efficiency standard.
• Deposit certificate, prescribed information and the scheme’s leaflet.

Tell the tenant to arrange their own renters’ contents insurance at the same time. Your landlord buildings policy covers the structure and the items you supply, not their belongings.

Which red flags should stop an application?

Treat a single red flag as a question to ask and any two together as a reason to decline. The pattern tells you more than one imperfect line on a credit file.

Red flags in the paperwork

When the occupancy changes after the offer

Three or more tenants from two or more households makes the property an HMO, which usually needs a licence and always needs HMO insurance rather than a standard let policy. An applicant who quietly adds people after the offer has changed the risk you priced.

What to do when you decline

Write down the objective reason: income below the threshold, an unverifiable reference, or a refused right to rent check. Never record anything about children, benefits or a protected characteristic.

Under UK GDPR, destroy unsuccessful applicants’ data within six months and keep the successful tenant’s file for the tenancy plus six years. Even a well referenced tenant can put a foot through a ceiling, which is what accidental damage cover exists for.