Firstly landlords who take a tenancy deposit should be aware that the Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) requires a landlord to provide their tenant with certain information prescribed by section 213 of the 2004 Housing Act. This so called prescribed information or section 213 Notice is required to inform the tenant of how the deposit is being held and how they get it back at the end of the tenancy.

 

Landlords that are registered users of Property Hawk can download a section 213 Notice for FREE.

The FREE SECTION 213 NOTICE is available within Property Hawk’s Property Manager software as one of a selection of FREE forms required by landlords to manage the letting of their investment property.  This  includes a FREE TENANCY AGREEMENT.  There are a number of other websites that offer free forms, however, some of these websites may not have used a legally trained lettings expert to have prepared them. 

The other significant advantage of using the Property Manager is that once a landlord has registered and added the details of their investment property along with the tenancy; the software then automatically fills in the section 213 Notice form with all the relevant 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. 

When it comes to reletting the investment property to a subsequent tenant all the landlord needs to do is to create a new tenancy.  This process takes a couple of seconds.  A new section 213 Notice form can then be generated and a landlord is then able to print off their new set of prescribed information.

Once a landlord has added their basic details by signing up, these are stored by the Property Manager and can be used to prepopulate a whole range of other forms needed by a landlord to manage their lettings business.

Which set of  prescribed information do I need?

Serving the prescribed information

Once the forms have been printed out the landlord then needs to serve the prescribed information correctly on the tenant.  In order to do this the landlord should print out one copy for themselves and one for each tenant.  These sections should be bundled or stapled together. The form then needs to be signed by all parties to the tenancy agreement.  The landlord has 30 days to serve this prescribed information on the tenant.  Failure to do so would mean that the landlord becomes subject to the same penalties that they would be if they had failed to comply with the TDS in the first place. 

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