Goldsmith Property
What a £47 tenant challenge costs you in hours
A tenant can challenge your rent at the tribunal for £47. You then have 28 days to send your evidence. 13 questions, about 2 minutes: for each thing a rent tribunal expects from a landlord, pick how long it would take you to find or put together. You'll see your total in hours, and how many of those hours the Rent Valuation Report takes off you.
How long would each one take you?
Pick the closest answer. Your total updates as you go. Nothing you pick leaves this page.
Answer the questions to see your hoursYour time to answer a rent challenge
— answer the questions to see your hours
Answer the questions to see your hoursHow we worked this out
Each answer counts as the middle of its band: 7½ minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour 7½ minutes, 2 hours 15 minutes and 4 hours. "5 hours or more" counts as 5 hours, so the total never claims more than you picked. "I don't have this" adds no hours; it is counted separately as something you couldn't produce.
Your total adds up all 13 answers. The report's share adds up questions 1 to 5 only, because those are the parts the Rent Valuation Report does. Questions 6 to 13 are yours whether or not you buy it.
Where the list comes from. When a tenant applies, the landlord replies on the tribunal's form MR2, within 28 days of the date they were sent the tenant's application, with a copy to the tribunal and to the tenant. The MR2 asks you to answer the tenant's case and attach your own evidence. This list is what you would need to do that, checked against the MR2 itself, the tenant's form (MR1), the GOV.UK guidance and tribunal decisions from 2026:
- Form MR2 (08.26 edition), the landlord's reply form. Form MR1 and the 28-day response: GOV.UK, apply for an open market rent determination.
- Late evidence not opened: Pierhead Lock, LON/00BG/MRA/2026/0109, 28 August 2026. The same decision says the tribunal does not follow links.
- Deadline enforced, extension refused: Bishops Court, LON/00AH/MNR/2026/0463, 11 August 2026.
- Agreed lettings given more weight than adverts: GOV.UK guidance above, and Skylark Point, LON/00BB/MRA/2026/0009, 17 July 2026.
- Condition deductions: Dorset Road, LON/00BB/MNR/2026/0039.
Hours are rounded to the nearest half hour so they don't pretend to be more exact than your answers are.
Ben Goldsmith runs Goldsmith Property, with over 400 tenancies under management across England and Wales. We are landlords ourselves.
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