This is day 31 of my 31 days of tips on tenancy agreements series. To see the rest of the series click here.
Finding tenancy agreements, and the Landlord Law service
Today is the last day of my 31 days of tips. I hope you have enjoyed it, and that you have learned something. When I started writing, I wondered whether I would have enough material to cover 31 posts. Having written it though, I keep thinking of things I have left out!
However the series has covered the critical things you need to know, whether as a landlord or as an adviser. It there are any other burning issues you would like me to look at in future, please leave a comment.
Finding tenancy agreements
The final thing to discuss with you, is where to get tenancy agreements.
In many ways, there is an embarrassment of riches. Modestly priced printed forms can be found in most large stationers, from respected names such as Lawpack and Oyez. There must be hundreds of other suppliers available online, both free and paid for. It seems like every online landlord service wants to have its own tenancy agreement for download by its users.
Probably the most reliable forms are those from the legal publishers (eg Lawpack and Oyez) who will have them checked regularly by solicitors, and from the Landlord Associations (such as the National Landlord Association and the RLA) where they are also checked over regularly and brought up to date if there are any changes in the law.
So far as free agreements are concerned, unless they are provided by a firm of solicitors, I would be careful about using them. They may have been correct when they were drafted, but have they been checked and updated since then? Some will be good but others less so.
The problem about most tenancy agreement providers
The trouble though, about most documents on sale or downloadable for free, is they are only suitable for letting out a whole house or flat on an AST. Although that is the most common type, there are others (as we have seen in this series).
For example in some shared houses, landlords will want to rent out rooms individually with tenants sharing the common parts (e.g. kitchen, sitting room and perhaps bathroom). Some publishers provide agreements for this, for example Lawpack. However many don’t.
But there are other situations. What if:
- you want to add a guarantee
- or pay the bills on behalf of the tenant
- or the tenancy is a common law one?
A few specialist suppliers provide documents for these situations, but not many. This is where my Landlord Law service comes in, and why so many landlords find it invaluable.
The Landlord Law service
I provide forms for all the situations described above, as well as:
- special agreements for tenants with pets
- special agreements for students
- special agreements for landlords and agents using TDS to protect deposits
- agreements suitable for non standard ways of paying rent, and
- with space for you to add your own clauses
I also have versions with different combination’s. For example
- for a room in a shared house, with guarantee clause, where the landlord pays the bills, and
- for a common law agreements with a break clause and space for your own clauses
There are also renewal forms and inventory forms.
You can read more about the tenancy agreements service on Landlord Law here.
Have you found this series useful? Is there anything else you would like me write about on tenancy agreements? Have you used the Landlord Law forms? What other types of tenancy agreement would you like to see provided?
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