Landlord guides
Advice for Doncaster landlords, written from experience
Practical answers on fees, compliance and running a tenancy well, from a local Propertymark regulated team.
Everything published here comes from the same place: the questions Doncaster landlords actually ask us. How much do letting agents charge, and what do the percentages hide? Which certificates does a rental legally need before a tenant moves in? What does the end of Section 21 and the arrival of the Renters' Rights reforms mean for an ordinary landlord with one or two properties? When a question keeps coming up at valuations, we write the answer down and publish it.
The guides are written by the team that manages tenancies across Doncaster and South Yorkshire every working day, not by a content agency. That matters for one simple reason: the advice has to survive contact with real tenancies. When we recommend a gas engineer's paperwork routine or a way of handling a deposit dispute, it is because it is the routine we use ourselves for the properties in our care.
Use them however helps. If you self manage, the compliance checklist is the one to bookmark, and our compliance service can backstop the certificates if you want a professional watching the renewal dates. If you are weighing up agents, start with the guide to letting agent fees in Doncaster and hold every quote you receive against our own published fee list. If you are weighing up a purchase, our free rental yield calculator turns an asking price and a rent into gross and net yield in seconds. And if you have just become a landlord without quite meaning to, the accidental landlord's guide covers the first steps in order.
If your question is not answered below, ask it directly. Call 01302 244104 or send us a message, and if it is a question we hear often, it will probably become the next guide.
Rental yields in Doncaster: how to work yours out
Gross yield tells you almost nothing on its own. Here is the method for getting to a net figure, and the local costs a Doncaster landlord has to put into it.
HMO licensing in Doncaster: what landlords must know
The mandatory HMO test, why it is not the same as selective licensing, and the points where only Doncaster Council can give you the answer.
Deposits: protecting, deducting and winning disputes
How deposit protection works, why it now decides whether you can get possession, and what evidence adjudicators expect before they allow a deduction.
Fully managed or let only: choosing a service
An honest comparison of let only and full management, including the landlords for whom let only is genuinely the better choice.
How to reference a tenant properly
What a full tenant reference should cover, the checks most landlords skip, and how selection criteria have to work now that benefit and child discrimination is prohibited.
Selective licensing in Doncaster: who needs a licence
Hexthorpe is the only selective licensing scheme running in Doncaster, it ends on 1 March 2027, and letting there without a licence carries a penalty of up to £30,000.
Damp, mould and where Awaab's Law stands
The honest position on Awaab's Law for private landlords, plus how to tell the three types of damp apart and what to do when a tenant reports mould.
Letting a property in Doncaster: a landlord's guide
A practical sequence for letting a Doncaster property, covering local demand, compliance, licensing, management options, referencing and deposits.
Your tenancy agreement since May 2026
Since 1 May 2026 every new tenancy needs a written statement of terms, and most pre-2026 agreement templates now contain clauses that do nothing or are unlawful.
How to raise the rent legally in 2026
Form 4A, once a year, two months' notice, and a figure you can defend at tribunal. How to put the rent up properly since the Renters' Rights Act.
Section 21 has gone: how possession works now
A plain account of how landlord possession works after the abolition of Section 21, covering grounds, notice periods, arrears, deposits and record keeping.
Every tenancy is periodic now: what changed
Since 1 May 2026 every assured tenancy rolls on with no end date, which changes how landlords plan voids, notice and sales.