How to write a letting advert that attracts the right tenant
A practical six-step guide for UK letting agents: gather the facts first, structure the advert properly, and include the material information portals now expect.
A good letting advert does two jobs at once. It persuades the right tenant to enquire, and it quietly filters out the applicants who were never going to work — wrong budget, wrong move date, wrong expectations. Most weak adverts fail at the second job: they describe the flat beautifully and leave out the facts a serious applicant needs. Here is how to write a letting advert that does both, step by step.
Step 1: gather the facts before you write a word
Under the material information framework published by National Trading Standards (NTSELAT), Part A — which took effect in May 2022 — covers the basics every lettings listing should state: the rent, the deposit and the council tax band. Portals built fields for these, so collect them up front along with the other details tenants filter by.
| Fact | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Rent (per calendar month) | Part A material information, and the first thing tenants filter by |
| Deposit | Part A for lettings; applicants budget their move-in costs around it |
| Council tax band | Part A; Rightmove displays it prominently on the listing |
| EPC rating | Shown prominently on portals and a proxy for running costs |
| Furnishing | Furnished, part-furnished or unfurnished changes who applies |
| Availability date | Removes timing mismatches before they reach your inbox |
Writing with these facts in front of you takes minutes. Chasing them after the advert is live wastes days and invites portal flags. Our material information checklist covers the full list, including the Part B and Part C items introduced in November 2023.
Step 2: write a headline that filters
The headline's job is not to attract everyone — it is to make the right tenant click and the wrong tenant scroll past. A reliable formula: property type, plus the single strongest concrete feature, plus one qualifying detail such as furnishing or availability.
- Weak: "Stunning must-see flat in popular area"
- Better: "Two-bedroom first-floor flat with allocated parking — furnished, available September"
- Better: "Three-bedroom semi with south-facing garden, five minutes from the station — unfurnished"
Concrete beats superlative every time. "Allocated parking" filters; "stunning" does not.
Step 3: structure the body like a viewing
Three rules keep the body copy tight and useful:
- Lead with the strongest feature. Whatever would make a tenant choose this property over the identical one down the road — the garden, the parking, the walk to the station — goes in the first sentence, not the fourth paragraph.
- Describe rooms in walk-through order. Front door, hallway, living room, kitchen, then bedrooms and bathroom. Tenants mentally rehearse the viewing; a jumbled room order reads as a jumbled property.
- Be honest about condition. "Neutrally decorated and ready to move into" and "would suit a tenant happy with dated but functional fittings" both let the right applicant self-select. Overclaiming just produces viewings that end in silence — and describing a property as something it is not can amount to a misleading practice under consumer protection law.
Step 4: add the material information block
End every letting advert with a plainly labelled block of facts: rent, deposit, council tax band, EPC rating, furnishing, availability, heating type and parking. This is where the material information framework earns its keep. Part A covers rent, deposit and council tax band; Part B applies to every property and includes property type, rooms, utilities, heating, broadband type, mobile signal and parking; Part C covers matters that apply where relevant, such as flood risk or listed-building restrictions. Our guide to material information Parts A, B and C explains each part in detail.
This is not optional polish. Since May 2024, Rightmove flags or blocks lettings listings that are missing key material information fields, so an advert without them can underperform or fail to publish cleanly. The legal backdrop matters too: omitting material information could be a misleading omission under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, and from 6 April 2025 that duty continues under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. NTSELAT withdrew its detailed guidance in April 2025 pending new CMA guidance, but the portals kept their material information fields — so the practical requirement has not gone anywhere.
Step 5: phrases to avoid
- Blanket bans on groups of tenants. Wording in the style of "no DSS" or "no benefits" is widely regarded as poor practice, and major portals generally have policies against it. Assess affordability case by case instead of excluding a group in the advert itself.
- Empty superlatives. "Stunning", "must see" and "deceptively spacious" carry no information. Replace each one with the fact that prompted it.
- Anything you cannot stand behind. If you have not verified it, do not state it. Leaving out a known problem is as risky as inventing a virtue.
Step 6: a worked example
Here is the structure in practice — headline, strongest feature first, walk-through order, honest condition, then the material information block:
Write the next one in minutes, not an hour
Every step above is repeatable — which means it can be templated. NippyListings offers a free letting advert generator that builds this exact structure from the facts you enter, with prompts for the material information fields as you go. If you handle lettings stock regularly, see how our lettings listing generator approaches rent, deposit and council tax band as first-class inputs rather than afterthoughts. Compliance-aware AI drafting and bulk generation for larger portfolios are on our roadmap, with planned pricing from £29 per month — the free generator is live today. For sales copy, our companion guide on how to write property descriptions that sell covers the same method for the sales side.