The Handshake Aftermath: Rebuilding the Record of a Tenancy That Was Never Written Down

There is a particular quiet that settles over a kitchen table when a landlord and tenant realise the arrangement they made over tea two years ago no longer matches what either of them remembers. The rent was '£850, but we said something about the bills, didn't we?' The deposit was 'cash, but it's safe, don't worry.' The boiler was 'going to be replaced before winter.' None of it exists on paper, and now one of them needs it to.

The good news, for anyone in this position, is that the absence of a written agreement does not mean the absence of rights. The less comfortable news is that the burden of proving what those rights are now falls squarely on the people who avoided the paperwork in the first place.

Yes, the Tenancy Is Real

An assured shorthold tenancy can be created orally. No signature is required; exclusive possession of a property, for a term, at a rent, is enough. The courts have recognised spoken lettings for centuries, and statute has not abolished them — the Housing Act 1988 applies to verbal periodic tenancies just as it does to written ones.

What the law does require, however, is a set of written documents regardless of how the tenancy was formed. A landlord who let informally is not excused from protecting the deposit within 30 days, serving gas safety and EPC certificates before any notice, or providing the prescribed information under the Renters' Rights framework now working its way through the system. The paperwork obligations attach to the letting, not to the signing ceremony.

This cuts both ways. A tenant in a verbal arrangement may be entitled to challenge a rent increase or resist eviction on procedural grounds that the landlord, having never assembled the file, cannot satisfy. A landlord may find that a tenant's informal promise to 'look after the garden' carries no contractual weight whatsoever.

What a Court Will Actually Accept

When a dispute reaches a county court, a tribunal, or a deposit scheme adjudicator, informal evidence is weighed rather than dismissed. The following tend to carry genuine weight:

• Bank statements showing regular payments. A consistent monthly transfer, with a reference naming the property, establishes both the rent amount and the existence of the arrangement. Cash payments are far weaker — but a pattern of withdrawals timed to rent day is not nothing.
• Text messages and emails. 'See you on the 1st, keys under the mat' may sound trivial, but contemporaneous messages fixing dates, amounts and responsibilities are among the most persuasive documents in an oral-tenancy dispute.
• Utility bills and council tax records in the tenant's name at the address, establishing occupation and its start date.
• Witnesses — a letting agent who showed the property, a relative present when terms were discussed, a previous tenant who can speak to the pattern.
• Conduct over time. If the landlord entered only with notice and the tenant decorated and insured the contents as if it were home, a court will infer the incidents of a tenancy regardless of what anyone now claims.

What rarely helps is a retrospective document produced after the dispute began. A 'memorandum of understanding' typed up last week, backdated to the original move-in, will be treated with suspicion and can damage the credibility of everything else in the file.

The Recovery Strategy: Write It Down Now

For parties still on speaking terms, the remedy is straightforward and urgent: reduce the existing arrangement to writing before anyone hires a solicitor. A short, honest memorandum — signed by both parties, dated today, recording the rent, the deposit, who repairs what, and any side agreements — converts a fragile oral understanding into evidence. It does not need to be a tenancy agreement; it needs to be a fair account of what both sides believe was agreed.

Landlords should use this exercise to close the compliance gap at the same time. Protect the deposit, serve the certificates that should have been served, and issue a proper written tenancy agreement at the next renewal or as a replacement document. In the Renters' Rights era, where written terms become mandatory for most lettings, an informal arrangement is a countdown clock, not a lifestyle.

Tenants, for their part, should request the documents they were never given — in writing, by email, so the request itself becomes part of the record. A landlord's failure to provide a gas safety record or deposit protection details is not a technicality; it can restrict possession remedies and, in the case of deposits, trigger compensation of up to three times the deposit amount.

When Relations Have Broken Down

If the parties no longer trust each other, the reconstruction becomes forensic. Start a single chronological file: every message, every payment, every photograph of the property at move-in and now. Date everything. Where memory is the only source, write a signed statement of what was agreed and when, while recollections are fresh — contemporaneous notes, even made now, are better than none at negotiation stage.

Free resolution routes should come before court. A deposit scheme's alternative dispute resolution service, mediation through a local council's housing team, or a solicitor's letter of claim often settles matters on the strength of the file alone. Tribunals and judges see oral-tenancy disputes regularly; the side with the more orderly paper trail — however improvised — usually shapes the narrative.

The Lesson the Paper Trail Teaches

Verbal agreements are not void; they are merely unproven until someone does the work of proving them. HousingDocs exists on the premise that the document is the defence, and the handshake is the exception that eventually needs one. If your tenancy lives in memory rather than ink, the time to fix that is now — while both parties still agree on what happened, and while the cost of fixing it is an afternoon with a template rather than a day in front of a district judge.