A landlord who wanted to increase the rent on a four-bedroom Manchester property by £200 a month has had the increase approved in full by the First-tier Tribunal.
In fact, the Tribunal decided the property was worth £100 a month more than the landlord was asking.
Yet after successfully defending his proposed rent, the landlord was still ordered to reimburse the tenant’s £47 Tribunal application fee – and the challenge also delayed the increase taking effect.
What Happened?
The tenant had been living in the four-bedroom Manchester property since 2010 and was paying £1,000 per month.
In May 2026, the landlord served notice proposing an increase to £1,200 per month from 1 August.
The tenant challenged the increase at the First-tier Tribunal and argued that, given the condition of the property, £1,000 remained a fair market rent.
Among the issues raised were dated kitchen and bathroom facilities, an unusable bath, alleged electrical and gas safety problems, previous fires and problems accessing the garage.
The tenant also described the proposed increase as retaliatory.
However, the Tribunal said the photographs and documentation provided did not substantiate a number of the allegations and said it had to be cautious about how much weight it gave them.
It also made an important distinction regarding gas and electrical safety.
While acknowledging that the absence of the appropriate certificates could potentially be serious, the Tribunal explained that compliance with those regulations is legally separate from determining the market rent.
In other words, alleged compliance problems don’t automatically make an otherwise valid rent increase invalid.
So What Was The Property Actually Worth?
This is where the decision becomes particularly interesting.
Neither the landlord nor tenant provided convincing evidence supporting their respective valuations, so the Tribunal used its own expertise and knowledge of rents in the area.
It concluded that the property, if modernised and in good order, would command approximately £1,500 per month.
It then knocked £200 off that figure to reflect:
- poor management and attendance;
- the dated kitchen and unusable bath;
- the blocked use of the garage; and
- improvements to flooring and decoration made by the tenant.
That produced an assessed open-market rent of £1,300 per month.
The landlord had only asked for £1,200.
The Tribunal therefore approved the landlord’s proposed rent in full.
The Tenants Grounds For The Appeal and a Strange Decision
The tenant had also asked for the increase to be postponed further on the grounds that it would cause severe financial hardship.
The Tribunal rejected that request because it said there wasn’t sufficient supporting evidence.
But then comes perhaps the strangest part of the decision.
The tenant had requested assistance with the £47 application fee. The Tribunal wasn’t even sure whether she had actually paid it and noted that she hadn’t provided reasons explaining why assistance was required.
Nevertheless, it ordered the landlord to refund the £47 if it had been paid.
Why? Because the landlord hadn’t engaged with the Tribunal process.
The Cost Of Delays
The landlord wanted the £1,200 rent to take effect from 1 August.
The Tribunal didn’t make its decision until 20 August and, under the new rules applying to these rent challenges, the increase could not take effect until the rental period after the decision – in this case on 1 September.
That effectively cost the landlord another £200.
A Warning To Landlords: Don’t Ignore A Rent Challenge
This wasn’t simply the Tribunal saying: the tenant challenged the rent, lost, therefore the landlord pays.
The decision specifically links reimbursement of the £47 fee to the landlord’s failure to engage with proceedings.
And that failure arguably hurt him elsewhere too.
Because he didn’t respond, the Tribunal treated the condition issues raised by the tenant as undisputed, although it still required evidence before accepting all of them.
The Tribunal ultimately deducted £50 each for four factors when calculating market rent.
Landlords receiving Tribunal paperwork therefore shouldn’t assume that because their proposed rent is reasonable they can simply ignore the challenge.
Respond, provide comparable rents, supply evidence about the property’s condition and deal with the tenant’s allegations.
This landlord’s proposed rent survived without him doing any of that. Others may not be so fortunate.
And it raises an interesting question about the new system for challenging rent increases.
If a landlord proposes a perfectly reasonable rent, what deterrent is there to stop tenants challenging it anyway if doing so could delay the increase and leave the landlord picking up at least some of the cost?
Hamptons says 166 market rent decisions were made in July – almost four times the 44 recorded in July 2025. Around 60% of the latest cases were initiated after the Renters’ Rights Act came into force.
There is now relatively little downside to challenging an increase. The Tribunal cannot set the rent higher than the landlord proposed and, even if the challenge fails, the increase isn’t backdated. With the average application taking around 80 days to reach a decision in July, even an unsuccessful challenge can therefore delay the increase by several weeks.
As Paul Rooke of Mayo Wynne Baxter puts it, the reforms have “reduced the downside for tenants who wish to contest rent increases.”