Letting a Property: The Complete Checklist for UK Landlords

Letting a property legally in England means clearing a list of around twenty steps before the tenant’s first night — none of them difficult, all of them mandatory, and the expensive mistakes are almost always the missed step, not the hard one. This is the checklist we work through for every new tenancy, in the order that avoids re-doing anything.

It is written for self-managing landlords; if you reach item nine and feel your enthusiasm quietly leaving the room, note that handing this entire list to someone else is literally the full management job description.

Before you advertise

1. Mortgage and insurance consent — confirm your lender permits letting and switch to landlord insurance; a standard home policy will not pay out on a tenanted property.
2. Licensing check — some Doncaster areas and property types (HMOs especially) need a licence from the council. Check before, not after.
3. Energy Performance Certificate — you need a valid EPC at the point of marketing, meeting the current minimum standard for rentals.
4. Gas Safety Certificate (CP12) — annual, by a Gas Safe engineer, required before move-in.
5. Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR) — valid report by a qualified person; see our electrical safety standards guide.
6. Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms — smoke alarm on every storey, CO alarm in any room with a fixed combustion appliance, all working on day one.
7. A realistic rent figure — priced against what comparable local properties actually achieve. A free rental valuation takes ten minutes and stops both under-pricing and a void from over-pricing. Optimism is a fine quality; it is not a pricing strategy.

Finding the tenant

8. Honest marketing — accurate photos and description; misdescription comes back to bite at deposit time.
9. Viewings with records — note who viewed and when.
10. Full referencing — identity, right to rent checks, credit, employer and previous landlord references. Every shortcut here is borrowed trouble.
11. A current-form tenancy agreement — written for periodic tenancies under the current rules, not a template from the fixed-term era, however fondly you remember it (see our guide to assured periodic tenancies).

Money and paperwork

12. Deposit within the cap, protected in a government scheme — within the deadline, with the prescribed information served and proof kept.
13. How to Rent guide — the current version, served and evidenced.
14. Inventory and schedule of condition — photographed, dated, signed. The single most valuable document you will hold if there is ever a dispute; our fair wear and tear guide explains why.
15. First month’s rent and standing order — set up before keys, not after.

Move-in and after

16. Meter readings and key schedule — recorded on the day.
17. Utility and council tax notifications — tell them the tenancy start date.
18. A repairs process the tenant understands — who to contact, and response expectations for emergencies. Boilers traditionally choose 11pm on Christmas Eve; decide now whose phone rings.
19. Diarised renewals — gas annually, EICR and EPC by expiry, alarm tests, and the annual rent review notice.
20. Keep everything — every certificate, email and receipt. Under the current possession rules, your records are your legal position.

What do landlords most often miss?

In our experience: the How to Rent guide (because it feels trivial and is legally anything but), the prescribed deposit information (protecting the money is not the whole job), and alarm compliance on day one. Each is a five-minute task that can undermine a possession claim years later.

Is it worth doing all this yourself?

Plenty of landlords do, and this checklist is enough to do it properly. The honest trade-off is time and liability: the list is not hard, but it never stops, and items 12–20 repeat for every tenancy, forever — item 19 alone is a lifelong relationship with your calendar. If you would rather own the asset and not the admin, talk to us about what managed letting costs — and see our letting agents in Doncaster page for what is included.