Glossary

The rent a landlord asked for when the home was put up for rent. It is not proof of what a tenant agreed to pay. Every comparable home UpRently shows you is an advertised rent, and how UpRently works explains why that matters.

The usual kind of private tenancy in England. Most private renters have one, and the rules about rent increases on this site are the rules for assured tenancies.

Another home, near yours, that is similar enough to be worth comparing your rent against. Similar usually means the same kind of property with the same number of bedrooms, close by, and advertised recently. Comparables are the main evidence a tribunal looks at.

The tribunal’s decision on what the open market rent for a home is. Asking for one is what form MR1 does, so you may see it called an application for a rent determination.

A document showing how energy-efficient a building is. It also records the floor area, which is why we suggest it when we ask how big your home is. You can look up an EPC on GOV.UK(opens in new tab) for free.

The PDF report a tenant can buy from UpRently. It sets out every comparable home we found, with the address, distance and rent for each, plus how your result was worked out. It is built so you can hand it to a landlord or a tribunal. The landlord version is called the Landlord Evidence Report.

How much evidence stands behind your comparison, rated strong, moderate or limited. It is not a measure of how likely you are to win. The number of comparable homes we found sets the rating, and homes further away can lower it, because a tribunal compares homes in the same local market. See how UpRently works for the exact rule.

Said on your result when the proposed rent sits within three per cent of the typical local rent, or of the top of the local range. It means the comparison came out close enough that a small change in the evidence could move it. It does not change how much evidence stands behind the result, which is shown separately.

The independent panel that decides rent disputes in England. It is not a court, and you do not need a solicitor to apply. It decides what the open market rent is for your home.

A tenancy agreed to run for a set length of time, such as twelve months. This is the opposite of a periodic tenancy.

How much space there is inside a home, measured in square metres or square feet. It is the single biggest thing affecting what a home could rent for, which is why we ask for it rather than guessing.

The official form a landlord uses to propose a rent increase for most private tenancies in England. It is sometimes called a section 13 notice.

Not being able to afford the new rent from the date it is due to start. A tenant can ask the tribunal to put that date back, but only in the application itself, with up-to-date figures for their income and outgoings.

A government scheme that reduces or removes the £47 tribunal fee for people on a low income or on certain benefits. Our guide on help with fees explains who qualifies.

The landlord’s version of the Evidence Pack. The same comparable homes and the same method, written for somebody proposing a rent rather than questioning one, and the same price.

A listing marked to say a tenant has been found, but the letting is not yet finalised. The rent shown is still the advertised rent, not necessarily what was agreed.

The company that supplies the advertised rents we compare your rent against. Ours is PropertyData, which collects listings from the main property websites. We do not collect listings ourselves.

The middle value in a list. If you line up every nearby rent from lowest to highest, the median is the one in the middle. The Evidence Pack prints it beside the typical rent because one unusually expensive home cannot drag it up.

The form a tenant uses to ask the tribunal to decide the open market rent. GOV.UK explains how to apply(opens in new tab).

The form a landlord uses to respond to a tenant’s MR1 application. The landlord has 28 days from the tribunal making contact.

The form the tribunal sends to a tenant when it first makes contact. It is also the form the tenant uses to reply to the landlord’s MR2, within 14 days. If you have a copy of MR1 dated 05.26, page 22 of it says to reply on MR2. That was a mistake in the form, corrected on 1 July 2026.

How much warning a landlord has to give before a rent increase can start. UpRently checks this against your dates, but it does not check whether the notice itself was correct or properly served.

What a home could reasonably be let for on the open market today, if it were newly advertised. This is what a tribunal decides. It is deliberately not the same idea as a “fair rent”, which is a different and much older scheme that applies to very few tenancies.

Rent is usually quoted for a calendar month, and adverts often shorten that to pcm. Every rent on this site is a monthly figure, so £1,200 pcm and £1,200 a month are the same thing.

A tenancy that runs on from one rent period to the next, such as month to month, rather than for a fixed length of time.

The law that changed the rules for private renting in England, including how and how often rent can be increased. Our guide on what the Act changed for rent increases sets out the detail.

The part of the Housing Act 1988 that lets a landlord propose a rent increase, and lets a tenant ask a tribunal to decide the rent instead. A section 13 notice and a Form 4A are usually the same thing.

The part of the Housing Act 1988 that tells the tribunal what to decide when a tenant challenges a rent increase. It sets the rent at the open market rent, and it cannot set a rent higher than the one the landlord proposed.

The figure we compare your rent with. We take the advertised rents of the comparable homes, leave out the highest quarter and the lowest quarter, and average the middle half. That stops a few unusual listings pulling the figure off course. Statisticians call it an interquartile mean.