Rent arrears chasing, and the rules that now sit behind it

The arithmetic half #

Before anybody can chase anything, somebody has to know that a payment is short. That means matching receipts to tenancies, which sounds trivial and is not: payments arrive with a reference that is a surname, or a flat number, or nothing.

Part payments have to be applied. Standing orders move by a day around weekends and bank holidays. A tenant who pays weekly produces four or five events a month instead of one, and a joint tenancy can produce three transfers that only make sense together.

All of that is arithmetic against a ledger, on a schedule, producing the same shape of answer every time. It is the most rule driven work in the agency, and in a lot of small agencies it is done by a person opening a bank feed every morning.

The conversation half #

The chase itself has a shape that most agencies follow.

1. A light reminder

2. A firmer one

3. A phone call

4. A letter to the guarantor

5. A conversation with the landlord about what happens next

Where it goes wrong is timing. A first contact on day two, when the tenant has simply forgotten, is an easy exchange. The same contact on day twenty, when the tenant is embarrassed and avoidant, is a hard one, and it takes several attempts.

What the rules now say #

Since the new tenancy system began on 1 May 2026, two things matter for arrears work.

First, the mandatory rent arrears possession threshold rose from 2 to 3 months' arrears, or 13 weeks where rent is paid weekly or fortnightly, and the notice period rose from 2 weeks to 4 weeks. MHCLG's stated reasoning is that it gives tenants more time to repay while protecting landlords from unsustainable costs.

The practical effect on an agency is a longer runway, and a stronger reason to make contact early, because arrears that reach three months took three months of somebody not acting.

Second, rent increases now run on a single annual route: once per year to the market rate, by section 13 notice, with at least two months' notice, and challengeable at the First-tier Tribunal, which cannot set a rent above the amount the landlord proposed and cannot backdate it.

That converts rent reviews from an ad hoc negotiation into a diary item with a fixed notice period, which makes it the same kind of work as everything in the compliance diary.

Which parts run on rules #

Why the record matters more than it used to #

Arrears cases are the ones most likely to be examined later, by a landlord, a tribunal or a redress scheme.

A chase history spread across a mailbox, a CRM note and somebody's memory is not a record.

The re-keying problem shows up here too: in a survey reported on 3 September 2026, 61 per cent of lettings professionals said staff transfer, re-enter or duplicate information between systems during a tenancy. Arrears is where that costs most, because the sequence and the dates are the whole point.

What to look at first #

Measure one number for the last three months: the average number of days between a payment being short and the first contact with the tenant. If it is more than two or three days, the problem is detection, not chasing, and detection is arithmetic. Then look at whether every contact is recorded in one place with a date. Those two things fix more arrears cases than any change to the letter template.

Landlord reporting sits next to this work, and so does property inspections, which is where arrears cases often turn into property conditions. The free tools will put an hours figure on the chase.