You or your agent must provide your tenant with a rent book or similar document if you charge rent weekly. It is a criminal offence not to do so.

You must provide your tenants with an address in England or Wales where they can serve documents on you. This does not have to be your home address and can be the address of your agent. Your tenant does not have to pay you rent until the address has been provided. Once you provide the address, any unpaid rent must be paid.

In the majority of cases, the rent paid is the rent that you agree with your tenant. There are certain circumstances where the rent must be increased in specified ways. For example, for Regulated and Assured Tenancies. In deciding what rent to charge, look at what is being charged on similar rented properties in the area. If you want to increase the rent on an Assured Shorthold tenancy, you do not have to serve your tenant with a formal document. A letter setting out the new rent you want to charge would be okay. Make sure the tenant signs the letter confirming that he agrees to it.

If you are owed rent by your tenant, you need to act quickly before the situation gets out of hand. You may be given a number of excuses for rent not being paid, but you need to decide what course of action to take before the situation gets worse. You can serve a notice because of rent arrears, but you cannot seek possession and rent arrears through the accelerated possession procedure. If you want possession and the rent arrears, you will need to seek possession at a court hearing.

The law fully accepts that if a tenant owes a landlord rent, the arrears can be offset against any damages that the landlord may owe the tenant. For example, if you have failed to carry out repairs to the property, your tenant can seek compensation from you and set this off against any rent he owes you. If you are going to bring proceedings for rent arrears, you need to weigh up a number of factors before issuing proceedings. We can advise you on your own situation.