Why the Guarantor Has Become a Landlord's Most Important Safety Net After the Rent in Advance Ban
For years, there was a simple answer to the awkward applicant. The graduate with no rental history. The self-employed contractor whose accounts didn’t quite stack up. The tenant relocating from overseas with no UK credit footprint at all. If the referencing came back thin, you asked for six months up front, and everybody moved on.
That answer disappeared on 1 May 2026.
The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 capped rent in advance at a single month’s rent, and made it unlawful to take any rent at all before the tenancy agreement has been signed. The cash cushion that quietly underpinned thousands of lettings every year is gone, and it isn’t coming back. What has replaced it, for most landlords, is the guarantor.
The problem is that a guarantor is only worth what the checks behind them prove. And a great many landlords are currently accepting guarantors on far less evidence than they would ever have accepted a tenant.
What the rent in advance rules actually say
The restriction is narrower than some of the headlines suggested, and worth getting precisely right:
- Before the tenancy is signed, you cannot ask for or accept any rent. Doing so is a prohibited payment under the Tenant Fees Act 2019 and carries a financial penalty.
- After signing but before move-in, you may require the first month’s rent (or 28 days’ worth for shorter rent periods).
- During the tenancy, any clause requiring more than one rent period in advance has no legal effect. Termly and quarterly rent arrangements are unenforceable on new tenancies.
- A tenant may still volunteer to pay ahead once the tenancy is running. You cannot require it, invite it, or make it a condition of being offered the property.
- Deposits are untouched – up to five weeks’ rent for annual rents below £50,000, and holding deposits of up to one week’s rent remain permitted.
Tenancies that were already in place before commencement are not affected retrospectively, but every new agreement falls squarely under the new regime.
The second change that makes this bite harder
The rent in advance cap did not arrive on its own, and its effect on risk is magnified by what landed alongside it.
Section 21 is abolished. Possession now runs exclusively through Section 8 grounds, and the mandatory arrears ground has been tightened in two directions at once: the threshold rose from two months’ arrears to three, and the notice period doubled from two weeks to four. Add court listing times on top of that, and a tenancy that goes wrong in month two may not conclude until month eight or nine.
Put the two changes side by side and the arithmetic is uncomfortable. Landlords have simultaneously lost the buffer that covered arrears and gained a longer, more expensive route to recovering possession when arrears occur. On a £1,300 a month property, the realistic downside of a single bad letting has moved from a few thousand pounds to five figures.
That is the gap a guarantor is now being asked to fill.
Guarantors are no longer the exception
The market has already moved, and the data is unambiguous.
Market sector figures show the share of accepted tenancy applications backed by a guarantor roughly doubled in eighteen months, climbing from around 9% in January 2025 to 18.4% by July 2026 – close to one in five lets. The steepest part of that curve falls either side of the Act’s commencement.
Looking forward, analysis from Zero Deposit suggests the proportion of local authority areas where a typical tenant would struggle to pass standard affordability checks could rise from roughly one in five to nearly one in two – which would put more than half of prospective tenants in guarantor territory.
Rising rents are part of that story independently of the legislation. But the rent in advance ban removed the alternative. Where a landlord and tenant would previously have chosen between “pay some up front” or “find a guarantor”, only one of those options survives.
Why an unchecked guarantor is worse than no guarantor at all
Here is the uncomfortable truth: a signed guarantee deed creates a feeling of security that is entirely disconnected from whether the guarantor could ever actually pay.
The failure points we see repeatedly:
The guarantor cannot afford the commitment. A guarantor is underwriting their own housing costs plus the full rent on the property they are guaranteeing. Standard practice is to look for annual income of at least 30 times the monthly rent.
The guarantor has adverse credit of their own. CCJs, defaults, IVAs and bankruptcy are common and rarely volunteered. Someone in an active IVA cannot lawfully take on the liability at all.
The guarantor is based overseas. This is the single most frequent weakness in international student and relocating professional applications. A guarantee signed by someone with no UK assets and no UK presence is, in practical enforcement terms, close to decorative. Pursuing it means foreign proceedings, foreign costs and foreign timescales.
The deed itself doesn’t do what the landlord thinks. Joint and several liability means a guarantor for one sharer can be pursued for the whole rent, which is rarely what they understood they were signing – and a guarantor who was pressured or misled has a defence. Poorly drafted guarantees can also fall away when the tenancy is varied or the rent increased. Since 1 May 2026, Section 19 of the Act also releases guarantors from liability for rent falling due after a sole tenant’s death, and after a joint tenant’s death where the guarantor is a family member.
What a proper guarantor suitability check covers
This is the service we provide at Tenant Screening, and it is deliberately built around enforceability rather than paperwork. A guarantor should be assessed to at least the standard you would apply to the tenant, because in the scenario that matters, the guarantor is the tenant.
Our guarantor suitability check includes:
- Identity verification & Full credit search, covering CCJs, defaults, bankruptcies, IVAs and the electoral roll
- Income verification & Affordability assessment through employer references, payslips, or SA302s and accountant confirmation for self-employed guarantors
- A clear written recommendation – suitable, suitable with conditions, or not suitable – with the reasoning set out so you can make a defensible decision
The compliance point most landlords are missing
The Act also banned rental discrimination against tenants who receive benefits or who have children. Requiring a guarantor is entirely lawful – but applying that requirement selectively, so that it lands on benefit recipients or families and not on other applicants, is exactly the pattern enforcement officers are looking for.
The protection is consistency. Set a written affordability threshold, apply it identically to every applicant, and require a guarantor whenever an applicant falls below it, regardless of the source of their income. Then have the guarantor independently assessed and documented. A referenced, evidenced, uniformly applied process is not only better risk management; it is your audit trail if a decision is ever challenged.
A practical process for landlords and agents
- Publish and apply one affordability standard to all applicants.
- Reference the tenant first, and identify the shortfall precisely – is it income, history, or credit conduct?
- Recognise what a guarantor can and cannot fix. A guarantor addresses unproven income. It does not fix a proven record of arrears or property damage.
- Commission a full guarantor suitability check before issuing the tenancy agreement, never after.
- Prefer a UK-resident, UK-asset guarantor. Where the only available guarantor is overseas, treat the guarantee as materially weaker and consider a commercial guarantor service or rent guarantee insurance instead.
- Keep the file. Every reference, every check, every reason.
Frequently asked questions
Can a landlord still ask for six months’ rent up front? No. On tenancies entered into from 1 May 2026, you cannot require or accept more than one month’s rent in advance. A tenant may choose to pay early once the tenancy has begun, but you cannot ask for it or make it a condition of the offer.
Is it legal to insist on a guarantor? Yes. The Act restricts upfront rent and prohibits discrimination on specified grounds; it does not prevent you from requiring a guarantor. Apply the requirement consistently and on objective affordability criteria.
What income should a guarantor have? A common benchmark is annual income of at least 30 times the monthly rent, or three times the annual rent.
Can a guarantor live abroad? They can sign, but enforcement against an overseas guarantor with no UK assets is slow, costly and frequently impractical. For international applicants, a UK-based commercial guarantor service is usually the stronger option.
Does the guarantee end if the tenant dies? For guarantees entered into on or after 1 May 2026, the guarantor is not liable for rent falling due after the death of a sole tenant. In a joint tenancy, release applies where the guarantor is a family member of the deceased tenant. Liability for arrears and damage accrued before the death remains.
Do I need to re-check a guarantor if the rent increases? It is strongly advisable. A rent increase changes the size of the commitment, and depending on the drafting of the deed it can affect whether the guarantee still binds. A reassessment protects both positions.
Get the guarantor checked before you hand over the keys
The rent in advance ban did not remove risk from letting. It removed one way of managing it – and moved the entire weight onto the quality of your referencing.
Tenant Screening’s guarantor suitability check tells you whether the person signing your guarantee deed could actually meet it: verified identity, verified income, full credit conduct, and an affordability assessment that accounts for what they are already paying. Results in 24 to 48 hours, with a clear recommendation you can act on and evidence you can keep on file.
This article is general guidance for landlords and letting agents in England and does not constitute legal advice. Tenancy law is jurisdiction-specific; the Renters’ Rights Act applies to England. Seek professional advice on your individual circumstances.
