Can AI Draft a Tenancy Agreement After the Renters' Rights Act?

Yes, AI can draft a tenancy agreement for a landlord in England, but only as a first draft that you check line by line. Since 1 May 2026 most new lets are rolling (periodic) tenancies with no fixed end date, so a draft built on an older template or a generic form will contain clauses that are now wrong.

The risk is not that AI writes badly. It writes fluently, which makes a stale clause look authoritative. A model has no way of knowing which rules changed last spring unless you tell it, and even then it can slip back into a familiar assured shorthold structure halfway down the page. The job below is to give it the right brief, then audit what comes back.

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What changed on 1 May 2026, in plain terms

The Renters' Rights Act reshaped how private tenancies in England start, run and end. The GOV.UK landlord page lists the changes that took effect on 1 May 2026, and these are the ones that touch the agreement itself:

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• No fixed terms. Most new and existing private tenancies became assured periodic ("rolling") tenancies. The tenant can stay until they end it, or until you serve a valid notice and win a possession order.
• No Section 21. You can no longer use "no fault" notices. Ending a tenancy needs a legal possession ground, so an agreement cannot promise one.
• Rent rises once a year, by formal notice. You must give at least two months' notice of a proposed increase, following the Section 13 process.
• Rent in advance is capped. You can ask for up to one month's rent after the agreement is signed and before the tenancy starts (28 days' rent if rent is weekly), and you must not ask for or accept any rent before signing.
• Pets. A tenant can ask to keep a pet and you must consider the request and respond in time, with valid reasons if you refuse.
• Bidding is banned. The advertised price is the price. This matters for the listing more than the agreement, but your draft should state one rent figure.
• Written information about key terms. For new tenancies you must give this to the tenant before the tenancy is agreed. A written tenancy agreement is the usual way to do it.

Read the current wording yourself on the GOV.UK Housing Hub landlord page. The Act is being phased in, so check the date of anything you rely on, including this tutorial. A landlord registration service opens region by region from 15 December 2026, and an ombudsman and a decent-homes standard are still to come, with guidance promised nearer the time. GOV.UK's registration guidance says the property record will ask for evidence of the gas, electrical and energy certificates your agreement refers to, and that adverts will in future need landlord and property registration numbers, so the paperwork around the agreement will keep growing.

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What the written information must contain

GOV.UK publishes a landlord guidance PDF (dated 20 March 2026) listing the minimum information you must give a new tenant before the tenancy is agreed. You do not have to use its wording, but each item must be covered. Turned into a checklist for reviewing a draft, it looks like this:

Two practical notes. The guidance says some items apply only when the relevant law applies to the tenancy, for example the gas point only if there is a gas appliance or flue. And supported accommodation has an extra statement. If your let does not look like an ordinary private home, stop and take advice rather than prompting your way round it.

Failure carries a penalty of up to £7,000 from the local council. The GOV.UK enforcement guidance lists the same band for claiming to let on a fixed term (for example by adding an end date) and for claiming to end a tenancy verbally. A model that helpfully adds a "12-month fixed term" is therefore handing you a fineable clause.

Why generic generators and chatbots drift

Search for a tenancy agreement tool and you meet form-fillers and document builders, many of them built before the Act. They produce a competent document for the rules their templates were written under. Chatbots have a different weakness: their training data is overwhelmingly about assured shorthold tenancies, so the old structure is their default. Expect these drifts in a draft that was not briefed:

• "The tenancy shall be for a fixed term of 6 or 12 months commencing on…"
• "The Landlord may serve notice under Section 21 or Section 8."
• "The rent shall increase annually by CPI plus 2%."
• "The Tenant shall not keep pets without written consent, which may be withheld."
• "Rent for the first six months shall be paid in advance."

Each one is either void, unlawful or a breach under the current rules. Models also love to add a "break clause after 6 months" and a "renewal" section, neither of which has a place in a rolling tenancy.

A brief that steers the draft: prompt and sample output

Give the model the structure you need and the rules you know, and tell it to flag rather than guess. Use placeholders for personal data. Here is a prompt a plumbing-firm owner might use for two flats let on rolling tenancies:

You are helping a private landlord in England draft the first version
of a tenancy agreement for an assured periodic (rolling) tenancy that
starts after 1 May 2026.

Rules for the draft:
- No fixed term, no break clause, no renewal clause, no end date.
- Do not refer to Section 21. Do not promise the landlord any way of
  ending the tenancy except by a possession order on a statutory ground.
- Rent: one figure, [monthly rent], due on [day]. No automatic or
  annual rent-review clause. State that any increase will be proposed by
  notice under Section 13 of the Housing Act 1988.
- No requirement to pay rent before the tenancy starts beyond one
  month's rent.
- Tenant notice: [one month / two months] to end the tenancy.
- Pets: tenant may request a pet under Section 16A of the Housing Act
  1988; consent cannot be unreasonably refused.

Output the agreement in numbered clauses, with a separate section
titled "Written information" that covers: landlord name and address for
notices, tenants, property, start date, rent, bills, deposit, how the
tenant ends it, how the landlord ends it, repairs and fitness, electrical
and gas safety, disability adaptations and pets.

Where a point is uncertain or depends on the property, write
[CHECK: reason] instead of guessing. Use placeholders for all personal
data. Do not invent legislation references.

An illustrative response will look tidy and confident, and parts of it will be right. The useful part is the [CHECK] flags, for example:

7. Rent increases
The Landlord may propose an increase in rent once in any 12-month
period by serving notice on the Tenant under Section 13 of the Housing
Act 1988. The notice will state the proposed new rent and the date it
would take effect. [CHECK: confirm the notice period and whether the
Tenant can challenge the proposed rent at the tribunal.]

12. Gas safety
The Landlord will ensure each relevant gas appliance and flue is checked
by a Gas Safe registered engineer at the intervals required by the Gas
Safety (Installations and Use) Regulations 1998 and give each Tenant a
copy of the report. [CHECK: does the property have any gas appliance?]

What you fix in that output: the rent clause should say the notice gives at least two months before the increase takes effect, the gas clause should be dropped for an all-electric flat, and every [CHECK] needs an answer from you or a qualified adviser. Do not delete flags just to make the page look finished.

One two-bedroom flat at £1,400 a month, corrected

Say a landlord with one two-bedroom flat lets it to two sharers at £1,400 a month, rent due on the first. The deposit cap is five weeks' rent, which for monthly rent is £1,400 x 12 / 52 x 5 = £1,615.38, so £1,615 at most. (The cap comes from the Tenant Fees Act 2019. GOV.UK's current guidance on fees you can charge puts it at five weeks' rent where annual rent is below £50,000, and six weeks' where annual rent is between £50,000 and £100,000. A holding deposit, if you take one, is capped at one week's rent: £323 here.)

The AI draft arrives with four problems:

1. A six-month fixed term, then "periodic." Delete it. The tenancy is periodic from day one, so the start date is the only date.
2. "First two months' rent in advance" (£2,800). Over the cap. The most you can require between signing and the start date is one month, £1,400, and the deposit sits separately within its own cap. Taking both lawfully means £1,400 rent plus £1,615 deposit, £3,015 before move-in, not the £4,415 the draft implied.
3. "Rent increases by 3% each April." Delete it. Replace it with the Section 13 statement and diarise a yearly review yourself.
4. "No pets." Replace it with the pet-request wording, and decide in advance what reasonable grounds for refusal you would have, for example a restriction in a head lease.

The corrected agreement then goes to the tenants before anyone signs or agrees verbally. Record the date you sent it and the form it took (email PDF or hard copy). That record is the evidence that you met the duty, so file it with the signed copy.

Five further checks AI cannot do for you

1. Does the property sit outside the ordinary pattern?

Say a cleaning-company owner lets a room in a shared house to three unrelated adults. That may be a house in multiple occupation, which has its own licensing, management and fire rules. The Act's written-information list is not the end of the story. A chatbot that sees "shared house" may not raise licensing. You raise it, using the council's current HMO rules.

2. Is there a lease above you?

A landlord who rents a flat as leaseholder may be bound by a head lease that restricts pets, sub-letting or alterations. The agreement should not promise more than the head lease allows, which is where the superior-lease grounds and prior notice come in. Ask the model to list questions to put to the freeholder or managing agent, then send them yourself.

3. Are certificates in date, and are they ready to hand over?

The agreement says you will do gas and electrical checks. It does not prove you did. Before the start date have the gas safety record, the electrical inspection report and the energy performance certificate ready, and use a tracker for renewals. The written-information guidance says gas checks normally fall every 12 months and electrical inspections at least every five years, and that tenants get a copy of each report. Once registration opens in your region, the same certificates go onto the property record; GOV.UK's guidance lists an annual fee of £65 per property and expects the record to be completed within 28 days of registering. The tutorial on tracking gas safety and electrical certificates with AI covers that routine.

4. Does the deposit process match the clause?

The draft might say "the deposit will be protected." The law needs the deposit to go into an approved scheme and the tenant to receive the prescribed information within 30 days of payment. Put the scheme name and the date on your checklist, not in the AI's hands.

5. Who is named on the tenancy?

Names must match the identity checks. If you screen applicants, remember that AI-generated payslips and bank statements exist, which the tutorial on fake bank statements on rental applications explains. The agreement should name the people you actually referenced, including every adult who will pay rent.

A review routine you can run in 40 minutes

The routine below works whether you draft with a chatbot, a document tool or a template you bought. Time it against your first agreement, then shorten it.

1. Strip identifying data. Copy the draft to a clean file. Replace names and the address with placeholders before pasting anything into an AI tool.
2. Search for stale wording. Use find in your editor for: "fixed term", "term of", "break", "renew", "Section 21", "increase", "CPI", "RPI", "pets". Each hit gets a decision.
3. Tick the written-information list. Use the table above. Mark each item with the clause number that covers it. A blank cell means a missing clause.
4. Test the numbers. Rent, deposit and any pre-tenancy payment. Recalculate by hand or in a spreadsheet; chatbots get arithmetic wrong, and the one-month and deposit caps are easy to breach by accident.
5. Ask for a second pass. Paste the finished draft (still anonymised) into a fresh chat and ask: "List every clause that could be inconsistent with an assured periodic tenancy in England after 1 May 2026. Quote the clause and explain why." Treat the answer as a lead, not a verdict.
6. Check dates against GOV.UK. Open the landlord page and the written-information guidance and confirm nothing has been updated since your draft. The GOV.UK page notes that a first draft of the written-information list, published on 24 February 2026, was replaced by a final version on 20 March with small changes, which shows how quickly it moves.
7. Send and record. Give the tenant the document before agreeing the tenancy. Keep the sent email and the signed copy together.

Run this once with a letting-agent friend or an adviser and you will know where your own drafts tend to slip. If you manage several flats, a structured checklist and a saved prompt save more time than any change of AI tool.

Two more drafts that look fine and are not

The sharer clause that sounds reasonable

An electrical contractor lets a flat to a couple. The AI adds: "If one Tenant leaves, the remaining Tenant must find a replacement acceptable to the Landlord within 30 days or the tenancy will end." No possession ground ends a tenancy that way, and the clause also reads as a threat to end it without a court order. Delete it. What happens when one joint tenant wants to leave, and how a replacement sharer is added, is a fiddly area of law, so agree any wording on departures with an adviser rather than letting the model invent it. In the meantime, the GOV.UK tenants' guide is clear on the basic point: everyone who signs a joint tenancy is responsible for the rent.

The administration fee clause

A roofing-company owner lets out a cottage with a wood stove. The draft adds a £75 "check-out inspection fee" and a £25 "late rent letter" charge. GOV.UK's guidance on fees you can charge lists what is allowed: rent, a capped deposit, a holding deposit, a payment to change the tenancy at the tenant's request, a payment when the tenant gives the wrong notice, certain bills, a late-rent fee and a lost-key fee. Anything else is a prohibited payment. A check-out fee is not on the list. A late-rent fee is, but only once rent is at least two weeks overdue, and only as interest of up to 3% above the Bank of England base rate on the overdue amount, so a flat £25 letter charge does not fit. Remove both lines, and if the tenant is ever late, work out the interest by hand on the actual days and sum.

Where AI saves real time once the skeleton is right

With the legal skeleton fixed, AI earns its place on the surrounding documents:

• Plain-English cover note. Ask for a one-page summary of the tenancy for the tenants, in short sentences, with the rent date, notice period and repairs route at the top.
• Inventory wording. Turn your phone photos and notes into a room-by-room inventory draft you then correct against the room.
• Move-in message. A friendly email with keys, meter readings and where certificates live, built from your own checklist.
• Rent-increase letter drafts. Next spring, have it assemble the covering letter from your figures. You still serve the notice in the required form and with the required notice.

The tutorial on WhatsApp maintenance requests and FAQs shows how to keep the repairs route consistent with what the agreement says, and screening enquiries and viewings covers the stage before. For a fuller set-up, AI software for landlords, compared lays out tools that hold documents, reminders and rent in one place.

When to put the AI draft down and call an adviser

The checklist above suits a standard single-household let of an ordinary home. Stop and get qualified advice when any of these apply: the property is an HMO, you let through a company, it is part of a development with a management company or right-to-manage arrangement, the tenant is a student or a supported-housing resident, you are relying on a possession ground other than the common ones, or a tenant has already disputed a term. An adviser also earns their fee on the first agreement you are going to reuse across a portfolio, because one mistake then repeats in every let.

Think of AI as the fastest way to get a clean structure and a clear summary on the page, and of your own checking, backed by GOV.UK and an adviser where the case is unusual, as the part that makes the document safe to sign. If you would rather set up that workflow with someone, that is what my AI implementation consultation covers.

Questions landlords ask before using AI on a tenancy

Can I paste a tenant's details into a public AI tool?

Use the minimum. Draft with placeholders such as [tenant 1], [property address] and [rent], then fill in the real details in your own document. If you do enter personal data, use a business plan that does not train on your inputs and check its data terms first.

Do I still need a solicitor if AI drafted it?

Not necessarily for a standard let of an ordinary home, if you check every point in this tutorial against GOV.UK. Get a qualified adviser for anything unusual: a house in multiple occupation, a company let, a lease with a superior landlord, supported housing or a student block.

Will an old assured shorthold template from the internet still work?

Treat it as out of date. Any fixed term, break clause or Section 21 wording no longer reflects how new tenancies work, and claiming a fixed term can attract a penalty. Rebuild from the current requirements instead of editing the old wording clause by clause.

Does the agreement have to be in writing?

You must give the tenant written information about key terms before the tenancy is agreed, and a written agreement is the easiest way to do that. Failing to supply the required information can lead to a penalty of up to £7,000 from the local council.

Further reads

• Can AI Review a Contract? What Small Business Owners Should Know — How to check any AI-drafted contract clause by clause.
• Rental Property Bookkeeping With AI: A Landlord's Monthly Routine — Keep rent records tidy from the first month.
• AI Tools for Landlords: Messages, Lease Checks and Application Fraud — Lease checks and application-fraud tests in one place.
• Making Tax Digital for Landlords: Keep Rental Income Records With AI — Record rental income in the form tax software expects.
• AI Contract Review for Small Firms: What It Catches and Misses — What AI contract review catches and misses for small firms.
• Renters' Rights Act: Using AI for Tenant FAQs and Section 13 Letters — An AI drafting checklist for Section 13 rent-increase letters and tenant FAQs under the Renters' Rights Act, checked against GOV.UK before anything is sent.
• Can AI Draft Rent Arrears Letters That Stay Within the Rules? — A four-stage arrears letter ladder with ledger checks, sample wording and a firm legal-review stop point.
• Can AI Help With Right to Rent Checks? Where a Human Must Sign Off — Where AI can help with right to rent checks (first-pass checklists, record tidying, reminders) and the sign-off points a human must keep.
• Can ChatGPT Write a Lease Agreement? What to Check Before You Use It — A landlord's clause-by-clause review of AI lease drafts, official forms and the points that need a solicitor.
• Can Landlords Use ChatGPT for Tenant Notices? The Validity Checks — A landlord's message library plus the validity checks every AI-drafted notice needs before it is sent, and a list of what never goes into the chat.
• AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.

Sources: GOV.UK Housing Hub landlord page (Renters' Rights Act changes from 1 May 2026), GOV.UK guidance 'Tenancy agreements: written information for your tenant' and its landlord guidance PDF (20 March 2026), GOV.UK 'Enforcement measures for landlords: Renters' Rights Act 2025', GOV.UK 'Fees you can charge as part of a tenancy', GOV.UK 'Register your rental property service: guidance for landlords', GOV.UK 'Assured periodic tenancies: a guide for tenants' (all read 4 November 2026).