Just because they don't know their landlord rights well enough, too many rental property owners suffer from painful and unnecessary mistakes. Find out your rights as a landlord today so that you can manage your tenants easily and smoothly.

Disclaimer: Please note that the advice given below are just general guidelines to help out members of this forum. If you need any legal aid, you should look for a landlord tenant lawyer from your area.

What are Your Landlord Rights for Collecting Rent Payments?

- As a landlord you have the right to collect rent payments from your tenants on the date it is due.

- For most types of rental properties, you are free to set the amount of rent as long as your tenant agrees to it. If your area imposes a rent ceiling or you have a regulated tenancy, you are not allowed to set your rent amount over the legal limit.

- If your tenant is late in his rent payments, you are allowed to impose late fee charges as long as the amount is considered reasonable by the laws of your area and your rental agreement mentions this point.

What are Your Landlord Rights for Managing Your Tenants?

- If your tenants have anyone staying over on your rental property for a prolonged period of time, they have to inform you of the matter. It is your rights as a landlord to decide if you want to keep the person as an additional tenant or ask him to leave.

- You are allowed to enter your rental property for rent collection and property maintenance if you notify your tenants at 24 to 48 hours beforehand.

- In the case of emergency repairs such as a burst water pipe, you are allowed to access to your rental property immediately without informing your tenant.

- If your tenant causes any damage to your property due to abuse or neglect, you have the landlord rights to demand him to make timely repairs and fork out money for any repair bills.

What are Your Rights When it Comes to Security Deposits?

- You have the right to ask your tenants for security deposits when they sign the rental agreement with you.

- The amount of security deposit you can ask for depends on your local landlord tenant law but you are generally limited to 2 month's rent as the maximum amount you can demand.

- If you want, you can actually choose not to ask for any security deposits to attract more tenants but personally I won't recommend you to do that because you will be giving up an effective safeguard against nasty tenants.

- At the end of your lease agreement, you are allowed to deduct money from the security deposits if your tenants still owe you rent, have unpaid bills or caused property damage.

Thank you for posting this informative article. I would appreciate some advice on the following. I am a landlord and I have agreed that my tenant can end the tenancy early. I furnished the property at her request so I will be out of pocket. Can I ask for a contribution to readvertising the property? (UK)

You can ask, but the tenant is under no obligation to make any additional payments to you. The original terms of tenancy as per the contractual agreement stand. It would have been prudent to end one tenancy and start a new one with different terms at the point when you agreed to furnish the property, thereby increasing the rent to a small degree to cover the expense. Offering early termination to the tenant (known as voluntary surrender) is also the appropriate point to agree any costs that may be borne by you as a direct result. Unfortunately, the fact that you did not make such an agreement (or so it would seem) means the tenant is not liable to any additional costs or expenses incurred by yourself or for that matter any loss of income or re-advertising costs. This is perhaps a very good example of why landlords need to consider their lettings as a business ... and thus apply a business approach to undertakings with tenants, putting everything in writing and carefully considering the cost and legal repercussions of making any variation to the original agreement.