The Housing Minister, Matthew Pennycook, has made clear that he is seeking to have the Renters’ Rights Bill in place by Summer 2025, or October at the outside. I suspect parts will come into force in the early summer and that October is very much a long-stop date.

One of the key issues for the student market is that tenancies are going to be signed well before the legislation comes into effect but will continue across it. So how will they be affected?

A huge amount is likely to depend on exactly when the tenancy starts and how that stacks up against the commencement date for relevant provisions under the Rights Bill. This is a key point because a lot of student landlords will get signatures on tenancy agreements and then effectively “hold them open” by using the subject to contract formula and so are not truly committing to the tenancy. This is not going to work. To gain any benefit from the transitional provisions landlord will need to have entered into tenancies which have actually started before the relevant provisions of the Rights Bill are commenced. If that doesn’t happen those tenancies will fall fully into the new regime and landlords may find themselves with tenancy agreements that do not meet the new requirements with the risk of associated penalties for this.

Assuming a landlord has started a tenancy before the Rights Bill is commenced (which will mean having a term starting in the early summer and including the summer holiday period) then what will that mean?

All tenancies will become periodic immediately on commencement and s21 will disappear so any fixed term that was in that agreement will be ineffective and landlords will then need to rely on the student possession ground. That can be done on commencement but there is a time limit of one month from the commencement date to do so, so student landlords will need to be alert and act promptly on commencement to preserve their ability to recover properties when they expect to.

Many student landlords will also take substantial amounts of rent in advance. Rent in advance is prohibited by the Rights Bill and rent periods that are greater than one month will be reset to one month on commencement. However, there is an exception relating to rent periods pre-commencement. So student landlords (and anyone else taking rent in advance) should be looking to take that early, before commencement, and then expect future rent payments to drop back to monthly.

The student sector faces some of the greatest upheaval from the Renters’ Rights Bill and this is a topic I expect I will be coming back to!