What does a balanced tenancy agreement actually look like?

In my opinion, these are exactly the right questions to be asking, even if it makes a few people uncomfortable.

The reality is that when a tenant stops behaving in a tenant-like manner, the practical options available to landlords are surprisingly limited. It is not about theory or what “should” happen, it is about what can actually be done in the real world when things drift.

In many cases, the only route that remains workable is to seek possession on the basis of selling. That is a pretty extreme step when you think about it, particularly where the underlying issue is behavioural rather than structural. You are effectively forced into unwinding part of your business just to regain control of the situation, and even then, you are restricted from re-letting for 12 months.

That does not feel like a balanced outcome. It feels like a system where the consequences of breach disproportionately sit with one party, regardless of the cause.

I agree with your underlying points. This is not about penalties for the sake of it; it is about whether agreements still operate as agreements. At the moment, when things go wrong, the path back to control can be slow, uncertain, and commercially damaging.

Clarity at the outset would not remove all issues, but it might at least reduce the number of situations where landlords feel they have no realistic options left.

I suspect many landlords will recognise that position, even if it is not always openly discussed.

Mark, are you by any chance a ‘concerned landlord’? 🙂

Reply to the comment left by Ryan Stevens at 02/04/2026 – 17:16
I have been one of those for well over a decade, which possibly goes some way to explaining why I’m bald 😂

Reply to the comment left by Mark Alexander – Founder of Property118 at 02/04/2026 – 17:39
Likewise!!

The property industry still keeps missing the point because it insists on answering this with rational argument and textbook economics. That is not what this is. This is an ideological push by a vote-chasing socialist Labour government.

There are people in the Labour movement who look at measures such as the new inheritance tax attack on farmers and see it as “the land returning to the state”. That tells you everything. This is not about creating a healthy market. It is about control. It is about building a client electorate that depends on the state, while leaving assets in private hands only where absolutely necessary.

Step by step, regulation and taxation have stripped landlords of the real benefits of ownership while leaving them with the pain, the cost, the liability and the risk. Landlords are left carrying the financial risk and the occupancy risk as little more than notional owners, while tenants gain through regulation and the state feeds through taxation. Government does not need to win the argument because, in its eyes, the end game is simple: transfer legal ownership to the state and call it progress.

That is how, overnight, they could recreate the council estates of the past and claim, by pure political fudge, that they have delivered 1.5 million new homes. Not new homes in any real sense. Just newly claimed council homes dressed up as delivery.

The confiscation has already started. Regulation and taxation have already hammered landlord values. Once those lower values are embedded across the market, the final transfer becomes frighteningly easy. At that point it is little more than the press of a button on an HM Land Registry keyboard.

Government will not rush to do that while landlords are still willing to keep going as unpaid housing officers, crushed under endless rules, endless costs and endless interference. As long as landlords keep absorbing the punishment and still provide the housing, ministers can keep pretending the system works.

What we are really heading towards is a two-tier PRS. At the top end, wealthy tenants will rent prestige properties at high rents. They will not need protecting by regulation because if a landlord fails them, they will simply walk and take their money elsewhere. In that tier, landlords will compete properly by offering the best homes and the best service.

For everyone else, it will be very different. In a broken, low-growth, low-productivity economy, neither tenants nor government can afford true open market rents. So instead of admitting that failure honestly, government will do what it always does: step in, distort the market, transfer value, punish owners and pretend that coercion is compassion.

No industry can survive this level of regulatory assault and tax attack forever. And no government pursuing this sort of agenda is going to change course because somebody politely explains supply and demand over coffee. It will only change when it faces real opposition and a real withdrawal of services.

But instead of fighting, too many supposed industry voices have spent years cosying up to housing ministers of every party, flattering them, humouring them and mistaking warm words for support. All the while, those same ministers have been giving nothing but lip service as the industry is slowly strangled in plain sight.

P.S. And why do you think the new fining structure is so punitive? Because if government decides to move towards the effective nationalisation of the PRS, it will do so: (a) at values depressed by the impact of new regulation and taxation; and (b) after any punitive fines have been deducted on completion.

P.P.S. A government valuer turns up, as under Right to Buy, puts a figure on the property, notes every alleged regulatory breach, and the fines come straight off the top. If the landlord wants to fight, it is years in tribunals. In the meantime, the choice is stark: carry on as an unpaid housing officer, or lose the property at a government-fixed value.

Orwell saw the mentality behind it in 1984:

“We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will.”

That is the game: squeeze, punish, devalue, take. The industry needs to wake up, stop pleading and start fighting.

In any other scenario a contract is legal and binding in how it is written. With tenancy agreements it is how the judge perceives the situation presented before him/her on the day and how lenient he feels towards the tenant. Frequent underpayment and laxity in paying rent, property unkempt and uncared for are at the discretion of the judge if it is decided that an eviction order should or shouldnt be served. It will be interesting to know the numbers which are upheld when the new regulations kick in. But I bet it’ll be heavily in the tenants favour, and then what does the landlord do, having gone to court and lost?
There are currently 50 week delays in getting to a hearing during which time probably no rent is received, where is the balance there?
Having to sell the house to regain possession is an oxymoron in itself. It’s time we landlords woke up and smelt the coffee. The new tenancy rules are such that we have to take the hit of housing people at our expense because the government can’t afford to. I would suggest all landlords with suspect tenants serve a section 21 now while there is still time. Its not rocket science to foresee any problem tenants now will be twice the trouble after 1st May.

“…would it be unreasonable for agreements to include predefined charges for certain types of breach, such as rent being consistently late beyond an agreed grace period?”

I thought most did. Landlords are allowed to charge daily interest on late payment. If arrears persist landlords can serve a section 8 notice under grounds 10 and 11.

“…reporting water leaks, cleaning the windows, or keeping the property and gardens clean and tidy. ”

Landlords can include these requirements in their tenancy agreements and if theyre breached deposit deductions can be made or the tenant sued for costs.

“where access is refused without good reason, or where a tenancy ends earlier than agreed, should the financial implications be clearer at the point the agreement is signed?”

Again, most tenancy agreements that Ive seen do cover what will happen if the tenant asks to end the agreement early. They also require the tenant to allow access for inspections etc and if this is breached, the landlord can again sue for any costs incurred.

“Would it make sense to think about resilience in a more structured way? For example, whether a tenant has a financial buffer, or whether some form of insurance-backed protection might sit alongside the agreement.”

Like asking to see bank statements during referencing and requiring a guarantor for example?

I agree that the balance of risk has shifted too far towards the landlord, especially post RRA, and even some of the above can be serious issues in extremis, but on the whole I think there are bigger problems for landlords to be concerned about and theyre caused by the Government, not the tenant.

Reply to the comment left by DPT at 03/04/2026 – 11:58
The courts are aware of the imbalance but deliberately maintain it:

Policy reasons include:

• Housing is treated as a social necessity, not a pure commercial contract
• Tenants are viewed as the vulnerable party
• Courts avoid creating deterrent liability that could restrict access to housing

This policy stance underpins statutes such as:

• Housing Act 1988
• Landlord and Tenant Act 1985