Landlord Terms

These terms apply to landlords and letting agents ("you") who use GaffSwipe to advertise accommodation, including through the landlord dashboard at landlords.gaffswipe.co.uk. "We" and "us" means GaffSwipe Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, company number 17390238.

They sit alongside our Terms of Service, Landlord Commission Terms and Privacy Policy. You accept them when you create a landlord account. If these terms and the Terms of Service conflict, these terms apply to you. You use GaffSwipe as a business user, for the purposes of your letting business, even if you are an individual who lets a single property.

1. Who can list

• You must be 18 or over, and either the owner of the property or authorised in writing by the owner to let it.
• If you are a letting agent, you must belong to a government-approved redress scheme, belong to a client money protection scheme if you hold client money, and publish your fees and scheme memberships as the Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires. Tell us which schemes you belong to when you set up your account.
• One account per landlord or agency. If several people manage listings for one business, tell us and we'll set them up under that business.
• Keep your account details accurate, including your legal name or company name, and a phone number and email address that reach you.
• We may ask for evidence of your identity, your ownership of a property or your authority to let it. This could be a Land Registry title, a council tax or utility bill, a management agreement, or a licence. We may refuse or pause listings until we receive it.

2. Your legal duties

You are responsible for meeting every legal duty that applies to you and your properties. We don't check that you meet them, and a listing going live doesn't mean we have. By listing a property, you confirm that, for that property and any tenancy you grant through GaffSwipe:

• Licensing. You hold any mandatory, additional or selective licence the property needs under the Housing Act 2004, and any planning permission needed for its use as a house in multiple occupation (HMO). You comply with the licence conditions.
• Gas safety. Every gas appliance, fitting and flue has been checked by a Gas Safe registered engineer in the last 12 months, and you give tenants a copy of the record, as the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998 require.
• Electrical safety. The electrical installation has been inspected and tested by a qualified person within the last 5 years, as the Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 require, and you have done any remedial work it identified.
• Energy performance. The property has a valid Energy Performance Certificate, and its rating is shown in the listing. It meets the minimum energy efficiency standard (currently a rating of E or above) unless a valid exemption is registered.
• Alarms and fitness. The property has the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015 require, and is fit for human habitation and free of serious hazards.
• Fees and deposits. You charge only the payments the Tenant Fees Act 2019 permits. Deposits are no more than 5 weeks' rent (where annual rent is under £50,000), and holding deposits are no more than 1 week's rent. You protect every deposit in a government-approved scheme and give the prescribed information within 30 days of receiving it.
• Right to Rent. You carry out the Right to Rent checks the Immigration Act 2014 requires, on every adult occupier, consistently and without discrimination.
• Renters' Rights Act 2025. As its provisions come into force, you comply with them. These include advertising a single, stated rent, not inviting or accepting offers above it, and not refusing tenants because they have children or receive benefits.
• Equality. You don't discriminate against anyone because of a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, in your listing, in choosing tenants, or in how you treat them.
• Consumer law. You don't mislead students or leave out information they need to decide, under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.
• Documents. You give tenants every document and piece of information the law requires at the start of and during a tenancy.

If your circumstances change so that any of these is no longer true, pause the listing straight away and tell us.

3. Listing standards

• Real and available. The property exists, you can let it, and it is available on the dates shown. Pause or mark a listing as let as soon as it stops being available.
• Accurate. Everything in the listing is true and up to date, including rent per room, deposit, bills, furnishing, tenancy length, availability, council tax band, EPC rating and any HMO licence number.
• One price. The rent shown is the rent you will accept. No bait prices, and no extras that appear only after an enquiry.
• One listing per property. Don't list the same property twice, or list rooms in it separately as well as the whole property, unless the dashboard asks you to.
• Photos. Photos are of the actual property as it is now. You own them or have the right to use them. They contain no people who haven't agreed to it, and no other company's watermarks. We strip location data from every photo you upload.
• No contact details or links in listing text or photos. Students contact you through GaffSwipe, which is how we keep them safe and how we know who introduced whom.
• No discriminatory wording. That includes "no DSS", "no benefits", "no children", "professionals only", and anything about nationality, race, religion, sex or any other protected characteristic. We check listing text automatically, and we will reject or remove listings that break this rule.
• The address. Give us the exact address. We use it to place the listing near the right campus and show students an approximate location only. The exact address is shown to a student only after you accept their enquiry.

4. Review and publication

A person at GaffSwipe reviews every listing before it goes live, and again after significant edits. We aim to review listings within 1 working day. We may ask you for evidence or changes, and we may refuse a listing if it breaks these terms or we can't verify it. If we refuse a listing, we'll tell you why.

Review is a check for obvious problems, not a survey, inspection or audit of your compliance. A live listing is not an endorsement by us, and you remain responsible for its accuracy and lawfulness.

We may pause or remove a live listing at any time if we receive a credible report about it, it appears inaccurate or unlawful, or the property appears to have been let.

5. How listings are ranked

Students see listings one at a time. The order depends mainly on:

• distance from the student's university or chosen area;
• how closely the listing matches the student's filters, such as budget, room count, bills and move-in date;
• how recently the listing was published or updated;
• completeness, including the number and quality of photos and the detail in the description;
• how students have responded to it, such as saves; and
• trust signals, such as unresolved reports, and listings that were removed without a let being recorded.

You can't pay for a better position, and we don't rank our own interests above yours. If we change these main factors, we'll update this section.

6. Dealing with students

• Reply to enquiries promptly, ideally within 48 hours, even if the answer is no. Listings with slow or no replies rank lower.
• Keep conversations on GaffSwipe until a viewing is arranged. This protects both of you, and it is the record we use if anything goes wrong.
• Never ask for money, bank details, identity documents or payment links before a student has viewed the property in person or by live video with you. After that, any holding deposit must comply with the Tenant Fees Act 2019.
• Never ask a student to pay anything "through GaffSwipe". We never take payments from students, and saying otherwise is fraud.
• Treat students with respect. No pressure tactics, harassment, or messages that aren't about the property.
• Students can report you, and we act on reports as described in our Terms of Service.

7. Students' personal data

When a student enquires, you receive personal data about them, such as their name, university, course, messages and any details they choose to share. For that data, you are an independent controller under UK data protection law, and you must:

• use it only to deal with their enquiry, arrange viewings, and enter into and manage a tenancy;
• never use it for marketing, or share or sell it to anyone else, except people who act for you on that tenancy;
• keep it secure, and delete it when you no longer need it for those purposes; and
• tell us within 72 hours if you become aware of any loss or misuse of it.

How we use your own personal data is set out in our Privacy Policy.

8. Fees

Listing, enquiries and messaging are free. When you let a property or room to a tenant introduced through GaffSwipe, you pay commission of 5% of the first year's rent, under our Landlord Commission Terms. You accept those terms before your first listing goes live. You must never pass any part of the commission on to a tenant.

9. Your content

You own your listings and photos. You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to host, store, edit for format and size, display and distribute them on GaffSwipe and in previews of shared GaffSwipe links, while they are live and for a reasonable time afterwards in backups. We won't use your photos in our own advertising without asking you first.

You confirm that your content doesn't infringe anyone else's rights, and you'll tell us straight away if you receive a claim that it does.

10. Restricting, suspending and closing accounts

• If you break these terms, we may remove listings, restrict your account, suspend it, or close it, depending on how serious the breach is.
• When we restrict or suspend your account, we'll tell you why on a durable medium, such as email, at the time it takes effect.
• Before closing your account for good, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice with our reasons, so you can respond. We won't give notice where the law requires us to act straight away, where we reasonably suspect fraud or a risk to anyone's safety, or where you have repeatedly broken these terms.
• You can close your account at any time. Commission on any let to a tenant introduced before then stays payable under the Landlord Commission Terms.

11. Complaints and mediation

If you have a complaint about us, including about a review decision, a restriction on your account or how we have applied these terms, email support@gaffswipe.co.uk with "Complaint" in the subject. We'll acknowledge it within 2 working days and give you a reasoned answer within 14 days. A person, not an automated system, will handle it. Each year we publish how many complaints we received, what they were about, and how long they took to resolve.

If we can't resolve it, we're willing to try mediation in good faith with either of the following mediators: [mediator 1] or [mediator 2]. We'll pay a reasonable share of the cost of mediation. Mediation doesn't stop either of us going to court.

12. Liability and indemnity

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that can't be limited by law.

We are a listing platform, not your letting agent and not a party to any tenancy. We aren't responsible for any student's conduct, ability to pay or suitability as a tenant, for any damage to your property, or for any rent or other money owed to you. Checks such as Right to Rent and referencing are for you to carry out.

We aren't liable to you for loss of profit, rent or business opportunity, or for any indirect or consequential loss. Otherwise, our total liability to you in any 12-month period is limited to the greater of the commission you paid us in that period and £100.

You will compensate us for any loss, fine, or reasonable legal cost we suffer because you broke the law or these terms, or because of a claim that your content infringes someone's rights.

13. Changes to these terms

We'll give you at least 15 days' notice by email and in the dashboard before changing these terms, and at least 30 days' notice before changing how commission is calculated. If you don't agree, you can close your account before the change takes effect. We may make changes sooner where the law requires it, or to deal with an unforeseen risk of fraud or harm.

14. General

• If any part of these terms can't be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don't enforce a right straight away, we can still enforce it later.
• You can't transfer your account or these terms to anyone else without our written agreement. We may transfer them to a business that takes over GaffSwipe, and we'll tell you if we do.
• Only you and we have rights under these terms.
• These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.