How to find a tenant yourself and let your property without an agent

In short: You can let a property in England without a letting agent. The one step you cannot do alone is advertising on Rightmove, which takes listings from registered agents only, so most DIY landlords use an online letting service for the advert and handle everything else themselves.

Updated 25 September 2026

The key facts

• Rightmove takes no private landlord listings. Advertisers must be registered letting agents in a redress scheme, so a DIY landlord needs an online agent to appear there. Rightmove customer help centre, read 25 September 2026.
• Advertising starts at £29. OpenRent's Portal Advertising is £29 without Rightmove or £99 with it; Hello Neighbour's Get Listed is £29 including Rightmove. Both pricing pages, 25 September 2026.
• 10 enquiries per rental home. Rightmove's Q2 2026 Rental Trends Tracker puts the average at 10, against 11 a year earlier and 22 at the 2022 peak.
• The asking rent is the ceiling. Since 1 May 2026 it is illegal to accept offers above the advertised rent or to require more than one month's rent upfront. GOV.UK guide to the Renters' Rights Act.
• Deposit capped at five weeks' rent and protected within 30 days, where annual rent is under £50,000. Tenant Fees Act 2019, Schedule 1; GOV.UK tenancy deposit protection.

In this article:

1. Can you let a property yourself without an agent?
2. How much does it cost to find a tenant yourself?
3. Step 1: How do you get the property ready to let?
4. Step 2: How do you set the right asking rent?
5. Step 3: How do you advertise your property on Rightmove and Zoopla?
6. Step 4: How do you screen enquiries and run viewings?
7. Step 5: How do you choose a tenant fairly?
8. Step 6: How do you reference a tenant and check Right to Rent?
9. Step 7: How do you set up the tenancy?
10. Step 8: How do you collect rent?
11. Step 9: How do you manage repairs and upkeep?
12. What have thousands of DIYers taught us?
13. When is it worth paying an agent instead?

Can you let a property yourself without an agent?

Yes. No law in England requires a landlord to use a letting agent, and your legal duties are identical either way: an agent only carries them out on your behalf. Letting it yourself means you take on the administration, the viewings and the paperwork, and you keep the fee.

The work runs in a fixed order: make the property legally ready, set an asking rent, advertise, screen enquiries and hold viewings, reference the tenant you choose, set up the tenancy, then collect rent and look after repairs for as long as it lasts. Each step has its own section below.

Rightmove is the practical exception. Its customer help centre tells private landlords that "we don't have any UK private property listings on Rightmove at all", because advertisers must be registered letting agents belonging to a redress scheme. Hello Neighbour and other online agents exist largely to close that gap: they list your property as the agent while you run the rest. If you are letting a single room in a shared house, SpareRoom is usually a better fit than any of the portals.

We built Hello Neighbour as landlords, for landlords. Thousands of DIY landlords have let through our platform, and what they tell us, combined with our own experience of running lets, shapes most of the advice below. If you are new to letting, our first-time landlord guide to self-letting covers the basics first.

How much does it cost to find a tenant yourself?

Between nothing and £128 for the advert and the tenancy paperwork, and the biggest variable is whether you want to appear on Rightmove. OpenRent lets you advertise on its own site for free, and its £29 Portal Advertising package adds Zoopla and other partner sites. Rightmove is a £70 upgrade on top, taking the total to £99. OpenRent's own advice is that "for most properties it is not needed to find a tenant", and in a busy area its free listing may well be enough.

Hello Neighbour's Get Listed costs £29 and includes Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket for three months, with the first seven days as a Featured listing on Rightmove. OpenRent's pricing page offers no Featured option. Both firms sell a step up that also handles the contract, deposit and first month's rent: OpenRent's Advertising + Rent Now at £58, or £128 with Rightmove, and our Get Rented at £59 with Rightmove and the Featured week included. We include Featured as standard because listings get most of their attention in the first few days, and that is the week it covers. Our guide to how our lettings packages work sets out the detail.

All prices include VAT, taken from each firm's website on 25 September 2026.

Add the certificates you need before anyone moves in. OpenRent's published prices start lower than ours on some of these, so compare both before you book. For what letting actually earns once every cost is counted, see our landlord economics research.

Step 1: How do you get the property ready to let?

Four safety checks come before any advert: gas, electrics, an EPC rated E or above, and working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. A Gas Safe registered engineer must check every gas appliance you provide at least once every 12 months, and the Health and Safety Executive says new tenants must get a copy of the record before they move in; our gas safety certificate guide explains the rules. The electrics need an inspection at least every five years under regulation 3 of the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020, with the report given to a new tenant before they occupy the property. Our EICR guide and how to judge whether an EICR is any good cover both.

The property needs an Energy Performance Certificate rated E or above, since GOV.UK guidance on the minimum energy efficiency standard (updated 5 May 2026) confirms landlords cannot let below E. Our EPC rules for landlords, the £10,000 cost cap and exemptions and which EPC improvements are worth paying for help if you are close to the line. The Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015 require a smoke alarm on every storey with living accommodation, a carbon monoxide alarm in any room with a fixed combustion appliance other than a gas cooker, and every alarm in working order on the day the tenancy begins.

Check whether your council runs selective or HMO licensing, because letting without a required licence carries a civil penalty of up to £40,000 per offence under section 249A of the Housing Act 2004, a cap the Renters' Rights Act 2025 raised from £30,000 on 1 May 2026. Our licensing guide and piece on the licensing crackdown explain how to find out. Read up on Legionella risk and the new landlord database before you start.

You can book a gas safety certificate, EICR or EPC through us or through any qualified local contractor. Get Rented also runs property compliance checks and checks your address against council selective and HMO licensing schemes.

Step 2: How do you set the right asking rent?

Price from comparable properties advertised nearby, and treat the figure as a ceiling, because since 1 May 2026 you cannot accept offers above it. Section 56 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 requires a specific rent in every advert and bans inviting, encouraging or accepting an offer above it, and GOV.UK's guide to the Renters' Rights Act confirms the same in plain terms. Bidding wars are gone, so an advert priced low stays low, and one priced too high sits unlet while you drop it in stages. You also cannot require more than one month's rent upfront.

Adjust the comparables for condition, outside space and transport. Our guides to getting a valuation right, what drives UK rental prices and how offers now work under the Act go further, and our monthly London rent reports, the latest being four months of the Renters' Rights effect, track where the market is moving. Get Listed includes unlimited data-led rental valuations, and 82% of properties on our platform let at the asking price.

Getting the valuation right is not only about the rent you receive. A rent set above what the market will bear is exactly what the Act's challenge mechanism exists to correct, so the figure needs comparable evidence behind it that you could show if asked.

Step 3: How do you advertise your property on Rightmove and Zoopla?

Through an online letting agent, because Rightmove takes listings only from registered agents: Get Listed puts you on Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket for £29, and OpenRent's Portal Advertising with the Rightmove upgrade does it for £99. Before that, get the advert right. A good advert does three jobs: it shows the property well, answers the obvious questions before they are asked and puts off people for whom the home is wrong. Good light, a floor plan and a clear description of what is and is not included do more than any amount of adjectives. Our guides on whether your property looks rental ready and why professional photos, video and floor plans matter explain what tenants respond to, and professional photos and a floor plan cost £79 through us.

Then decide how much reach you want. Rightmove's Q2 2026 Rental Trends Tracker puts the average rental home at 10 enquiries, against 11 a year earlier and 22 at the 2022 peak, and we set out in why Rightmove matters for landlords why we think portal reach is worth having as the market cools. Listings on Hello Neighbour average 37 enquiries, nearly four times that Rightmove figure, and reach an accepted offer in an average of six days. Those two measures are not perfectly like for like: Rightmove counts enquiries across every listing on its site, while ours is the average across our own platform, most of it in London. Every listing runs as Featured for its first week, and we looked at what that slot does in does Rightmove Featured really work?

If you are weighing up the two main online options, our OpenRent and Hello Neighbour comparison looks at how the self-letting market has changed, and why Get Listed works for DIYers explains our approach.

Step 4: How do you screen enquiries and run viewings?

Screen before you book, because a popular listing produces more enquiries than anyone can view. When we analysed 8,304 pre-qualification messages between DIY landlords and prospective tenants, landlords asked about employment and income in 96% of exchanges, household make-up in 84%, move-in timing in 81%, pets and smoking in 75% and guarantors in 72%. Previous landlord references came up in only 20%. We have written our own short set of questions, and asking the same set of everyone keeps you consistent and fair as well as giving you the best chance of finding the right tenant; our guide to screening viewing requests goes into more detail. Get Listed pre-screens household, income, affordability and ID before a request reaches you, and answers tenant phone enquiries for you.

Book viewings close together so you are not travelling back and forth, stay with every visitor and ask to see ID on the day. Watch for the warning signs in our letting fraud guide. If you cannot be there, a friend can stand in, or you can pay for accompanied viewings: Get Viewings costs £45 per 30-minute viewing with us, and OpenRent's start from £49. Our guide to viewings and the note on smarter viewing management cover the practicalities. Across our platform, 70% of vetted viewings turn into offers.

Step 5: How do you choose a tenant fairly?

Choose on affordability, track record and fit, and apply the same test to everyone. The Renters' Rights Act 2025 made it illegal to refuse prospective tenants because they have children or receive benefits, so a "no DSS" or "no children" policy is now unlawful. Tenants can also ask to keep a pet, and our pets guide explains how you must respond. Our five-step guide to finding the right tenant walks through the selection itself.

Once you have chosen, take a holding deposit to take the property off the market. Schedule 1 of the Tenant Fees Act 2019 caps it at one week's rent. Get Rented collects it within 24 hours.

Step 6: How do you reference a tenant and check Right to Rent?

Referencing confirms identity, credit history, income and previous tenancies, and Right to Rent is a separate legal check you must run on every adult who will live there. OpenRent's DIY landlord guide (updated 12 January 2026) says agents typically charge £70 to £80 per tenant for referencing; OpenRent and Hello Neighbour both charge £30 per reference, ours through Get Reference. What each check shows, and where fraud slips through, is in our guide to how tenant referencing works. If you want rent guarantee cover as well, ours, Rent & Legal Protection, costs £250 against £299 for OpenRent's, and our article asks whether rent guarantee cover is worth it.

For Right to Rent, GOV.UK says you must check every adult aged 18 or over who will live in the property, including anyone not named on the tenancy, before it starts, and that it is against the law to check only people you think are not British citizens.

Step 7: How do you set up the tenancy?

Give the tenant a written APT (Assured Periodic Tenancy) agreement, protect the deposit within 30 days and record the property's condition before they move in. New tenancies in England have been assured periodic tenancies with no fixed end date since 1 May 2026, and GOV.UK's guide to the Renters' Rights Act says every tenancy needs a written agreement carrying specific information: your name and address, the rent and when it is due, the deposit and who is responsible for repairs. Our Renters' Rights toolkit and what landlords need to know about the Act cover the wider changes.

The deposit is capped at five weeks' rent where the annual rent is under £50,000, and six weeks above that, under Schedule 1 of the Tenant Fees Act 2019. It must go into a government-approved protection scheme within 30 days of receipt, per GOV.UK, and the process is in our guide to tenancy deposit protection. Arrange an independent inventory and check-in so that any later dispute over the deposit rests on evidence; we explain why an independent inventory matters and how much it can save, and you can book one through our inventory service for £95, or £145 with a check-in. Decide how keys will be handed over and who holds spares, as our note on key management suggests.

This is the stage where a DIY service earns most of its fee. Get Rented generates the tenancy contract for digital signature, registers the deposit with MyDeposits and collects the first month's rent, all for £59 including the advert. OpenRent's Rent Now covers similar ground. Our post on Get Rented for first-time landlords describes how it works, and why the upgrade from Get Listed costs £30 explains the difference between the two.

Step 8: How do you collect rent?

Ask the tenant to set up a standing order for the day after payday and check your account on the due date every month; OpenRent's DIY landlord guide gives the same advice. If a payment is late, contact the tenant the same day and keep a written record of every exchange. Early, polite contact is the best chance of stopping arrears from building. Our tenant guide to paying rent is worth sharing at move-in.

Rent reviews follow a set process. GOV.UK's guide to the Renters' Rights Act says you can raise the rent at most once every 12 months, with at least two months' notice, using the Section 13 procedure only. If you would rather someone else chased payments, OpenRent's rent collection costs £10 a month. Our Rent Collection Plus costs £30 a month and adds a dedicated property manager, arrears chasing, compliance monitoring and key management, so which is better value depends on how much of that you want.

Step 9: How do you manage repairs and upkeep?

Under section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 you are responsible for keeping the structure and exterior in repair, along with the installations for water, gas, electricity, sanitation, heating and hot water. Give tenants one clear way to report problems, reply quickly, and keep dated records of every report and repair. Keep a digital file for each property covering certificates, deposit paperwork, licences, Right to Rent checks and repairs; you will need most of it for the landlord database in any case.

Our guides to what really goes wrong in a rental property and how to take care of your rental property show where the money usually goes. A visit every six months catches small problems before they become big ones, as we set out in why property inspections matter, and a mid-tenancy inspection costs £85 if you cannot go yourself.

For emergencies, OpenRent's Management Plus costs £19 a month and includes 24-hour phone support and up to three emergency repairs a year at no extra cost. For emergency cover alone, that is cheaper than anything we offer. Our Management Complete service is a different product at £150 a month for one to three bedrooms: a dedicated property manager, six-monthly inspections, Section 13 rent reviews and vetted tradespeople charged at cost with no mark-up.

What have thousands of DIYers taught us?

Four things: price, screening, compliance and portal reach. Running a platform that thousands of DIY landlords use to let their own homes shows you where self-letting goes smoothly and where it catches people out.

The first is price. Under the new rules the asking rent is the ceiling, so the figure you advertise is the most you will get. Across our platform 82% of properties let at the asking price, which makes the hour spent on comparables before listing the best-paid hour of the whole process.

The second is screening. Our analysis of 8,304 conversations shows DIY landlords ask about income almost every time and previous landlords only one time in five. The previous landlord is the one person who has watched this tenant pay rent and look after a home, and it costs nothing to ask.

The third is compliance. Certificates, licensing and the right contract are the part of the job with the highest cost of getting it wrong: the civil penalty for a serious or repeat breach of the Renters' Rights Act runs to £40,000, and an unlicensed property can carry the same.

The fourth is portal reach. In our experience Rightmove, and the Featured slot in a listing's first week, change both the number and the quality of prospective tenants you see, which is why Get Listed includes both at no extra cost.

When is it worth paying an agent instead?

When you live far from the property, are letting several at once or do not have the time for weekday viewings and paperwork. Doing it yourself suits landlords who live nearby, can make viewings and are comfortable with the administration. In the other cases a full tenant find is money well spent. Ours, Get Rented Pro, costs £1,440 including VAT, paid only on move-in, and covers the photos, valuation, accompanied viewings, referencing, contract and deposit; our article on how Get Rented Pro works explains more. If you have already found a tenant yourself, Get Moved-In Pro costs £490.

If the goal is the lowest possible cost and your property is in high demand, OpenRent's free listing is hard to beat. If you want Rightmove from day one, a Featured slot and support when you need it, Get Listed and Get Rented are built for that. Either way the legal steps above are the same, and how self-service letting works and how our lettings services fit together show the two routes side by side.

Sources

Legislation. Renters' Rights Act 2025, section 56 (rental bidding). Tenant Fees Act 2019, Schedule 1 (holding deposit and deposit caps). Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, section 11 (repairing obligations). Housing Act 2004, section 249A (civil penalties, as amended by the Renters' Rights Act 2025). Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020, regulation 3. Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015.

Government. GOV.UK, Guide to the Renters' Rights Act (updated 6 November 2025). GOV.UK, Renting out your property. GOV.UK, Tenancy deposit protection. GOV.UK, Check your tenant's right to rent. GOV.UK, Domestic private rented property: minimum energy efficiency standard (updated 5 May 2026). Health and Safety Executive, Gas safety for landlords.

Sector. Rightmove customer help centre, private landlord advertising. Rightmove Rental Trends Tracker, Q2 2026 (July 2026) and Q4 2025 (15 January 2026). OpenRent pricing and Rightmove and Zoopla advertising pages, read 25 September 2026. OpenRent, DIY Landlord: How to Rent Out Your Property Without an Agent (5 August 2025, updated 12 January 2026).

Hello Neighbour. Platform data as published on our self-service, viewings and landlord pages on 25 September 2026: 37 average enquiries per listing, six days from listing to accepted offer, 82% let at asking price, 70% of vetted viewings leading to offers, and our analysis of 8,304 pre-qualification messages.

This guide is general information for landlords letting property in England and is not legal or financial advice. The law and prices it describes were correct when we checked them on 25 September 2026 and may have changed since. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have different rules. Hello Neighbour is a letting agent and sells some of the services mentioned; competitor prices were taken from their own websites on the same date. If your circumstances are unusual, take advice from a solicitor or other qualified adviser before acting.

Ready to find your own tenant? Get Listed puts your property on Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket for £29, Featured on Rightmove for the first week. Sign up free.