Call of the month: Creating a tenancy checklist

This month, one of our members phoned up, seeking advice from us about the best way to go about setting up a tenancy. This is a common topic we see regularly on the advice line, and we are able to help with this.

In this instance, our member was looking for more of an understanding about the process to go through in an efficient manner to enter into tenancies whilst making sure that the numerous obligations that landlords have placed upon them are all met.

One way that we can help with this is through our interactive start of tenancy checklist, a relatively new webpage we offer that has a checklist of what steps a landlord should have taken at each point in the letting process. The checklist, which is exclusive for NRLA members, is split up into various sections like before marketing the tenancy, viewing stage, prior to and signing the tenancy, tenancy start date.

The checklist can be followed as a guide, but also can be ticked off on the page at each step and printed out and saved in physical copy to be used as evidence or proof later down the line if necessary, so saves our member duplicating this information later on.

We recommended utilising our checklist to assist in deciding on a process that suits our member. All the steps on our checklist are either legal obligations or are considered essential to the lettings process that we would nearly always recommend them where applicable. We advised that you don’t have to follow it in the exact order listed in each step, but doing each step in each section in a way that suits you and recording it in some fashion such as using the checklist is a sensible way to come up with a process.