Tenant referencing is getting tougher but are we going too far?

Tenant referencing is getting tougher under the Renters’ Rights Act, and I can understand why.

One of the biggest things I hear from landlords now is fairly simple: if a tenancy goes wrong, getting the property back is no longer as straightforward as it once was.

Since 1st May, Section 21 is gone, so landlords need a valid ground for possession and have to follow the proper process. That understandably changes how people look at risk before they hand over the keys. If getting tenant selection wrong carries more consequences, the natural response is to be more careful about who you accept.

I run Amhurst Lettings with my mum, Debbie. We manage residential properties across Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. We came into lettings from a family background in residential construction, so we tend to look at management through a risk lens as well as a service one.

Good referencing has always mattered, but there’s a difference between being thorough and simply making the criteria harder for everyone.

What does stricter referencing actually look like?

In practice, landlords and agents get more cautious on affordability, employment history, credit, previous landlord references and how stable the application looks overall.

On paper, that sounds fair, but the problem starts when referencing becomes a blunt pass or fail, with almost no room for context. Someone who has just changed jobs might have a short employment history but solid income and a strong career. A self-employed applicant may not have tidy payslips. Someone who has recently moved to the UK, or who has never needed much credit, can have a thin file without ever having been in financial trouble.

If our answer to higher landlord risk is to keep narrowing who counts as “acceptable”, we will end up turning away perfectly good people because they don’t fit a standard box. That doesn’t mean lowering standards

I’m not arguing for being less careful. If anything, selection matters more now. A landlord needs confidence that the person moving in can reasonably afford the rent, look after the
home and meet their obligations. That should mean better due diligence and not harsher blanket rules.

There is a difference between an applicant who cannot show the rent is affordable, and one whose circumstances just need a bit more digging. Where something doesn’t fit the usual criteria, I would rather understand why. Is there a sensible explanation for the employment gap? Can the self-employed applicant show income another way? Is there a suitable guarantor? Does their previous tenancy history stack up? Does the whole application tell a consistent story?

None of that means ignoring genuine warning signs. It just means taking a fuller picture before you decide.

Communication matters too: What often frustrates applicants isn’t being asked for information; it’s being asked without knowing why, or being rejected with no idea which part of the application caused the problem.

If people know from the start what affordability evidence you need, what referencing involves, and when a guarantor might be required, they can decide whether to apply, which also saves landlords and agents a lot of wasted time.

We need to be careful what problem we’re solving.

The Renters’ Rights reforms have changed the risk calculation because Section 21 has gone, possession rests on the right grounds, and landlords want fewer serious problems during a tenancy. Tighter scrutiny at the application stage is hardly surprising.

However, if the sector’s response is simply to ratchet up every affordability ratio, demand a perfect credit history and reject anything slightly outside the norm, I think we create another problem.

Good tenants don’t always have perfect paperwork, so the better approach, in my view, is robust referencing with common sense: set clear standards, verify what applicants tell you, dig into inconsistencies, and look at the whole application rather than one number on a report.

That protects landlords without treating every applicant who falls outside a standard profile as a risk that is not worth taking.

Author bio: Becky Clarke is co-founder and director of Amhurst Lettings, an independent mother-and-daughter letting agency managing residential property across Nottinghamshire
and Leicestershire.