Tenancy Agreements Training

One thing which ALL landlords need is a tenancy agreement.

Many landlords totally fail to appreciate the importance of their tenancy agreement considering that the best agreement is the shortest agreement!  However, this attitude can be dangerous as a short agreement will probably fail to protect your position and could cause you big problems.

You also need to take care to have a tenancy agreement which is up to date.  For example, all tenancy agreements had to be amended with effect from June 2019 to take into account the Tenant Fees legislation.  

If this was not done and you are still using an agreement which provides for illegal penalty clauses and fees, this can get you into serious trouble.

The same result but done a different way

One example of how tenancy agreements need to adapt is with call out charges for tenants failing to allow access for agreed inspection visits.

In the past, this issue was often dealt with by imposing penalty fees.  However, this approach is now outlawed by the tenant fees legislation. 

The way to deal with this now is to make it a breach of the terms of the tenancy agreement to fail to attend an agreed appointment and provide for the tenant to pay any penalties (ie call out charges from tradespersons) you may suffer as a result.

So you get the same result – the tenants pay the penalty for their non-co-operation – but this is now payable as compensation for breach of contract (which is allowed) rather than as a penalty charge (which is not).

This is just one example of how you need to be on the ball with your tenancy agreements and ensure that they are drafted to help you.

To help landlords understand tenancy agreement issues we have now launched our

Tenancy Agreement Complete Course. 

This in seven parts as follows:

• Parts 1 and 2 – Legal Background issues – eg tenancies and licenses, oral tenancies and the different types of tenancy
• Part 3 – Why tenancy agreements are misleading – looking for example at the unfair terms regulations
• Part 4 – Shared properties – looking at the various ways of dealing with this
• Part 5 – Individual clauses (1) – looking at the main parts of a tenancy and the main clauses
• Part 6 – Individual clauses (2) – looking at all the other types of clauses (this is quite a large section of the course), and
• Part 7 – Creating, amending and revising – discussing this in detail

There are also quite a few bonus items.

This course will give all landlords the background information they need to ensure that their tenancy agreements not only protect their position but work for them in a positive way.  It should be taken by all landlords and letting agents.

Landlord Law members get a 10% discount (if logged in at the time of purchase) and can offset their points.  Plus we have a members-only coupon for a further 30% off the full price (ie it won’t work with other coupons or if there is a sale price on).

Find out more here (if you are a logged-in member)