A tenancy agreement is the biggest contract most people sign without reading it properly.
Not because they are careless. Because the document is written to be hard to parse unless you pay someone by the hour to parse it for you.
Most UK renters get the agreement about 48 hours before they need to sign. They are moving cities, juggling viewings, coordinating furniture. The last thing they have time for is 40 pages of clauses.
So they sign.
Six months later they find out the landlord wants £150 for a professional clean they never agreed to. Or that the deposit was not protected properly. Or that the break clause they thought they had does not exist.
Here is what to check before you sign, and what AI document review can and cannot do about it.
Why Tenancy Agreements Are Hard to Read
A friend moved into a flat in Hackney a couple of years ago. First time renting in London. She asked me to look at the agreement because she knew I had worked on legal document tools.
It was a mess.
The deposit clause referenced the wrong scheme. The repair obligations sat almost entirely with the tenant. There was a clause about reasonable wear and tear that contradicted itself two pages later.
She took the list back to the agent. They fixed some of it. She signed.
But she only caught any of it because she happened to know someone who reads contracts. Most people do not.
That is the real gap. Not the law, the access to someone who can read it.
Solicitors are expensive for a routine review. Citizens Advice is stretched. Shelter is excellent and cannot read every agreement in the country.
Which leaves you doing it yourself. So do it in a structured way, rather than reading top to bottom and hoping something jumps out.
Start with the six things below.
The Six Things Worth Checking First
Most of the trouble in a UK tenancy comes from a small number of clauses. Read those before anything else.
You are not looking for elegant drafting. You are looking for terms that are missing, vague, or heavier on you than the law allows.
Check the following, in this order:
- Deposit protection: which scheme it goes into, and that it will be protected within 30 days
- Rent increases: how much notice, how often, and whether the amount is capped or open-ended
- Repairs and maintenance: what the landlord is responsible for, and what has been pushed onto you
- Break clauses and notice periods: when either side can end the tenancy, and how much notice each must give
- Fees and charges: anything you are asked to pay beyond rent and deposit, checked against the Tenant Fees Act 2019
- Unfair terms: anything one-sided or unclear, which the Consumer Rights Act 2015 may make unenforceable
Read them before you sign if you can. If you have already signed, read them anyway, because knowing what you agreed to changes how you handle the next disagreement.
Earlier is better. Later is still worth doing.
Deposit, Rent, Fees and Repairs in Detail
Deposit protection is the one most likely to go wrong and the one with the clearest rules. In England and Wales your deposit must go into a government-approved scheme within 30 days, and you must be given the prescribed information. If the agreement is vague about which scheme, ask before signing.
Rent increase clauses are the ones most likely to be vague. "Rent may be reviewed annually" tells you nothing. You want the mechanism, the notice period, and either a cap or a stated index.
Fees are the easiest to check, because the Tenant Fees Act 2019 sets out what a landlord or agent in England can charge for. If the agreement mentions admin fees, renewal fees, or a compulsory professional clean at the end, that is worth a question.
Repair obligations are where the exact wording matters most. A clause making you responsible for keeping the property in good repair is doing far more work than it looks like it is doing.
If one of these is missing rather than wrong, that is still a finding. Silence in a contract is where arguments start.
What to Do When You Find Something
Finding a bad clause is not the same as being stuck with it.
Ask the agent in writing. Email, not a phone call. You want the answer in a form you can point at later.
Ask for the change in writing too. Plenty of clauses are template leftovers nobody has looked at in years, and agents will often amend them rather than lose the let.
If they will not change it, you have a decision to make. Sign anyway, or walk away. That is your call, and no document review can make it for you.
What checking gives you is not certainty. It is making that decision knowing what is actually in the contract.
Where AI Document Review Actually Helps
AI is genuinely good at a narrow part of this, and it happens to be the part that stops most people.
It reads the whole document quickly, without getting bored on page 22. That matters, because the clause that costs you money is rarely on page one.
It is good at spotting absence. A missing deposit scheme, a missing notice period, a missing landlord address. Absence is exactly what a tired human reader skims past.
It is good at translating. Take a clause, ask what it means in plain English, then ask what it would mean for you in a specific situation.
And it is good at generating questions. Even where it is unsure, "ask your agent about this clause" is a useful output.
For a routine assured shorthold tenancy, that covers most of the value of a first-pass read.
Where It Does Not
AI document review is not legal advice, and that is not a disclaimer, it is a real limit.
It does not know your situation. Whether a clause is a problem often turns on facts that are not in the document: what you were told at the viewing, what the last tenant experienced, what the landlord has done before.
It is confident when it is wrong. A model explains an incorrect reading as fluently as a correct one, and tenancy rules change, so anything working from older material can be out of date.
It cannot act for you. In a dispute, a possession claim, or anything heading towards a court, you need a person: a solicitor, Shelter, or your local Citizens Advice.
Treat it as a reader that never gets tired, not as an adviser. Use the output as a list of questions to ask, not as a verdict to rely on.
A Practical Way to Use It
If you do run your agreement through a general AI tool, a few things make the output more useful.
Give it the whole document, not a screenshot of the one clause worrying you. Context changes meaning.
Tell it where the property is. The rules differ across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and a model will happily apply the wrong ones.
Ask what is missing as well as what is there. That is the question people forget to ask.
Then check anything important against gov.uk, Shelter or Citizens Advice before you act on it. Two minutes on a primary source beats a confident paragraph.
And think about privacy. A tenancy agreement carries your name, your address and often your income. Know what happens to a document once you upload it somewhere.
If You Are About to Sign
Read the six clauses above. Ask about anything vague. Get the answers in writing.
If something is wrong, push back before you sign. You have far more room to negotiate before your name is on it than after.
If you have already signed and something feels off, check what you agreed to anyway. It changes how you handle whatever comes next.
None of that needs a solicitor. It needs an hour and a list.
Where to Get Real Help
For anything beyond a pre-signing read, go to a person.
Shelter has free advice for renters in England and Scotland. Citizens Advice covers the whole UK. gov.uk carries the deposit protection rules and the current model tenancy agreement.
Your council's private housing team handles disrepair and licensing complaints, and is often more responsive than people expect.
If you are facing eviction, get advice straight away rather than waiting to see what happens. The deadlines are short.
The agreement is the start of the relationship, not a formality at the end of the viewing. Read it like it matters, because it does.
Questions about this, or about building AI tools for document-heavy problems? Email hello@marvanova.com.