Your tenancy is now rolling, so there's no fixed end date. This means:

• Your landlord can't end it without a legal reason.
• You can leave by giving two months' written notice. You can give notice once your tenancy has started, and it must end on the last day of a rent period (the day before your rent is due).
• Rent can only go up once a year, and you can challenge an increase.
• You can't be asked for rent before you sign your contract. After signing, and before you move in, you can't be asked for more than one month's rent in advance.
• You can ask to keep a pet, and your landlord can't unreasonably say no.

If you live in a shared student house (an HMO) and everyone on the tenancy is a full-time student, your landlord may be able to end the tenancy so the house can be let to the next group of students. They can only do this if all of these apply:

• They told you in writing, before you signed, that they might use this right.
• Your contract was not signed more than 6 months before you could move in.
• They give you at least four months' notice (a Section 8 notice).
• The date you must leave is between 1 June and 30 September.

If you don't leave, the landlord still has to go to court. This right doesn't apply to ordinary one- or two-bedroom flats that aren't HMOs. If you're not sure whether your home counts as an HMO, ask us.

If you get a notice, don't ignore it. Contact the NTSU Advice Service for support.

University halls aren't covered by the new rules. You'll usually have a licence agreement, and your rights come from that contract.

Private halls are often exempt too, if the provider follows an approved code such as the ANUK/Unipol Code or the UUK/GuildHE Code. Ask your provider which code they follow. If they don't follow one, the new rules probably apply to you.

Exempt providers may still use fixed-term contracts and have different rules on ending the contract.

• Advertising and holding viewings early is allowed, because the rules are about signing and money rather than marketing.
• Signing a tenancy more than six months before move-in is allowed, but the landlord will normally lose Ground 4A for that tenancy and would need another ground to get the house back.
• Inviting or accepting offers above the advertised rent is banned, so a landlord can’t run an early-season bidding war, and adverts have to state the rent.
• A holding deposit of up to a week’s rent, with a deadline extended in writing, is allowed – one at a time per property, refundable if the landlord pulls out.
• Taking a tenancy deposit before signing is allowed, according to government guidance.
• Taking rent before signing, inviting it, or accepting a tenant’s offer of it is banned for an assured tenancy, and payments by a parent, guarantor, or anyone else acting for the student are caught too.
• Requiring more than the first month’s rent between signing and moving in has no legal effect, so the student doesn’t have to pay it.
• Refusing to sign until rent and deposit have cleared is treated as a breach in government guidance.
• Requiring a guarantor is allowed, but a landlord can’t make a student pay a particular guarantor company.
• Charging more rent early in the year than later makes the extra a prohibited payment.
• A lump sum for bills is a grey area, because the Tenant Fees Act permits payments for utilities where the tenancy requires them, so where bills are genuinely separate from rent an upfront payment for the year may well be lawful.
• A genuine licence sits outside the rent in advance rules, but a lockable room paid for as rent, with no hotel-style services, is almost certainly a tenancy whatever the paperwork calls it.
• Asking a student to sign a notice to quit alongside their contract used to be caught by section 5(5) of the Housing Act 1988, which voided notices signed “on or before the date on which a tenancy is entered into” – but that subsection was repealed on 1 May with the rest of the fixed-term machinery, nothing obvious has replaced it, and whether such a notice can work at all is untested.