On the ONS median London two-bed of £1,800 a month, the most a landlord or agent can lawfully collect from you before you get the keys is about £3,877: five weeks' deposit (£2,076.92) plus one month's rent (£1,800), with a week's holding deposit (£415.38) counting towards that total rather than sitting on top of it. That is the ceiling, not an opening position. And none of it can be taken until the tenancy agreement has been signed by everyone.
The old London routine of "six months up front and we'll consider you" died on 1 May 2026, when phase one of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 came into force. Agents who have not updated their process are not being cheeky. They are exposed to a civil penalty from the council.
What can lawfully be asked for before you move in
Three payments, in this order, and nothing else.
| Payment | Cap | When it can be taken | Legal source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Holding deposit | One week's rent | Before signing, to reserve the property | Tenant Fees Act 2019 |
| Security deposit | Five weeks' rent (six if annual rent is £50,000 or more) | After the agreement is signed | Tenant Fees Act 2019 |
| Rent in advance | One month (or 28 days for shorter rent periods) | After the agreement is signed, and it can be required before the tenancy start date | Renters' Rights Act 2025 |
The weekly figure is not guesswork. The Tenant Fees Act sets the formula: monthly rent multiplied by 12, divided by 52. On £1,800 a month that is £415.38 a week, so the five-week deposit cap is £2,076.92 and not the £2,250 some agents still quote from memory.
Holding deposits are held for a maximum of 15 days unless you both agree a longer deadline, and only one holding deposit can be taken per property at a time. If the tenancy goes ahead, the money must go towards your rent or deposit.
The six-week deposit band only bites above £50,000 annual rent, which means a monthly rent above roughly £4,167. Even Kensington and Chelsea, the most expensive local authority in the country on ONS figures at an average of £3,596 a month in June 2026, sits below that line on average. If you are being asked for six weeks on an ordinary flat, someone has misread the Act.
The sequence is the part agents get wrong
Two separate provisions of the Renters' Rights Act do the work here.
Section 9 prohibits a landlord or agent from inviting, encouraging or accepting any rent payment before the tenancy agreement is in force. Not "taking" it. Inviting it. The email asking you to transfer the first month's rent so they can draw up the paperwork is itself the breach. According to OpenRent's guidance on the new rules, accepting rent before that point exposes the landlord or agent to a civil penalty of up to £7,000 from the local authority, and reporting by Yahoo News in June 2026 notes that repeat breaches under the Act escalate towards a £40,000 ceiling.
Section 8 deals with what happens once you are in. Any term in a post-1 May 2026 agreement requiring rent to be paid more than one month in advance, or before the first day of the rent period it covers, is of no legal effect. It does not bind you. Rent periods themselves cannot exceed one calendar month, which is why quarterly-in-advance clauses have vanished from new London agreements.
One nuance worth knowing before you argue with anyone: paying early voluntarily is not an offence. If you choose to pay two months because it suits your cash flow, that is lawful. The prohibition is on the demand, the invitation and the contractual requirement. Which is exactly why some agents now phrase it as an option. "Some applicants like to offer more up front" is an invitation dressed as an observation, and it is the same breach.
What to say when it happens
Keep it in writing, and keep it flat. Email or WhatsApp, never a phone call you cannot evidence:
"Happy to proceed. To confirm: I'll pay the holding deposit of one week's rent now, and the five-week deposit plus one month's rent once the agreement is signed. I understand section 9 of the Renters' Rights Act means no rent can be invited or accepted before signing, so I'll hold off on anything further until then."
That sentence does two things. It shows you know the rule, and it creates a record with a date on it. In practice most agents drop the request immediately, because the penalty falls on them personally as well as on the landlord.
Then read the agreement properly before you sign it, particularly the rent clause and anything about payment dates and "advance" periods. Our guide to what to look for in a tenancy agreement covers the clauses that still catch people out under the new regime.
The maths on the ONS median two-bed
ONS puts the median rent for a two-bedroom flat in London at £1,800 a month, drawing on its Price Index of Private Rents and its ad-hoc Private Rental Market in London statistics for early 2026. A one-bed sits at £1,495. Those are rents actually being paid, not asking prices on portals, which is why they read lower than what you see advertised in Zone 2.
On £1,800 a month, here is the before and after.
- Lawful maximum now: £2,076.92 deposit plus £1,800 rent, total £3,876.92, with the £415.38 holding deposit absorbed into that figure.
- A six-months-up-front demand in 2025: £10,800 rent plus £2,076.92 deposit, total £12,876.92.
The difference is roughly £9,000 of cash you no longer need to have sitting in an account to be taken seriously. For anyone moving between London flats, that is the whole point of the reform: the deposit from your old place, once returned, now roughly covers the deposit on the new one.
Worth checking your rent against the local median before you commit, because you can challenge an above-market rent at the First-tier Tribunal within the first six months of a new tenancy, and rent increases now come only via the new section 13 notice on Form 4A. We cover the process in how to challenge a London rent increase at the tribunal.
If your tenancy was already running on 1 May 2026
The carve-out is narrow but real. The NRLA's guidance on pre-May tenancies confirms that where a tenancy was agreed before 1 May 2026 and already contained an arrangement for rent to be collected in advance, the landlord may continue collecting it on those terms until that tenancy comes to an end. Lexology's summary of the Act puts it the same way: advance rent clauses in pre-1 May 2026 agreements are preserved.
So if you signed in March 2026 and paid six months up front, you cannot claw it back, and a quarterly-in-advance clause from 2024 can still be enforced against you for now.
Two things do change for you regardless. Most existing assured and assured shorthold tenancies converted to the new assured periodic regime on 1 May 2026, which removed Section 21 no-fault eviction and made your tenancy periodic. And you can now end it yourself with two months' notice at any point, without giving a reason. If you are sitting on a preserved advance-rent clause you dislike, that notice right is your exit. When the tenancy ends, the clause dies with it, and anything you sign afterwards falls under the one-month cap.
Landlords also had to serve the government's Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet 2026 on existing tenants by 31 May 2026. If yours never arrived, that is a compliance failure worth noting in writing.
What has replaced the lump sum
The money has not stopped being asked for. It has changed shape.
Bigger guarantor demands. A UK-based guarantor with their own income and, often, property is now the default fix for a borderline application. Fraser & Co's guidance to landlords on the ban is explicit that guarantors should be referenced as thoroughly as the tenant. Read the guarantor deed before your parent signs it: check whether the liability is capped at a fixed sum, whether it covers damage as well as rent, and whether it ends when the tenancy period ends or rolls on indefinitely.
Rent guarantee insurance. This is a landlord-side product, but useful to know about. PropertyGoose's guide to renting without a guarantor puts typical cover at around £100 to £300 per tenancy per year, and notes that policies generally require the tenant to have passed referencing anyway. If an agent says the landlord is nervous rather than unconvinced, suggesting they insure the risk sometimes unsticks the application.
Harder referencing. Goodlord's analysis of the ban warns that applications previously solved with a lump sum now get more scrutiny instead, with open banking data and payment history used to fill the gap. It also cites the State of the Lettings Industry Report 2025 finding that one in five renters had used advance payments to secure a home because they could not provide a guarantor. International students, recent arrivals and the self-employed are feeling this most.
Deposit replacement products. These can only be offered as a genuine choice against a conventional five-week deposit. Property Redress is clear that requiring a non-refundable insurance premium instead of a deposit, without offering the alternative, is a prohibited payment under the Tenant Fees Act.
If your budget is the binding constraint, subsidised and discounted stock is worth a look before you stretch to a guarantor arrangement you are uneasy about: see how to find newly subsidised flats in London.
Reporting an agent who asks for six months up front
Enforcement sits with local authority trading standards, and London boroughs are already publishing the route. Southwark Council's trading standards page says plainly that if you are asked to offer more rent than advertised, or to pay more than a month's rent in advance, you should contact trading standards. Every borough has an equivalent team.
Practical order:
- Get it in writing. Ask the agent to confirm the request by email. Screenshot listings, portal messages and the advertised rent.
- Report to the borough's trading standards team. Use the borough where the property is, not where you live. Shelter's guidance also points to the Citizens Advice consumer service as a route into trading standards.
- Complain to the agent's redress scheme. All letting agents must belong to a government-approved scheme, but as Southwark notes, schemes normally only accept complaints once you have been through the agent's own complaints procedure first. Do that in writing, and keep the dates.
- Note the rent-bidding angle. If the same agent invited you to offer above the advertised rent, that is a separate breach carrying its own civil penalty of up to £7,000, and failing to state the proposed rent in the advertisement is another.
You do not need to have paid anything for a breach to have occurred. The invitation is enough, which makes the email you were sent the only evidence anyone needs.