Having worked in the lettings industry for most of my adult life, I have become keenly aware that practical information for tenants is not circulating well. And that’s putting it mildly!

I can’t think of another single industry or service that comes close to the rental sector for disputes or misunderstandings, despite its importance let alone its economic clout. The cost of an average rental in South East England will cost tenants as much as a pretty decent car every single year. Even further afield, most tenants are still paying between a third and a half of everything they earn to keep a rented roof over their heads. However... what all tenants need to understand from the beginning is that they are often not even the customers in transactions that involve agencies.

What do I mean? Well, let’s buy a chocolate bar in, say, Woolworths. Pay 40 pence and you become the customer. Along with all the consumer protections that come with being a customer. Let’s take another example and buy that car from a reputable dealership. Clearly, again, you hand over the cash and thus become the customer. Simple.

Not so for the huge number of tenants who rent property via agencies. In the overwhelming majority of instances, the letting agent’s customer is the landlord – not the tenant. And, like any other business, agencies respond to the needs of their customers – who unfortunately in this case are not the ones handing over all that money each month. Far too often the tenants’ needs get completely lost in this type of arrangement.

It’s an interesting anomaly that the most expensive purchase of a tenant’s year is often the very one over which they’ll have little or no control.

The relationship between a tenant and a landlord direct can – in many instances – be easier to manage. You are, much more effectively, the customer here and, as a majority of landlords still don’t use agencies for all sorts of reasons, this means that a huge number of tenants and landlords do business without the expense of middlemen. However, such direct relationships can sometimes lead to another, quite different set of problems for tenants to deal with.

In fact, the real double blind in letting/rentals is that tenants are always the ones left struggling to know where they stand, while also being the ones who pay handsomely for the privilege.

Just one more thing. Tenants in England and Wales (with some rare exceptions explained later) have precious few meaningful rights once something called The Fixed Term comes to an end. (Read Lesson on leases. You’ll already know this better as the original length of the agreement.) Once that extremely limited period of legal protection ends, it’s no exaggeration to say that a tenant’s rights could be balanced on the proverbial pinhead.

Over the past several years there has been an unprecedented range of changes to Housing Law, which massively affects how tenancies operate in England and Wales (with more important changes still coming courtesy of the new 2004 legislation – this time you’ll be relieved to read, designed mainly to protect tenants rather than investors).

The most significant of these first changes was undoubtedly the introduction in 1988 of assured shorthold leases. These leases mean exactly what they suggest. Shorthold says it all. These tenancies are not permanent. They can become longer term, but only if the landlord is happy with the way that a tenancy is running. Once your initial protections run out, everything depends on the way you behave as a tenant.

Until the introduction of assured shortholds, almost all tenancies required a landlord to prove (to a court) that s/he had good enough legal reasons for requiring the tenancy to be terminated: reasons like damage, antisocial conduct or unpaid rent. The introduction of assured shorthold tenancies means that any landlord who decides to terminate a tenancy after a short period may do so for no legal reason whatever. Landlords (or their agents) don’t need any particular reason to ask for their property back once the first ‘fixed term’ has expired. Of course, that doesn’t mean they can simply change the locks – both sides have processes to go through to end tenancies – but in effect landlords have the key to the car, their foot on the throttle and full control of the brakes. Modern tenants remain fare paying passengers at all times.

Welcome to the world of the modern tenant

No guide can change Housing Legislation that governs how you rent, from whom, for how long, let alone how much it all costs. What it can do is help you to negotiate your way through some very expensive and quite complex contracts. It can help you to understand them and their hidden consequences. It will teach you how they operate and what to watch for in the small print, and show you where your protections do exist – and where they don’t. It can point out pitfalls and help you find your way around some of them.

Plus, it explains what a reasonable landlord can and will insist on to protect their own, very considerable interests.

I’ve illuminated a few tricks of the trade so you don’t get stung too often. I’ve also included details on some new and very interesting legislation covering rental deposits that since April 2007 affect almost all landlords/agents and tenants too. I’ve also given you a flavour of other new laws that should soon, with luck, help in reducing dangerous housing conditions that can so often affect sharers on tight budgets. In short, spending a bit of time reading here should make a real difference to your everyday life as a tenant.

Now for the reality check. If I were going to hand over to a virtual stranger the kind of money that it takes to set up an average tenancy (and never forget that you only met this landlord/agent yesterday) then I’d want some realistic advice on what to expect.

Good and bad practice is widespread. Tenants with little experience can’t possibly just guess and get it right. So try reading the whole of this guide. It shouldn’t take long and its style is lighthearted and conversational. I’ve even thrown in a few true stories to make you laugh (or cry).

Although it’s often claimed that tenants have ‘rights’ under a variety of Housing Acts, Common Law, and Consumer Protection Acts, in reality this protection is about as much use as a chocolate teapot for anyone with six months’ security of tenure under an Assured Shorthold lease, which is what you’ll be getting as a modern tenant. By the time any action can be taken to enforce safety or contract, landlords or agents may have decided to quite legally remove what they consider to be ‘troublesome tenants’. It’s a right that they do have in law and bad landlords/agents use it all too often to ‘control’ very legitimate tenant concerns.

However, do remember that, out there in this huge marketplace are thousands of hard working, fair minded landlords who treat their tenants in just the way that any other customer would expect. It’s your job as a tenant to learn how to find yourself one of the majority and, frankly, how to steer clear of the rest.

By providing clear information, what you read here should help you to learn what to look for, what to try avoiding, how to conduct your tenancy, and with luck, leave with your deposit intact. I also provide access points to other useful and reliable sources of information to help build on what I’ve incorporated here. It should also explain why rushing to sign a contract that you don’t understand (or even bother to read!) can often be a grave a mistake.

This guide is not intended to be a legal manual, but a practical one – for when the law is as ineffective as it is for the vast majority of tenants, practicality rather than theory is what will help you most.

The ‘fixed term’

Almost, but not quite all, modern leases begin with a fixed term. This is the original length of time agreed to offer a lease for and it will normally be six months.

Now, this original fixed term matters. Beyond that, tenants have no control over the length of time for which they will be able to continue their contract. Together with other far-reaching changes, this legislation has utterly transformed the lettings industry. (Fixed Terms are explained in much more detail in Lesson 1.)

These legal transformations have both positive and negative effects for tenants. There has been a genuine upturn in the supply of rented housing, and we can forget about past shortages. Nowadays, when higher education and shorter-term employment contracts mean we all have to move around much more than we ever did before, this increased supply is absolutely vital.

However, while everyone welcomes the increased supply and choice, gone also are the days when tenancies lasted for as long as the tenant wanted, so long as the contract terms were not breached. The whole way in which we occupy rented property has changed beyond all recognition. And that has proved to be a very mixed blessing for tenants.

‘Market rents’ have replaced ‘fair rents’, which at least offered some control on costs. Tight contracts, in which every detail of tenant conduct is clearly laid out, are now commonplace. Agencies have been rapidly established to service this growing sector and their sole reason for existence is to make profits at every stage of the rental process. Being a tenant is now vastly more costly and infinitely less secure than it has been for decades (and indeed still is in many parts of the world where rentals are permanent lifestyles).

These changes affect every single aspect of being a tenant in England and Wales.

What difference does this make to me?

The first difference this has made is that if you do want to be a tenant, you will have no difficulty in finding something to rent. You may even be lucky enough to find a local glut in your price range. However, the climate in which you rent has been utterly transformed. The introduction of assured shorthold leases has removed any security of tenure beyond that first ‘fixed term’. The landlord’s guaranteed ‘no fault’ right to repossession has restricted tenants enormously. Every player – landlords, agents and tenants – now knows that if tenants complain their lease need not last beyond the legal minimum, and this is usually only six short months.

The difference that this has made is absolutely critical. Tenants now enter a highly commercialised, expensive market, in the certain knowledge that if they have even the most reasonable cause for complaint, they may, for no other reason than raising a problem, be asked to leave their home. We have entered uncharted waters where tenants – even those with very genuine problems with their accommodation – don’t feel confident enough to complain about a thing.

It is very easy for people (invariably home owners) to shrug their shoulders, and wonder why you should mind moving on if you’re not happy? However, moving is expensive, and unsettling, whether you’re a tenant or an owner-occupier. Being told to leave a property that you have dutifully paid rent on and cared for because you complained about something reasonable is a bitter pill to swallow for most tenants.

The double irony remains that your single largest expense, i.e. your home, should be the one thing that you are unable to raise any legitimate concerns about.

The Housing Acts 1988 may have solved the problems of under-supply, but they have, in reality, created another, quite different set of problems that place far too much control over lifestyles in the hands of virtual strangers, yet offer absolutely no quality control or meaningful safeguards to tenants who have genuine problems. This is unlikely to change. That is why tenants need to know what to look for, because well cared for units simply cause less areas of friction.

Interestingly, problems in the seventies and eighties were genuinely experienced by landlords, who – even when they had the most appalling problems with their tenants – found it almost impossible to regain possession of their property. A completely different type of problem now exists, this time for tenants who, despite paying high rents, and signing very stringent contracts, find it is their turn to be virtually powerless.

What should I do to protect my interests?

In this highly commercial market, where rights are limited, tenants need to know what to look for, not only in the property itself, but also in its management (agent or landlord). Ideally tenants need to be well informed before they ever sign a contract.

Inexperienced tenants (and they form the majority) need to learn how to assess and protect their own interests quickly and efficiently. Property is now very expensive to rent and good units often go very quickly in a market where they are still at a premium. Learning what to look for and why is now an essential part of being a tenant.

How will The Tenant’s Survival Guide help me?

The aim of the guide is primarily to show you how to establish a sensible framework within which both you and your landlord can operate in harmony. It sets out not only what you can expect from your landlord or agent, but also what they can reasonably expect from you. That will help you to recognise what should concern you, and show you some easy, practical ways to protect your own interests.

You may find some of the guide alarming, some of it amusing, but all of it will help you negotiate the realities of being a private tenant today. Throughout the guide you will find numerous anecdotes from landlords and tenants, which have been used to illustrate potential pitfalls. These will help you to learn from the past misfortunes of others (there’s no substitute for experience, even if it’s someone else’s!). None of these is invented; as a service we generate enough horror stories to set anyone’s teeth on edge without the help of fiction.

What is in this Tenant’s Survival Guide?

Most local authorities, Citizens’ Advice Bureaux and tenancy advisory groups have already produced small, quite helpful pamphlets for tenants. They do however tend to concentrate on clear areas like major disrepair (the roof fell in), illegal eviction (suitcases in the front garden) and other forms of major harassment. Many also still include information on tenancies, which are no longer likely to be issued, as these booklets are intended to cover the whole spectrum of tenancy problems and there are still a surprising number of regulated tenants with old style contracts, still running out there in the marketplace.

The Tenant’s Survival Guide is designed quite specifically to cover only Assured Shorthold Tenants, or those who have been offered ‘licences to occupy’. It is able therefore to concentrate on the vast majority of modern tenants with little or no security of tenure and very few rights to enforce. Because, despite these being the overwhelming majority of tenancies, problem-solving advice for this huge and growing army of tenants is usually brief. It is often also accompanied by a warning that you have very little security – and you might not want to enforce what limited rights you do have because this could very well result in a legal request to vacate.

It is much harder to advise people when they have very little legal redress. If you complain, or have a problem on an assured shorthold, and that lease is legitimately brought to an end, what has happened may be grossly unfair, but it is certainly not illegal!

Put simply, informed tenants will do well, and badly informed tenants will struggle. Believe me, landlords and agents have quickly learned how to manage under-informed tenants. The purpose of this guide is to give tenants access to a range of experience that agents and landlords already enjoy. Longer than a pamphlet (but shorter than War and Peace), this guide aims to help you both foresee and resolve the type of problems you are likely to be dealing with as a tenant with limited tenure. I’ve made it short, informative and practical. It is also a technical reference point, somewhere for you to look up specifics should a problem arise during your tenancy.

Where else could I get advice?

I wish I could throw in a long list of resources here – but I can’t. It has been remarkably difficult for tenants to actually get hold of useful advice about these types of tenancies. Advice on assured shortholds is limited; because your rights are limited. There’s nothing else to say! These particular tenancies need a proactive, forewarned tenants. Tenants who know about their knock-on effects and have been advised about their consequences. Why? Because, as a tenant, you certainly can’t exercise control over them.

The only other readily available source of information which tenants can access is legal advice. However, most of us (except in the most serious of instances) find this a very expensive option. Too often tenants realise that their position is insecure, and that their landlord is holding a considerable sum of their money (advance rent plus of course that deposit). For many, it is simply cheaper to cut their losses than to lose money fighting futile battles.

Some final advice

Many private landlords provide high quality, safe and well-serviced properties. A minority are appalling, offering inadequate, overcrowded, and sometimes downright unsafe properties. And, of course, the overwhelming majority fall somewhere between the two.

Don’t however forget that (even if it often doesn’t feel that way), you are a customer of your landlord. It may well be your rent which will be paying the mortgage on a property. Your landlord may be acquiring a portfolio of properties, all funded by rental income. You may not have too many legal remedies available to you, but landlords and agencies cannot survive without tenants’ revenue, because you fund our entire industry. The one thing that worries a modern landlord is an empty unit. This is the only card in your deck, so learn how to play it effectively. As always, a contract between two well informed parties based on mutual respect has a much greater chance of success than any other sort.

This guide should equip you well in your search for accommodation and help you resolve misunderstandings during tenancies without coming to blows. And always remember...