Five Challenges following the Renters’ Rights Act 2025

I recently gave a talk for Oxford City Council on the new Renters’ Rights Act 2025 and the challenges it presents for landlords and agents. It was a great opportunity to explore the practical fallout from what is arguably the most significant overhaul of residential letting in a generation. Here are my top five takeaways.

1. Where does it leave international tenants?

Oxford attracts huge numbers of international visitors – students at the university, researchers, and professionals working at the city’s many science parks and hospitals. Many of these people have no UK credit history and no domestic guarantor to call on, which means they often struggle at the referencing stage.

Before the RRA, one pragmatic workaround was paying several months’ rent upfront for a fixed term, effectively sidestepping the referencing process altogether. With the new restrictions on accepting advance rent, that route is closed. These tenants now face a significant barrier to securing housing in the city and there is currently no clear alternative.

2. Does it disadvantage low-income or poor-credit households?

The Act sets out to level the playing field and, for those already in settled accommodation, it largely does. The unintended consequence is that getting into housing has become harder for some of the people it most wants to protect.

With greater security of tenure comes greater landlord caution. Landlords – particularly those seeking rent guarantee insurance – are leaning more heavily on referencing. Tenants on low incomes, variable contracts, or with a patchy credit history are increasingly likely to fall short of the required threshold. In Oxford, where average monthly rents are some of the highest outside London, that bar is particularly high.

3. Can the Tribunal system cope?

The Act allows tenants to challenge a proposed rent increase at the First-tier Tribunal for a fee of just £47. The increase is put on hold until the Tribunal reaches a decision, and it will not be backdated. The intention is to keep rents fair but the incentives created are worth examining closely.

A typical rent increase will exceed £47 per month (in some cases by a significant margin). That makes a Tribunal challenge economically rational for almost any tenant, regardless of whether the proposed increase is genuinely unreasonable. If a substantial proportion of landlords serve increases and most tenants challenge them, the Tribunal system will face a volume of cases it was never designed to handle. The practical result could be rent increases taking many months to come into effect – a form of de facto rent control that the legislation may not have intended. It has never been so important to have a good relationship between agent/landlord and tenant as it is now. Bright Properties pride ourselves on maintaining good relationships with tenants.

4. What about landlords trapped in predatory agent contracts?

Some letting agents include clauses in their contracts stipulating that, for as long as a tenant they placed remains in the property, the agent’s management fee continues to be due. Before the RRA, fixed-term tenancies gave landlords a natural exit point, the end of the term, to switch agents or move to self-management.

With fixed terms abolished and tenants now able to remain in place indefinitely, those exit points are gone. A landlord who wants to change agent or manage the property themselves may find they are contractually locked in for years, or facing a substantial early-termination fee. The lesson here is straightforward: read your agency contract carefully before you sign it. Look for flexibility, reasonable notice periods, and clear exit terms. Bright Properties ensure that landlords have flexibility within their contract and transparency from the offset.

5. Are there new risks for landlords selling up?

Selling a tenanted property has always required careful timing, but the RRA introduces a new complexity. A landlord now needs to serve four months’ notice to recover possession, and most buyers require vacant possession to proceed. The problem is that four months may exceed the typical conveyancing timeline.

In practice, this means a landlord may need to serve notice before a sale has even been agreed, with no guarantee it will complete. If the sale falls through, they face a difficult situation: the new restrictions on using Grounds 1 and 1A mean they cannot immediately re-let the property, leaving them potentially without either a buyer or a tenant for up to twelve months. For anyone with a mortgage to service, that is a serious financial exposure.

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 has made genuine progress in improving security for tenants who are already housed. The challenge is that in doing so it has created a fresh set of problems — around access to housing, tribunal capacity, agent contracts, and the selling process. These may need further legislative attention as the Act beds in. We will be watching closely to see how it evolves and whether the government moves to address the unintended consequences that are already becoming apparent.