TENANCY AGREEMENT (AST)

How to get my FREE tenancy agreement.

The FREE AST is available within Property Hawk’s Property Manager software as one of a selection of the forms required by landlords to manage the letting of their investment property.  There are a number of other landlord websites that offer free forms, however, some of these websites may not have used a legally trained lettings expert to have prepared the tenancy agreement. 

The Property Manager  software  automatically fills in the tenancy agreement form with all the tenancy details.  It can then be viewed as a PDF and printed off.  The form remains stored on the landlord’s account to be viewed or reprinted. 

The Property Manager is designed to save landlords time. When it comes to re-letting a rental property all the landlord needs to do is to create a new tenancy.  This process takes a couple of seconds.  A new tenancy form can be generated and a landlord is then able to print off their new tenancy form.

Once a landlord has added their basic details by signing up, these are stored by the Property Manager and are used to prepopulate other forms needed by a landlord to manage their lettings business.  For instance, following the introduction of the TDS if a landlord takes a tenancy deposit they need to also provide their tenant with certain prescribed information relating to how they intend to hold the tenancy deposit.

Where do professional landlords get their buy-to-let insurance from?

Using Property Manager to create your Tenancy Agreement
Creating a tenancy agreement should take no longer than 3 minutes.  We have timed it! Having done it once, it will take landlords even less time next time round.  The other good thing about using the Property Manager is that because it is Internet based you can use it at work……...when the boss isn’t looking!  A great time saving manoeuvre!

This Tenancy Agreement is not Suitable for Scottish Rental Property - Sorry

Our tenancy agreement is not suitable for lettings within Scotland or Northern Ireland because the law governing property rental is different in these countries.

The Landlord
The Property Manager draws the details for the landlord from the user details taken when a landlord signs up to use Property Hawk.  Therefore it is best to use your or your businesses full name.  The correspondence address that you enter must be an address in England or Wales in order to comply with section 148 of the Landlord & Tenant Act 1987.

The Term
The most common term for an Assured Shorthold Tenancy is 6 months.  A fixed term AST offers the advantage to tenants and landlord of stating clearly their intentions.  It is possible to grant a tenancy for longer or shorter periods of time.
There is little advantage to a landlord in letting their property for longer than 6 months other than providing the tenant with a greater amount of certainty.  This may be vital in  persuading them to take your property a head of a competing landlords investment.

The Rent
Landlords should enter the amount of rent payable in the rent field being careful to ensure that they select the correct rental period e.g. monthly, annually.  Remember if a landlord  selects a weekly rent they are required by law to provide the tenant with a rent book.  It’s therefore not advisable for landlords to go for weekly rent just because of the additional administration.  Most landlords now opt for monthly rent paid in advance by standing order or direct debit.

The Deposit
It is normal for a tenant to pay a damage deposit to the landlord for them to fund any repairs or replacement resulting from the tenancy.  Landlords should be aware of the Tenancy Deposit Scheme which requires a landlord to hold any deposit taken in the custodial or one of the approved insurance backed schemes.  Some landlords now choose not to take a deposit at all preferring instead to charge the tenant an admin charge for setting up the tenancy or insuring themselves against potential damages resulting from the tenancy.

Executing the tenancy agreement
The tenancy agreements then have to be signed by the landlord and the tenant.  The landlord should never hand over the keys and / or allow the tenant into occupation before they have a copy of the assured shorthold tenancy with the tenant original signature (i.e. not a faxed or scanned copy.)

Most tenancies no longer need to be witnessed.  This is because only documents that are signed as a deed need witnesses.  Most documents transferring property rights need to be signed as a deed, but section 54(2) of the Law of Property Act 1925 provides that this not necessary for short leases (i.e. for less than 3 years) at a market rent.

Remember if you are taking a tenancy deposit you will need to do this.

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