Terms of use
Last updated 5 October 2026
These terms apply when you use RentAProperty at https://rentaproperty.co.uk. RentAProperty is run by Byte Projects Ltd ("we", "us"). Our company details are in the legal notice.
What RentAProperty is
RentAProperty lets landlords and letting agents advertise homes to rent in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and lets tenants advertise the home they are looking for. People find each other and exchange messages on the site. It is free.
We only publish adverts and pass on messages. We are not a letting agent or an estate agent, and we are not a party to any tenancy or agreement you make. We do not take payments, deposits or fees, and we do not arrange viewings or bookings. Apart from verifying letting agencies, as described below, we do not check properties, people or anyone's right to let. You decide who you deal with and on what terms.
Who can use it
You must be 18 or over. You need an account to post adverts or send messages: one account per person, and one account for each branch of a letting agency. Keep your sign-in details to yourself and tell us at [email protected] if you think someone else is using your account.
Adverts
Landlords and letting agents advertise a whole home: a flat, house, studio, maisonette or bungalow. Tenants post tenant-wanted adverts describing the home they need. When you post an advert you promise that:
- it offers, or asks for, a whole home in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, let as somewhere to live. Homes in Scotland, single bedrooms in shared homes, holiday, tourist and nightly lets, stays shorter than a month and homes for sale are not accepted. Quoting the rent per week is fine;
- everything in it is accurate, including the rent, deposit, photos, floor plans, EPC and location, and the photos and floor plans are of the actual home;
- it shows one exact rent, weekly or monthly, which we show as you entered it: no ranges, "offers over", bidding or "price on application";
- any deposit is within the legal limit: in England no more than five weeks' rent, or six weeks' rent if the annual rent is £50,000 or more; in Northern Ireland no more than one month's rent; and it asks for no fee the law bans, such as a viewing, admin, referencing or credit-check fee;
- it shows the council tax band of a home in England or Wales, and the home's EPC as described below;
- you are entitled to let the home, as its landlord or as an agent acting for the landlord, and the advert and the letting follow the law where the home is. That is your responsibility, not ours;
- it contains no contact details, links or payment requests. People contact you through RentAProperty's messages;
- it follows our community rules, including the rule against discriminatory requirements: for example, you may not turn people away because they receive benefits or have children.
How we check adverts before they are published, and the exception for verified letting agencies, is explained below.
An advert leaves the site 14 days after it was published or you last confirmed it is still current; we remind you before then. It is kept, not deleted, and you can renew it. You can pause or close an advert at any time. When you have found a tenant you can mark the advert let agreed: it stays on show as let agreed for 14 days, closed to enquiries, and then closes.
Energy Performance Certificates
The law requires adverts for homes to let to show the home's EPC rating. Every advert shows one of these:
- A rating, A to G, as on the certificate. In Northern Ireland an advert needs its rating before it is published.
- An exemption (England and Wales only): the home is a listed or officially protected building where meeting minimum energy performance requirements would unacceptably alter its character. You tell us why it is exempt, and we keep a record.
- "EPC to follow" (England and Wales only): allowed only where no valid EPC exists and one was commissioned before the home was first advertised anywhere. You declare that there is no valid EPC, the date the EPC was commissioned, the date the home was first advertised anywhere, and that you instructed an assessor and paid, or promised to pay. We keep your declaration. We remind you to add the rating from day 5, and at the end of day 28 after the home was first advertised the advert stops showing until you add it.
Letting agents
- One account is one branch. Add the branch's details in your profile: the agency's name, branch address, phone, website, Companies House number if it has one, redress scheme and membership number, client money protection scheme and a link to your fees.
- We verify the agency before its adverts go public. You can prepare adverts in the meantime. Our staff decide, using evidence gathered automatically: what the public Companies House register says about the company number (name, status, registered office and business activity), whether your account's email address is on your website's domain, and whether the same company number, website or phone is on another account. We may ask you for more. If you change the agency's name, address, company number, website, phone or fees link, we verify it again.
- What your adverts show. Once the agency is verified, its adverts show its name, branch address, redress scheme and membership number, client money protection scheme and fees link, as the law requires of letting agents. Keep these details accurate and current: they are your responsibility.
- Monthly check. We check verified agencies against the Companies House register every month.
- Limits. An agency can have up to 20 adverts while we verify it, and up to 200 once it is verified.
How we check content
A person checks every advert before it is published, and again when you change it, except for some adverts and changes from verified letting agencies (see below). We use:
- automatic checks, run when you send an advert for review or send a message: for example for contact details, payment phrases, banned fees, bidding wording, duplicate text or photos, rents far below similar homes nearby, and words we have blocked;
- two AI models (run by OVHcloud in the EU) that read the text of each advert sent for review and suggest to our staff whether to publish, ask for changes or look more closely. They do not read messages;
- people, who make every decision to refuse or remove an advert, remove a message or suspend an account. The few steps taken automatically are temporary and wait for a person; they are listed under what we can do.
Automatic approval for letting agencies
For a verified letting agency in good standing:
- Routine changes to a live advert (the rent and its period, the deposit, the date the home is available, and the order of photos) are approved automatically.
- New adverts are approved automatically once a person has approved three of the agency's adverts, if both AI models judge the advert clear and no automatic check flags a serious problem.
Other changes, such as to the text, photos or floor plans, go to a person. So does any change caught by one of these safeguards, which also pause automatic approval for the agency until our staff resume it: the account's sign-in email or password changed in the last 7 days; an unusual burst of new adverts or edits; a rent cut of more than 30%, or a rent far below similar homes; contact or payment wording; a report against the agency that we upheld; or the company no longer being active at Companies House.
A person checks one automatic approval in twenty afterwards. Our staff can switch automatic approval off for an agency, or for the whole site. Automatic approval only ever approves: refusing or removing an advert is always a person's decision. Adverts from private landlords and tenants always go to a person.
Messages
Messages go between the two people in a conversation. A landlord or letting agent who writes to a tenant-wanted advert must attach one of their own live adverts, which the tenant sees with the message. Messages are checked automatically for signs of scams, such as requests for money before a viewing, and a message may be held for a person to look at. Staff read a conversation only if someone reports it; when a message is held, they see that message and the two before it, and nothing else. When contact details or payment requests appear, both people see a safety warning.
Reports
Anyone can report an advert, a message, a person or anything else on RentAProperty, signed in or not, from the report links on adverts and conversations or at https://rentaproperty.co.uk/report. If you believe something is illegal, choose "Illegal content" and tell us why; if someone is threatened or in danger, say so and we look at it first. We acknowledge every report and tell you what we decided.
Illegal content, intimate images and complaints
- Terrorist content and child sexual abuse material. A person checks every advert, edit and image before anyone else can see it, except a verified agency's automatically approved adverts: their text is read by two AI models and their images are compared automatically with images we have blocked, but no person sees them first (see automatic approval). One in twenty of those is checked by a person afterwards. If either is found or reported, we remove it at once and suspend the account, and we report child sexual abuse material to the UK's National Crime Agency. We remove accounts run by or for an organisation proscribed in the UK.
- Other illegal content, such as scams, threats and hate: the same checks before publication, and messages that match known scam wording or offer a home in exchange for sex are held. Reports of illegal content go to the front of the queue and are usually decided within a day; illegal content is taken down as soon as a person confirms it.
- Intimate images. If an intimate image of you, or of someone you act for, is on RentAProperty without consent, report it as illegal content, say that you are the person shown or act for them, and give the link. We take it down, with any copies we find, within 48 hours.
- Complaints. To disagree with a decision, see asking us to look again. To complain that we are not dealing properly with illegal content or reports, or not respecting freedom of expression or privacy, write to [email protected]: we acknowledge it and reply within a month.
What we can do
If content or behaviour breaks these terms or our community rules, we may refuse or remove an advert, ask for changes, hold or remove a message, limit what an account can do, or suspend an account. For a letting agency, we may also refuse verification, or pause or switch off its automatic approval. Some steps happen automatically and wait for a person: a message that matches known scam wording is held, three reports from different people hide an advert, an account that sends the same first message to many adverts keeps a new account's limits, and a safeguard pauses an agency's automatic approval. The privacy notice explains each one.
When we restrict something of yours we tell you what we did, why, which rule we relied on, whether automated means were involved, and how to ask us to look again.
Asking us to look again
If you disagree with a decision, reply to the email that told you about it or write to [email protected] within six months. A person who was not involved, where possible, looks at it again and tells you the outcome.
Your content
You keep ownership of what you post. You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, show, adapt (for example resize photos) and distribute it on RentAProperty for as long as it is there and for the time we keep it under our privacy notice. Do not post anything you do not have the right to share.
Things you must not do
Do not use RentAProperty to scam, harass or discriminate against anyone; to send spam or the same message to many people; to collect other people's details; to advertise anything other than a whole home to rent; to get around a suspension; or to interfere with the service, for example by scraping it or probing its security. Report security problems to [email protected] instead.
Business users
If you advertise as a business (for example a letting agent, or a landlord letting several homes), the following also applies, under the platform-to-business rules (Regulation (EU) 2019/1150 as it applies in UK law):
- Ranking. Search results are ordered by the sort the searcher picks: newest first, rent, or distance from the searched place. Agencies and private landlords are ranked the same way. There is no paid ranking and no other factor.
- Changes to these terms that affect you are announced at least 15 days before they apply, unless the law or a safety risk requires faster change.
- Restrictions come with a statement of reasons, as above. Before we end your account for anything other than an illegal content or safety reason, we give you 30 days' notice.
- Complaints go to [email protected]; a person handles them and replies in writing.
- Data. Your account shows your adverts, their statuses, the messages people send you and your agency details, and you can ask us for a copy of everything we hold about you. We see everything on the service, as its operator, and use it only as the privacy notice says. We give no business user access to another's data, and we share no data with third parties for their own use.
Our responsibility to you
We provide RentAProperty with reasonable care and skill, but we cannot promise it will always be available or error-free, or that any advert or person is genuine. Always follow our safety advice: never pay anything before you have viewed the home in person.
Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, such as for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. Otherwise, because the service is free, we are not liable for losses that come from dealings between users, or for indirect losses. If you use RentAProperty as a consumer, you keep every right consumer law gives you.
Ending
You can delete your account at any time from your profile. We may suspend or close accounts as described above. What happens to your data is in the privacy notice.
Changes
We may update these terms. We will tell you about important changes by email or on the site before they apply. If you keep using RentAProperty after that, the new terms apply.
Law and courts
These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales can hear disputes. If you are a consumer living in Northern Ireland or Scotland, you can also bring a claim in your local courts.