Student lets: a landlord guide
22 August 2026 · AgentCheck Editorial · 7 min read
Part of our UK Landlord Legal Guide
Student letting in England changed on 1 May 2026. Fixed terms and section 21 have gone, so a tenancy no longer ends itself in the summer. Landlords of student HMOs can use ground 4A to recover possession between 1 June and 30 September, but only where written prior notice was given before the tenancy was agreed and four months’ notice is served. One and two-bedroom student lets usually fall outside the ground, and there is no equivalent for them.
The student cycle used to run itself. You signed a twelve-month fixed term in November, the term expired in the summer, and the next group moved in behind it. The Renters’ Rights Act took that structure apart on 1 May 2026, and the replacement only works for some student properties.
If you let to students in England, this is the shape of the new year.
What changed
Assured shorthold tenancies and fixed terms are abolished. Every assured tenancy is periodic. Tenants can serve notice and leave, and section 21 no longer exists, so you cannot end a tenancy simply because a date has passed. Possession has to come from a ground in the Housing Act 1988, served by section 8 notice. Our guide to ending a tenancy under the Act covers the mechanics.
For student landlords the practical effect is that the summer handover is no longer automatic. It has to be produced in advance, by paperwork, and the deadlines are real.
Ground 4A: the student possession ground
Ground 4A was written for exactly this problem. It is a mandatory ground, so where the conditions are met the court has to grant possession. All of the following must be true:
- the tenancy is an assured tenancy
- the property is a house in multiple occupation
- the tenancy was entered into less than six months before the tenants were entitled to move in
- all the tenants are students, or you reasonably believe they will become students during the tenancy
- you intend to re-let the property to another group of students
- possession is required between 1 June and 30 September
- you gave the required prior notice in writing
- you serve the correct notice period
Miss any one of them and the ground is not available for that tenancy. There is no partial credit.
Prior notice
You have to tell the tenants in writing, before the tenancy is entered into, that you may use ground 4A because you intend to let to another group of students. Doing it afterwards does not work. The practical place for it is a clause in the tenancy agreement itself, which is a good reason to use an agreement drafted for student lets rather than adapting a general one.
Notice period
In most cases at least four months’ notice is required, and the notice has to expire inside the 1 June to 30 September window. Both conditions apply together, so the arithmetic runs backwards from when you want the property empty. If you want possession at the end of June, the notice needs to go out by the end of February. Leave it too late and the notice expires outside the window, which wastes the whole cycle.
A one-off transitional arrangement let student landlords serve two months’ notice, but only for notices served between 1 May and 31 July 2026. That window closed on 31 July. Four months is now the standard.
The six-month booking rule
Ground 4A only applies where the tenancy was entered into less than six months before the tenants were entitled to move in. That undoes the early-signing habit. Signing in October for a September move-in loses you the ground entirely.
So the letting season has to move later. For a September start, the agreement cannot be entered into before roughly March. Marketing earlier is fine. Committing to the agreement earlier is what costs you.
If your property is not an HMO
This is the gap in the ground, and it is a wide one. A house in multiple occupation broadly means at least three people using the property as their main home, at least two of whom are unrelated. One and two-bedroom student flats, and lets to a couple, generally will not meet that test, so ground 4A is not available.
There is no student-specific alternative for those properties. They are periodic like any other tenancy, and unless another ground applies, such as selling, moving in yourself, serious rent arrears or breach of tenancy, it is largely the tenant’s decision when to leave. The section 8 grounds are worth reading properly before assuming you have one to hand. Note that the grounds for selling and for moving in yourself cannot be used in the first twelve months of a tenancy, so they are not a workaround for the academic year.
If you own smaller student units, plan on the basis that the property may not be free for the start of the academic year, and do not commit it to a new group until the current one has actually gone. Double-letting a property you cannot deliver is the expensive version of this mistake.
Purpose-built student accommodation
Purpose-built student accommodation usually sits outside all of this, because those lets are normally non-assured and so fall outside the Act. To qualify, the accommodation has to be owned or managed by someone signed up to and following a recognised code of practice. The code for larger developments can only be applied for where at least fifteen students live in the same building, so an ordinary student house cannot get there.
Money: what you can and cannot ask for
Two limits catch student landlords in particular.
Rent in advance. You cannot ask for, encourage or accept rent before the tenancy agreement has been signed. Once it is signed and before the tenant moves in, you can require up to one month’s rent, or up to 28 days where the rental period is shorter. A term demanding more than that has no effect. A tenant can choose to pay more voluntarily, but you cannot make it a condition of the let. The year-up-front arrangement that some landlords used for international students no longer works.
Deposits. The Tenant Fees Act cap applies: five weeks’ rent where the annual rent is under £50,000, six weeks where it is £50,000 or more. A holding deposit is capped at one week’s rent. The deposit has to be protected in a government-approved scheme within 30 days, with the prescribed information served in the same period. On a joint student tenancy that means every named tenant, not just the one whose bank account the money came from.
Get this wrong and it now costs you possession as well as money. Since 1 May 2026 a landlord cannot obtain a possession order on a section 8 ground unless the deposit is protected and the prescribed information has been served before the notice is issued. That includes ground 4A. Protecting late is possible, but it has to be sorted before the notice goes out.
Guarantors are still permitted, and for student groups they now do most of the work that rent in advance used to.
Rent increases
Rent review clauses are void. An increase goes through a single section 13 notice once a year, served on Form 4A, and the tenant can challenge it at the First-tier Tribunal. In practice the rent you set at the start of a student tenancy is the rent for that academic year, so set it deliberately rather than optimistically. Our guide to rent increases under the Act explains the process, and if you are pricing a room share from scratch, how to set rent covers the comparison work.
Licensing has not gone away
Most student houses are HMOs, and an HMO of five or more people from two or more households needs a mandatory licence anywhere in England. Councils in university towns often run additional licensing that catches three and four person shares as well. Check before you advertise, not after you have taken holding deposits. Our HMO licensing guide sets out which scheme applies where.
What to do this year
- Use a student tenancy agreement containing the ground 4A prior notice clause, and keep evidence it was given before the agreement was entered into.
- Move your letting season so agreements are entered into less than six months before move-in.
- Work notice dates backwards from the June to September window and diarise the service date, not the expiry date.
- Treat one and two-bed units as a separate category with no possession ground, and let them accordingly.
- Review your rent-in-advance and deposit handling before the next round of offers goes out.
Student portfolios take more managing than they used to, and the paperwork now carries hard deadlines. If you are weighing up handing it to someone else, you can compare local letting agents, their fees and their HMO experience on AgentCheck.
This article is general information about the law in England, not legal advice. If possession or a licence is at stake, take advice on your own circumstances.
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