Drafting a new Renters’ Rights Act Tenancy Agreement – Part 5

See part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.

The new Renters’ Rights Act compliant assured periodic tenancy agreement is now finalised and available for members to use.

It’s been a long process, but it is now finally up and online for members to use.

Quite a bit of work has been done since my last post:

• I had to check over the tenancy pdf carefully to see if there were any errors
• Check the form instructions to make sure that they were sufficiently helpful for members
• Tweak the form and the template.

Special formatting

My IT and web developer, Gill, has done some nifty formatting. For example:

Some time ago, members asked if the tenancy agreement could have a place at the bottom of every page for tenants to initial and date. We did this. However, other members then asked if it could be removed!

So now members can toggle this feature on or off. Which I am quite pleased about.

The new Key Information section has a subtle grey line down the left-hand side. I am very pleased about this, partly because it was my idea and partly because it makes the key information section stand out.  Although not too aggressively.

The agreement is fairly adaptable.

• Rent can be monthly or weekly,
• It can list bills paid by the landlord,
• There is a choice between a traditional deposit and an alternative scheme, and
• The agreement is also highly suitable for use by a letting agent, as their details can be added.

Going live!

The agreement finally went online for members to use yesterday.

I sent out a mailing to them with a link to the form and also to a SurveyMonkey so they could let me know what they thought.

Although, as I have only had two responses to the survey, I can only conclude that they are happy with it.

The room in a shared house version

As well as a standard document for people renting a whole house or flat, I also like to provide a separate agreement for renting a room in a shared house.

This was quite easy, just a matter or a few changes, so this option went live this morning. This is not used as much as the standard form, but some members prefer to rent this way.

And finally

It’s a huge relief to have finally got this done as the tenancy agreements are an important part of the Landlord Law service.

If you want to find out more about the details, I wrote a post for the Landlord Law news blog here.

Members can find the new agreements online here.

My next task is to develop a separate student landlord version. But I am going to wait a day or so first!

Find links to all posts in this series in this overview.