Announcing our conversion contracts page for Welsh landlords

All landlords of property in Wales which had an existing tenant as at 1 December 2023 when the new law came into force, must serve a ‘conversion contract’ on their tenants / contract holders before 1 June 2023.

This document must be a combination of the Welsh model contract and their own tenancy agreement which applied prior to 1 December.

The reasoning behind this is that the original contract still applies – apart from the bits which have been overridden by the new rules.

So landlords must serve a document on their contract holders telling them what their contract now consists of.

What landlords need to do

The exercise of creating a conversion contract is actually a lot more difficult than you would imagine from reading the government’s guidance page.

The terms and conditions in the model contract are very long indeed, and most landlords, who are not lawyers and who are not used to drafting legal forms, will find it a truly horrible task. (They are not alone – lawyers find it a horrible task too!).

I would not be surprised to learn that some landlords have sold off their properties just to avoid having to do this!

The government’s guidance page is also not that helpful.  They give as an annex the introductory text for a conversion contract (although only for a periodic contract), but don’t give any examples of how a final document should look.

Members have been asking me for some time for a conversion document and I have  finally come up with something which will help, not just Landlord Law members but hopefully all Welsh landlords.

What we have done

I have now created a special ‘conversion contract’ page.  On it, I have: 

• Divided the contract into sections to allow you to create one part at a time
• Used colour coding to show the different types of term in the terms and conditions, to make it easier for you to see what bits you can change and what you can’t
• Provided a draft you can use if you used the Landlord Law Welsh AST form for your tenants – although at present we only have a version for a fixed term tenancy
• Given general guidance tips and FAQ

Even Landlord Law members will need to do a checking exercise though, as often landlords will have added extra terms to their contracts or amended them in some way – which will need to be reflected in your conversion contract.

However, this page will be very helpful for Landlord Law members who have used our form.  It should also make things easier for landlords who used other forms – as I suspect that most form publishers will not be producing Welsh conversion versions!

Landlord Law members will find the page here.