Since 1 May 2026, a landlord or agent in England can require a maximum of one month’s rent in advance, and cannot accept any rent at all before the tenancy agreement has been signed by both parties. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 makes any clause requiring more than one month’s rent up front unenforceable, and taking a prohibited pre-tenancy payment is a breach that attracts a civil penalty from the local authority. Asking a tenant for six months up front — long the standard workaround for weak referencing — is no longer available.
What the cap actually covers
Two separate restrictions are at work, and it helps to keep them apart.
Before signing. You must not accept rent before the agreement is entered into. A holding deposit — capped at one week’s rent, as before — is still permitted and can be applied towards the first month’s rent once the tenancy goes ahead. The security deposit is unchanged and still capped and protected in the normal way.
After signing, before move-in. Once the agreement is signed, you can collect the first rent period — the initial rent — before the tenant takes occupation. That is the one month.
During the tenancy. A tenant can voluntarily choose to pay ahead if they want to. What you cannot do is require it, make it a condition, or write it into the agreement. The distinction between “the tenant offered” and “the landlord asked” is the whole of it, and in a dispute the burden of showing which happened will not fall on the tenant.
Local authorities, and guarantors acting on their behalf, are exempt from the restriction.
Why this is causing real problems
Rent in advance was the mechanism that let landlords say yes to applicants who could not pass a standard affordability check. Self-employed applicants without two years of accounts. People relocating from overseas with no UK credit history. Students without a UK-based earner behind them. Applicants on variable or benefit income. For all of those, “six months up front” was the bridge.
That bridge is gone, and the alternative — insisting on a UK homeowner guarantor — excludes many of the same people. The predictable consequence is that landlords tighten affordability rules instead, and applicants who would previously have been accepted with money up front are now simply declined.
There is a trap in that. Setting affordability thresholds so high that benefit income is effectively excluded is unlawful discrimination, carrying a civil penalty of up to £7,000, and refusing an applicant because they have children is the same. A blanket rule that has the effect of screening out benefit claimants will not be saved by the fact that it was worded neutrally.
What to do instead
Reference properly rather than reaching for money up front. Most of what advance rent was covering was uncertainty, and uncertainty responds to better information — employer confirmation, bank statements, previous landlord references, and where relevant an accountant’s letter. How to reference a tenant thoroughly is the first place to look.
Use a guarantor where one is genuinely available, but understand what you can and cannot require. Guarantor rules have changed too.
Consider rent guarantee insurance. For a landlord whose real concern is arrears rather than the tenant’s character, insurance transfers the risk you were previously self-insuring with a lump sum. It is worth reading the exclusions carefully — most policies require referencing to a specified standard, which brings you back to the point above. What standard landlord cover does and does not include.
Price the void, not the risk. A month standing empty in Guildford costs more than most arrears claims ever will. The arithmetic on void periods tends to change how people think about a marginal applicant.
Getting the advert right
The advance rent cap sits alongside the bidding ban, and they are enforced together. You must state a rent in the advertisement. You cannot invite offers above it, and you cannot accept one. Failing to specify the proposed rent attracts a penalty of around £3,000; inviting offers above the advertised figure, around £4,000. Both are assessed per advert, not per tenancy.
In practice this means the asking rent has to be the number you actually want, decided before the property goes live rather than discovered through competitive bidding. Where Guildford rents sit this year is now a pricing input rather than a starting point for negotiation.
The bigger picture
Advance rent, bidding, discrimination and referencing are four parts of one change: the Act moves the whole selection process towards documented, defensible decisions made before the property is advertised. The rest of what changed on 1 May is in our guide to the Renters’ Rights Act, and the enforcement side is in the penalty schedule.
General information, not legal advice. Property Lounge, Guildford.
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