Rent Reviews
Overview
PaTMa allows you to schedule regular or one time rent reviews, which generally mean rent increases. Your tenants will not thank you for this, but it's a part of doing business as a landlord.
Keep in mind that PaTMa cannot tell you whether your rent increase is permitted. There are rules and regulations around when you can increase the rent on a property.
You will also need to ensure you are providing the tenant with sufficient notice of the adjustment. The notice period required depends on the type of tenancy.
Regular Rent Reviews
A rent review schedule can be added when editing a tenancy. You only need to add two pieces of information:
- Rental periods between rent reviews - schedule a periodic rent review.
- Rent review base - whether the review base relates to the start of the tenancy or the most recent review.
PaTMa will notify you when rent reviews scheduled in this way are coming up.
Scheduling a Rent Review
Select your tenant, then their tenancy, and open the Actions tab.
Click Add action and choose Rent review. A new action will be created as a checklist. You'll need to carry out these steps yourself, then click the circles to log each one as complete:
- Discuss or negotiate with tenants - tell the tenants how much their rent will be. It's unusual but not unheard of in the UK to negotiate over rent, so ensure that your tenants get to have their say as well.
- Formally notify tenants of new rent - after agreeing the new rent with your tenants, inform them in writing and/or with a new tenancy agreement. Make sure you give them the required amount of notice!
- Create new rent schedule - you can do this part in PaTMa, just click Change rent amount under this step. Add the start date and the amount to be paid (note that you cannot change the rent period in an existing tenancy). then click Save.
PaTMa will update everything else for you as soon as the rent amount is changed.
Change Rent Amount
If you follow the steps above, PaTMa will already have the updated rent and there is no need for you to do anything else.
However, if you agreed on the rent change without logging it in PaTMa, or if your rents automatically increase by an agreed percentage, you may prefer to adjust the amount without using the rent review scheduler.
From the tenancy page, open the Rent tab and click Change rent amount.
As before, just add the start date and the amount to be paid, and then click Save.