Before May 2026, rent setting was flexible and mostly informal. A new fixed term, a negotiation, sometimes just a letter. The Renters' Rights Act replaced all of that with a single structured mechanism: one increase in any twelve month period, served on a formal notice at least two months ahead, with the tenant entitled to challenge the figure at a tribunal.
Most commentary treated this as a restriction. We treat it as a discipline. When you only get one move a year, the quality of that move decides your return, and sloppy habits that used to cost a little now cost the full year.
The mechanics, briefly
The increase is served on the prescribed notice with at least two months before it takes effect. It can happen once in any twelve month period. If the tenant believes the proposed rent exceeds the market, they can refer it to the First-tier Tribunal, which will set the rent it considers the property would achieve. Get the paperwork wrong and the notice fails; get the figure wrong and you invite a referral.
Playbook step one: build the evidence first
The strongest renewal is the one that would survive a tribunal without embarrassment, and the way to achieve that is to price from evidence rather than appetite. Agreed rents on comparable properties nearby, current and recent, adjusted honestly for condition and size. If the figure you want cannot be defended with comparables, it is the wrong figure, and proposing it risks converting a cooperative tenant into a formal dispute.
This is where managed landlords hold a real advantage. A firm letting continuously across an area holds live agreed rent evidence that no individual owner can assemble, which is precisely what we bring to every renewal we run.
Step two: time it deliberately
One move a year means the calendar matters. Serve too early after the last change and the notice is invalid. Drift late and you donate months of the new rent to the old figure. We diarise every tenancy's renewal window and prepare the evidence pack ahead of it, so the notice lands at the earliest proper moment with the strongest possible footing.
Step three: have the conversation like professionals
The formal notice is the mechanism, not the relationship. A renewal handled well starts with communication: the evidence shared, the reasoning explained, the tenant treated as a party to an agreement rather than a target. Most tenants accept a fair, documented figure without friction, because fair and documented is obvious when you see it. The tribunal route exists for the other kind of proposal.
Tone earns money here. A respected tenant renews and stays, and retention is worth more than any single increase. The renewal that wins the year is the one that captures the market and keeps the tenant, and those two outcomes are not in tension when the figure is honest.
Step four: mind the traps
Three failures recur. Wrong form or short notice, which voids the attempt and can burn months. Rent set by anger rather than evidence, which invites referral and delay. And the quiet failure, the most expensive of all: no renewal at all, year after year, while the tenancy drifts further below the market. Under the new rules that drift compounds, because recovering it later still happens one bounded step at a time.
What this means in practice
The legal frame, in plain English
Since May 2026, mid tenancy rent increases in England run through one gate: the statutory notice process. You propose a new rent in writing on the prescribed form, giving at least two months' notice, and you can do it no more than once in any twelve month period. The tenant can accept, negotiate, or refer the proposed rent to the First-tier Tribunal, which will set a market rent if asked. Clauses that used to do this work inside fixed term agreements no longer apply, because those fixed terms no longer exist for lettings to individuals.
Two practical consequences follow. First, the annual increase is now a scarce event: you get one bite in twelve months, so the number you propose deserves real preparation rather than a guess. Second, the process rewards landlords whose paperwork is immaculate and whose figure is defensible, because a tribunal referral tests both. None of this makes repricing impossible. It makes casual repricing expensive, which is a different thing.
Evidence beats instinct
The single biggest upgrade most landlords can make to their renewal outcome is to stop pricing from feel and start pricing from a file. Before we propose any figure, we assemble the comparables: what has actually let nearby in recent months, at what size and condition, and how long each listing took to go. Achieved rents, not asking rents, because the gap between the two is precisely what a tribunal would notice.
The file does two jobs. It sets the number, and it sells the number. A tenant who receives a proposed increase alongside three genuinely comparable lettings is looking at evidence, not opinion. Most people respond to that the way you would hope: they check it, they see it is real, and the conversation becomes about timing and logistics rather than fairness. The renewals that turn sour are almost always the ones where the number arrived naked.
The renewal conversation, run properly
Timing first: the conversation should open well before any notice is served, ideally three to four months ahead of the date you have in mind. Serving a statutory notice cold, as the opening move, converts a negotiation into a confrontation and invites a referral you did not need.
The shape of the conversation is simple. Here is where the market sits, here is the evidence, here is the figure we propose from the date the notice would take effect, and here is what staying looks like: no moving costs, no agency referencing gauntlet, no upheaval for children or commutes, a landlord who fixes things. For a good tenant, staying at a fair market adjusted rent is nearly always the best deal available to them, and it is entirely legitimate to say so warmly and mean it.
Where the tenant pushes back, listen for information rather than just resistance. A tenant who says the bathroom lets the property down may be right, and a modest commitment on works alongside the increase often lands the figure and improves the asset in one move. Where the gap cannot be closed, the statutory process exists, and because your figure was built from evidence, it will survive scrutiny if it comes to that.
When to hold the rent flat on purpose
Not every tenancy should be repriced every year, and treating the annual increase as automatic is how good tenants become ex tenants. The cases for holding are concrete. A tenant who pays on the day, reports problems early and keeps the property well is generating value that does not appear on the rent line, and replacing them carries real cost: an empty period, re-letting effort, and the risk that their successor is worse. Where the achievable increase is small, say £40 on £1,900, the expected cost of pushing for it can exceed the gain.
The discipline is to make holding a decision rather than a default. Know what the market figure is, know the gap, and choose to leave the gap open because the tenancy is worth more than the difference. Write that down, because next year's decision starts from this year's file.
Tribunal risk, without the drama
Landlords sometimes treat the tribunal as a bogeyman. It is better understood as a discipline. The tribunal's job, when asked, is to determine the open market rent for the property; it can set the rent at, below, or occasionally above the figure proposed. If your proposal was built from genuine comparables, a referral is an inconvenience rather than a danger: the evidence that produced your number is the same evidence the panel weighs.
The proposals that fare badly are the ambitious ones: figures set from hope, from a neighbour's asking price, or from what the mortgage now costs. Affordability of your finance is not evidence of market rent, and the panel will not treat it as such. Price from the market and the process holds no terrors; price from need and it might.
A worked example: chasing £75 and losing £1,400
A hypothetical, with round numbers. A flat lets at £1,850; the evidence supports £1,925. The landlord instead proposes £2,050, the tenant declines, relations sour, and the tenant serves their two months' notice and leaves. The re-let takes three weeks at the achievable £1,925, so the empty period alone costs roughly £1,280 at that rent, before a penny of re-letting effort, and the eventual rent is exactly what the evidence supported in the first place. The pursuit of an extra £125 a month above the evidence produced a four figure cost and a lost tenant.
Run the same case with the evidence led figure and both outcomes beat it: the tenant stays at £1,925, or leaves anyway and the re-let happens at the same figure with a plan already in motion. The lesson is not that increases are dangerous; it is that unevidenced increases are.
The renewal calendar we run
For managed landlords, none of this relies on remembering. Every tenancy sits on a calendar: comparables refreshed and the strategy set at month nine of each tenancy year, the conversation opened around month ten, agreement or notice by month eleven, and the new figure effective cleanly on the anniversary. Renewals handled this way are quiet, which is the entire aim. The rent moves with the market, the tenant is treated like an adult, the paperwork would survive a tribunal, and nobody's Sunday is spent drafting a difficult letter.
If your tenancies have drifted below market because the conversation felt awkward, that drift is recoverable, but it is recovered one compliant notice at a time, once a year. The sooner the calendar starts, the sooner the figures catch up.
Renewals on company lets and fixed agreements
Everything above concerns lettings to individuals, because that is where the statutory machinery now lives. Where the tenant is a company, the renewal is whatever the contract says it is: rent review clauses remain lawful and enforceable, terms can be renegotiated at expiry like any commercial arrangement, and the once-a-year rule does not constrain the parties. That freedom is one of the quieter attractions of the corporate route for landlords who found the new residential process heavy. On fixed guaranteed agreements, the renewal question arrives at the end of the term rather than annually: the property comes back, the market is re-evidenced, and a fresh term is offered at a figure reflecting where rents and demand now sit. Landlords approaching the end of a fixed term should open that conversation about three months out, which is when we open it with ours.
The renewal file, itemised
For completeness, here is what sits in a renewal file that would survive scrutiny. The comparables: at least three genuinely similar recent lettings with dates and achieved rents. The property's own record: current rent, when it last moved, and the tenancy's payment history. The condition notes: anything the tenant has raised that bears on value, with what was done about it. The proposal itself: the figure, the effective date, and the notice that will carry it if agreement is not reached informally. And the correspondence: every offer and reply, dated. Five items, one folder, perhaps an hour of work when the evidence is to hand, and the difference between a renewal that is a conversation and a renewal that is a quarrel. Managed landlords receive this file built; the only decision left is the one that is properly theirs, which is the figure to propose.
And a closing thought on tone, because it decides more renewals than arithmetic does. The landlords whose rents track the market year after year are almost never the ones who write the sternest letters; they are the ones whose tenants feel dealt with straight. Evidence shared openly, notice given properly, repairs honoured promptly: do those three things and the annual conversation stays what it should be, a routine adjustment between people who both got what they were promised.
Renewals are now a professional discipline: evidence assembled, calendar managed, notices exact, conversations handled properly. It is precisely the kind of work systems do better than memory, and it is built into every tenancy Morgan Prescott manages. If your rents have not moved since the Act came in, or you are not certain your last notice was valid, a free appraisal will tell you where you stand and what the next correct move is.