Is This Landlord Legit? The Checks Worth Doing
There are two different worries hiding in this question, and they need different checks.
The first is whether the property and the person exist at all, which is fraud. The second, and much more common, is whether a real landlord letting a real flat is actually allowed to, and doing it properly. Plenty of tenancies are perfectly genuine and entirely non-compliant.
This covers the second. For the fraud version, how to avoid rental scams deals with the money-before-keys patterns.
The short version
- Ask for the gas safety certificate and the EPC. A legitimate landlord has both to hand.
- Check the licensing register if it's an HMO or in a licensed area. Free, on the council's site.
- Check the agent's redress scheme membership. Legally required, and free to verify.
- A PRS Database is coming, which will make most of this a single lookup.
Are they entitled to let it?
Start here, because everything else follows from it.
Do they own it? A Land Registry title check costs £3 and takes minutes. It gives you the registered owner. If the name doesn't match the person you're dealing with, ask why. There are legitimate answers, a company, a trust, a family arrangement, and they should be able to explain it without irritation.
If they're not the owner, what's the arrangement? A managing agent should say who they act for. Someone subletting needs their own landlord's permission, and without it your position is much weaker than you think.
Is the property leasehold with restrictions? Some head leases prohibit subletting entirely, which can put the whole tenancy at risk through no fault of yours.
Beware "rent to rent". A company takes a property from an owner and sublets rooms. Sometimes above board, often not, and it's a common route to unlicensed HMOs. Ask directly whether the person letting to you owns the property.
The compliance checks, in about fifteen minutes
Ask for all of these before signing. A good landlord produces them immediately. Hesitation is the signal.
- Gas safety certificate, dated within the last twelve months, from a Gas Safe registered engineer. You can verify the engineer's registration number on the Gas Safe Register website. Not having one is a criminal matter, not an oversight.
- Electrical Installation Condition Report, within five years, and marked satisfactory.
- EPC, which you can look up free on the government's register using the postcode. Also tells you what it will cost to heat.
- Written information about the key terms of the tenancy, which must be given before the tenancy is agreed. This replaced the How to Rent guide, withdrawn on 1 May 2026. What replaced it.
- Deposit protection, within 30 days, in one of the three schemes, plus prescribed information. All three schemes let you check your deposit free.
- Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms present and working on day one.
A landlord failing several of these isn't necessarily a criminal. They are telling you how the next two years will go when the boiler breaks.
Licensing
The check almost nobody does, and it's free.
Mandatory HMO licensing applies to properties with five or more people from two or more households sharing facilities. Additional and selective licensing schemes are set by individual councils and can cover entire streets or wards, including ordinary single-family lets.
Search your council's website for "licensing register" or "public register" and look up the address. If it should be licensed and isn't, that's an offence.
Why this matters beyond principle: letting an unlicensed licensable property is one of the offences that supports a rent repayment order, where the First-tier Tribunal can order up to twelve months' rent repaid to you. Your rights in a shared house.
If there's an agent
Three legal requirements, all verifiable free in a couple of minutes.
- Redress scheme membership is compulsory. Check the member directory on The Property Ombudsman or the Property Redress Scheme website. Not being in one is a criminal matter carrying a fine of up to £5,000. What the Ombudsman does.
- Client Money Protection, also compulsory if they hold your money. Ask for the certificate.
- Fee transparency, displayed on their website and in the office.
Signs a real landlord is a bad bet
Not fraud. Just the pattern that turns into two years of grief.
- Can't produce the gas certificate, or says it's "with the accountant"
- Reluctant to put anything in writing
- Wants rent in cash, or more than one month in advance, which is now capped anyway
- Asks for fees that were banned in 2019
- Vague about who owns the property
- Suggests you don't need a written agreement
- Says the deposit will be "held safely" rather than naming a scheme
- Existing tenants who won't talk in front of them
- Obvious disrepair, brushed off with "we'll sort that"
That last one is worth taking literally. Everything a landlord shrugs off at the viewing is something you'll be chasing in writing by November.
What the property itself tells you
At the viewing, in ten minutes: run the taps and check the pressure, look under every sink, check the boiler's age and whether there's a service record, look for mould in corners and around windows, check the windows open and close, and see whether the alarms have been tested.
Ask to speak to the outgoing tenants if they're still there. Ask them one question: what would you want to know if you were moving in?
Finding a good rented property.
The database that's coming
Worth knowing about, because it will change this entirely.
The Renters' Rights Act creates a Private Rented Sector Database that all private landlords in England will be legally required to register with, paying an annual fee, with rollout beginning from late 2026. There's a compulsory landlord ombudsman alongside it.
Once live, checking whether a landlord is registered becomes a single lookup, and letting a property without being on it will be an offence. Until then, the checks above are the ones available.
If you're already in
All of these still work after you've moved in, and some are worth money.
- Check the deposit is protected. If it never was, the penalty is one to three times the deposit, plus the deposit back. Your deposit rights.
- Check the licensing register. An unlicensed licensable property supports a rent repayment order.
- Ask for the gas certificate in writing if you've never seen one, and report it to the council if it doesn't appear.
- Reclaim banned fees you were charged. Claiming money back.
And you can now do all of that without fearing a retaliatory notice, since Section 21 was abolished in May 2026.
The honest summary
Ask for the gas certificate, the EPC and the deposit scheme details before you sign, and treat any hesitation as the answer. Check the licensing register and, if there's an agent, their redress scheme membership. Both free.
Most bad tenancies don't involve a fake landlord. They involve a real one who never had the paperwork and was never going to fix the shower.
And check the address on MOOT before you sign. Someone who lived there is the only source that tells you what actually happened when the heating failed.
This guide covers England and reflects the position at August 2026. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland differ. General information rather than legal advice. Sources: GOV.UK, private renting, GOV.UK, Renters' Rights Act implementation roadmap, Gas Safe Register.