A new rent review platform has launched in England just weeks before the Renters’ Rights Act rewrites how landlords and agents justify rent increases. MarketRent says its system is designed to help users build an evidence trail around proposed uplifts instead of relying on ad hoc comparables and email chains.
Need the wider rent-rule picture? Read Landlord Knowledge’s Rent increase rules guide for the Section 13 process, tribunal challenge risk and the key compliance points landlords should watch.
Rent reviews are becoming a compliance process
The launch is a sign of where the market is heading. After 1 May, rent increases in England will attract more scrutiny, more tenant challenges and more interest in what evidence a landlord can actually produce if a proposed increase is disputed.
MarketRent, founded by Fixflo co-founders Rajeev Nayyar and Duncan Careless, says it will let agents, property managers and build-to-rent operators pull together comparable rents, index data and landlord approvals in one workflow. The company has also launched a free indexation tool using Office for National Statistics data as a starting point for discussions.
For landlords, the bigger story is not the software itself. It is the commercial response to the new regime. Businesses do not build specialist products unless they think demand is coming, and in this case the demand is likely to come from a market bracing for more tribunal threats and more document-heavy rent reviews.
That shift is already visible in landlord strategy. Recent Landlord Knowledge coverage on regional rent trends and investor caution ahead of RRA points to a sector that is trying to protect income while regulation tightens.
Tribunal risk is shaping landlord behaviour before 1 May
The old habit of testing the market with an ambitious increase and seeing what sticks looks less safe under the incoming rules. Landlords and agents will need to show why a figure is defensible, how it compares with local evidence and whether the communication around the increase is clear.
That does not mean every landlord needs a new software subscription. But it does mean the sector is moving towards a more formal rent-setting process, especially for larger portfolios and agents managing multiple reviews each month.
This follows Landlord Knowledge’s March report on the key RRA changes landlords must prepare for, which highlighted how routine management tasks were becoming more compliance-heavy before commencement. The arrival of dedicated rent review software suggests landlords are already adjusting to that reality.
The risk for smaller landlords is that they carry on as before and only discover the standard has changed when a tenant challenges an increase. In that sense, products like MarketRent are less about innovation than about the cost of getting the basics wrong.
Landlords and agents can see the platform overview on the MarketRent website.
What this means for landlords
- If you expect to raise rents after 1 May: gather comparables, local evidence and a written rationale before serving notice.
- Watch for: more tenant challenges where increases look opportunistic or poorly evidenced.
- Bottom line: rent reviews are moving away from intuition and towards process, paperwork and proof.
Editor’s view
The real message here is not that a proptech firm has launched. It is that landlords now need systems for things they once handled informally. When software appears for a problem, it usually means the problem is already here.
Author: Editorial Team – UK landlord & buy-to-let news, policy, and finance
Published: 14 April 2026
Sources: MarketRent
Related reading: UK rents plateau as regional divides widen in March
📘 Renters’ Rights Act: Complete Landlord Guide
Everything you need to know about the new rules – 1 May 2026
