Renter’s Rights Act: why relationship quality is now a core operating risk for rental living operators

INSIGHT

27 Nov

The Renters’ Rights Act introduces a materially different regulatory environment for renting in England, bringing a wide range of implications for how homes are managed, decisions are documented, and conversations with residents are held. For professional Build-to-Rent and Single-Family Rental operators and investors, success will depend not only on understanding and implementing the legislation itself, but on how consistently onsite teams translate its intent into everyday interactions.

Residents will have greater rights, enhanced procedural protections and clearer escalation pathways. In this environment, the strength of the relationship between landlord and resident -and, in the BTR and SFH sectors, between onsite teams and the households they support - becomes central to performance. A single conversation or the handling of a complaint can now have a direct impact on trust, resident satisfaction, churn and, ultimately, regulatory exposure.

This is where hereSAY, SAY’s mystery shopping service, adds real value. By revealing how real interactions align with or drift from policy intent, hereSAY highlights the execution gap that often emerges between written standards and lived resident experience. It provides operators with the clarity needed to strengthen consistency, confidence and compliance at the frontline where regulations meet real people, and where relationships shape outcomes.

Why resident relationships now have greater strategic weight

The English Private Landlord Survey 2021 found that only around 9 percent of tenancies ended because the landlord asked the tenant to leave or through eviction, with the clear majority ending for other, predominantly tenant-driven reasons.

For Build-to-Rent and Single-Family Rental operators, that pattern is already visible in portfolio data:

Mobility and life changes drive a significant proportion of move-outs.

Residents increasingly benchmark experience, not only price and location, when deciding whether to stay.

The Renters’ Rights Act amplifies these dynamics:

Open-ended tenancies reduce friction to exit when residents are dissatisfied.

Stronger redress mechanisms accelerate escalation when residents feel dismissed or misinformed.

Public review platforms can magnify a single poor interaction into a persistent reputational issue for a building or brand.

In this context, relationship quality is a material driver of:

Renewal performance and income stability.

Avoidable churn and associated re-let and marketing costs.

Dispute frequency and severity.

Online reputation and investor perception at asset and platform level.

Soft skills become operational controls. Listening, clarity, emotional intelligence and reliable follow-through are the mechanisms by which operators reduce complaint volumes, protect occupancy and demonstrate seriousness about the new regime.

This applies equally to fully staffed Build-to-Rent buildings and dispersed Single Family Rental portfolios. In a building with a front-of-house team, the volume of daily interactions creates both more upside and more risk. In a digital or centralised model, fewer touchpoints simply mean each one carries greater significance.

SAY Recommends

Build relationship quality explicitly into key performance indicators for onsite and central teams, such as renewal rates, complaint volumes and review scores.

Align people processes so that recruitment, induction and performance management all emphasise communication and judgment alongside technical competence.

Use resident feedback loops, such as pulse surveys and structured interviews at renewal, to understand which aspects of the relationship most influence stay or leave decisions in your assets.

Key operational shifts under the Renters’ Rights Act

The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 has received Royal Assent. The Government’s implementation roadmap indicates that the core tenancy reforms are expected to apply from 1st May 2026, with the national landlord database and ombudsman following later in the year.

At a headline level, the Act will

Remove Section 21 and move possession fully onto statutory grounds.

Replace most fixed-term assured shorthold tenancies with assured periodic tenancies.

Restrict the use of substantial rent in advance, especially relevant for students and international residents.

Limit rent increases to once per year within a prescribed process and clearer routes for challenge.

Introduce a mandatory national landlord database and redress scheme, increasing external visibility of complaint handling and compliance.

The sections below provide more technical detail for each of these changes.

Abolition of Section 21 and a fully grounds-based possession regime

Section 21 “no fault” possession will be removed. Operators will rely exclusively on statutory grounds for possession, primarily via Section 8, adjudicated through courts or tribunals. The sector is familiar with these grounds, but the risk profile changes when residents know that:

Reasons for possession must be clearly articulated and evidenced.

Any inconsistency between written policy, frontline explanation and actual practice is easier to challenge.

For Build-to-Rent and Single-Family Rental operators, this increases the premium on accurate, plain English explanations of possession grounds and on clean, defensible case records.

Assured periodic tenancies as the default operating model

Fixed-term assured shorthold tenancies will largely disappear in favour of assured periodic tenancies. Residents will be able to leave by giving notice. Landlords will only be able to end tenancies on specific statutory grounds.

This replaces the traditional fixed renewal cycle with a continuous occupancy model. Every month functions as a micro renewal moment driven by satisfaction, perceived value and trust rather than by a contractual end date.

Limits on rent in advance and the need for alternative risk frameworks

Restrictions on rent in advance will significantly alter risk mitigation practices for operators serving students and international residents who have a limited United Kingdom credit footprint. Large upfront payments that previously served as a default comfort mechanism will no longer be a routine tool for new tenancies.

Operators will need to design and implement alternative risk frameworks that may include:

More granular and consistent guarantor policies.

Enhanced referencing approaches.

Clear segmentation of risk appetites by asset or portfolio.

Frontline teams will have to explain these frameworks confidently and consistently to residents and parents who may be anxious and well informed.

Rent increase requirements, challenge mechanisms and renewal conversations

For most assured periodic tenancies, rent increases will be limited to once per year and must follow a prescribed statutory process. Residents will be more confident in assessing uplifts against government guidance and local market data and will have clearer routes to challenge increases they believe exceed local levels.

In practice, this turns rent reviews and renewals into a single, ongoing conversation about value, affordability and rights. Frontline teams therefore need to:

Explain the legal requirements on frequency, notice and process with precision.

Evidence increases with clear local market data rather than generic references to rising costs.

Manage challenges professionally and consistently, and document rationale and communication as part of a defensible trail if an increase is disputed.

National landlord database and mandatory redress as visibility tools

The new national Private Rented Sector database and mandatory redress scheme will introduce systemic visibility of complaint handling and compliance. Internal responses, time frames, tone and decision-making rationales will be open to external scrutiny in a way that many operators have not experienced before.

This effectively promotes complaint handling from an administrative task to a core compliance and reputational control point.

This article is not legal advice. Rental living operators should continue to rely on their own legal advisers, industry bodies and primary United Kingdom government publications for detailed interpretation. The focus here is operational: where and how the new regime will expose gaps between policy design and resident experience.

SAY Recommends

Mapping which parts of your current operating model rely most heavily on fixed terms, rent in advance and informal complaint handling, and flag these as priority redesign areas.

Commission a targeted legal and operational review to translate the new statutory requirements into clear decision trees and frontline guidance rather than long policy documents.

Invest early in training a small group of “Act champions” inside your organisation who can support teams with complex questions as the new model beds in.

Operational pressure points under the new regime

While the Act is broad, its practical impact will be felt most sharply at specific points in the resident journey. These are the interactions to treat as priority risk nodes for training, scripting and measurement.

Students, international residents and the loss of routine rent in advance

For city centre schemes with large student and international resident populations, the restriction on rent in advance removes a familiar and simple risk mitigation lever. If conversations about guarantors, referencing and alternative comfort mechanisms are not handled clearly and consistently, operators risk accusations of inconsistency or indirect discrimination.

Frontline staff will need:

A clear script and policy framework for explaining new expectations.

Confidence in describing the rationale behind those expectations.

Support to manage difficult conversations without improvising informal workarounds that create compliance exposure.

High churn, high mobility schemes

In central and highly connected locations, open-ended tenancies create an opportunity for residents to “trial” buildings, which operators can harness by designing products, pricing and experiences that convert short stays into longer-term commitment, rather than relying on friction or penalties to hold people in place.

This demands:

Honest positioning of who the building is for and what typical stay patterns look like.

Pricing and unit mix that assume some level of mobility.

Service and community strategies that encourage residents who start as short stay to extend based on experience.

Complaint handling and the ombudsman

With a sector-wide ombudsman and database in place, complaint handling processes will be assessed more closely for:

Response quality and tone.

Timeliness and transparency of communication.

Coherence between internal notes and outward-facing explanations.

Clear, empathetic and well-documented complaint handling shows seriousness, strengthens your regulatory and reputational position and remains defensible even when a resident is unhappy with the outcome.

SAY Recommends

Develop structured conversation guides for rent reviews, security of tenure and complaints, and test them in real interactions before scaling.

Segment your portfolio to identify student, international and high churn assets, and prioritise those for enhanced training and oversight.

Build a simple but rigorous complaint logging and review process that captures tone, timing and resolution, and use regular internal reviews to identify themes before they appear in external redress data.

From asset class to service industry: operating model implications

The Renters’ Rights Act accelerates an existing evolution. Build-to-Rent and Single-Family Rental are already moving leading the way in offering service-first homes.

Operators will be judged on:

How coherent and frictionless the end-to-end journey feels from enquiry to move out.

How residents are treated at critical stress points, including repairs, arrears, disputes and complaints.

Training and operating frameworks, therefore, need to combine legal accuracy with communication design. Teams should be equipped to:

Explain resident rights and operator obligations in precise, jargon-free language.

Provide a commercially honest context without sounding defensive.

Balance resident protection with legitimate business needs such as rent collection and building standards.

Digital first models carry the same obligations as staffed buildings. Fewer touchpoints simply require greater discipline in script design, channel choice, response standards and escalation paths.

SAY Recommends

Co-design training with operations, legal and people teams so that legal content is embedded in realistic scenarios your staff recognise from day-to-day work.

Review your channel strategy to ensure digital, telephone and in-person routes all support consistent, high-quality responses on rights, processes and next steps.

Measurement as a compliance and performance tool: how hereSAY helps

Policies, process maps and learning modules establish intent. They do not, on their own, describe reality. Under the Renters’ Rights Act, the gap between intent and execution becomes commercially material.

hereSAY, SAY’s mystery shopping service for rental living, is designed to quantify that gap. Shoppers behave like real prospects or residents across Build-to-Rent buildings and Single-Family Rental portfolios and test the live experience of:

Lead handling and initial advice.

Early tenancy communication.

Responses to complex or sensitive questions.

In the context of the new regime, targeted hereSAY programmes can focus on:

Security of tenure explanations
Are assured periodic tenancies explained in a balanced, accurate way that reflects official guidance and avoids either scaremongering or minimisation of rights?
Rent increase processes and challenge pathways
Do teams articulate how often rent can rise, how uplifts are calculated and what residents can do if they believe an increase is above market, in line with sector guidance?
Handling arrears, anti-social behaviour and difficult conversations
Are discussions about arrears, disruptive neighbours or potential possession managed with procedural accuracy and appropriate signposting, reflecting the grounds-based model?
Consistency for students and international residents
Are requirements and limits on rent in advance explained consistently and fairly, without unrecorded exceptions that could undermine compliance?

For operators, the outputs are not just scores. They provide:

Objective behavioural data on how policy translates into practice.

Insight into tone, clarity and emotional intelligence that traditional performance measures rarely capture.

Concrete direction for targeted training and coaching.

Portfolio-wide benchmarks and early warning indicators ahead of full implementation and heightened resident awareness.

The principle is simple. You cannot improve what you do not measure. Mystery shopping becomes both a performance tool and a compliance safeguard in the Renters’ Rights Act era.

Practical next steps for rental living operators

A structured readiness plan for Build-to-Rent and Single-Family Rental portfolios should:

Map critical touch points
Identify where questions about security, rent, notice and complaints are most likely to surface and where the highest concentration of risk sits across the resident journey.
Audit messaging and artefacts
Review frequently asked questions, email templates, lease summaries and call scripts for accuracy, clarity and tone. Remove contradictions, subjective language and legacy references that do not align with the new statutory requirements.
Upskill your frontline teams
Build capability in communication, emotional intelligence and statutory knowledge with scenario-based training that reflects real resident questions rather than abstract legal summaries.
Establish a baseline through mystery shopping
Run hereSAY programmes across Build-to-Rent and Single-Family Rental assets before resident awareness peaks. Use the findings to create a data led view of your current exposure and strengths.
Use insights to refine operating models
Apply mystery shopping and internal data to refine service standards, escalation frameworks, training priorities and portfolio strategies. Retest periodically to track improvement and evidence seriousness to boards and investors.

The Renters’ Rights Act is a significant regulatory shift. It is also an opportunity for professional rental living operators to demonstrate maturity, transparency and resident centred service. Success will hinge on how frontline teams communicate, how consistently they interpret policy and how effectively operators measure and improve the lived resident experience.

SAY Recommends

Treating readiness for the Renters’ Rights Act as a defined workstream with executive sponsorship, clear milestones and measurable outcomes, not as a generic legal update.
Use a small number of concise dashboards that bring together key indicators such as renewal rates, complaint patterns, mystery shopping results and training completion, so leadership teams can see progress at a glance.
Communicate progress internally and to investors, positioning your approach to the Act as part of a broader commitment to high quality, resident centred operations.

If you want an evidence-based assessment of your operational readiness, SAY’s Rental Living and hereSAY teams can design a programme that strengthens frontline capability and portfolio resilience in advance of full implementation.

William Fritchie