Regulating rent in LAFT
Table of Contents
There are two different solutions for regulating rent in the rental module in LAFT. Which solution you should use depends on how you work in your municipality. As a new customer in the rental module, you will usually clarify with your contact in LAFT which solution is right for you, and the other solution will be removed. If you have both solutions available, you can send an email to support@laft.io, so that we remove the redundant one. Both solutions should not be used at the same time.
NOTE ! If an invoice basis is created for a tenancy, and adjustment has occurred during the period for which the basis is created, two invoice lines will be created on the invoice basis - one line showing rent before adjustment, and one line showing rent after regulation.
Use the arrows to read about the two different solutions below:
Rent adjustment based on the tenancy start date
This solution is suitable for those who regulate rent based on the start date of the tenancy. If you wish to use this solution, please refer to the page marked in the screenshot below:
When you enter this, the "Last regulated" date will automatically be the same as the tenancy start date. You do not need to tell the system when the rent was last regulated. If you want to choose a different date, you can do this by clicking on the date in the "Last regulated" column.
In the drop-down menu at the top left of the page, select whether you want to index regulate or regulate the current rent. By checking the "Can be regulated" box, you can filter so that the table below only shows you tenancies where the date for regulation has passed.
Do you want to have regulation plans for your tenancies, i.e. specific frequencies for when a tenancy should be regulated? See separate article on this here and here.
How to regulate rent based on the tenancy start date
Rent regulation is done in two steps:
First, you must set a percentage for the regulation and approve it, before you can regulate the rent itself. The purpose of doing this in two steps is so that after you have set a percentage and approved it, you can send a letter to the tenant with information about the adjustment in advance of the actual update of the rent. This is to notify the tenant.
Use the filter to find the tenancies you want to set a new rate for. If you are setting a rate for tenancies that will be adjusted 3 months in the future, scroll forward 3 months in the calendar, select a date, and then you can choose whether you want to see tenancies that can be regulated by that date, at the earliest on that date, or only on that date. When you have listed the tenancies you want to see in the table, check them.
If you then scroll down the page, you can either enter a percentage manually in the percentage field, or use the Statistics Norway buttons. When you click on "Update selected tenancy with new index", the percentage will appear under "Regulation" in the table and a new amount will appear under "New rent".
If you want to download letter templates for the selected tenancy conditions, check them again, and scroll to the bottom of the page to download the letter template you want. You can then choose the standard letter template included or any custom letter template. See separate user guide about letter templates.
When you click on "Download letter template for selected tenancies", a compressed folder will be downloaded to your computer, containing a letter for each tenancy. The letter automatically contains information about the rental property and tenancy, and what the new rent will be, as well as when it will take effect.
NOTE! NOTE that the rent itself has not yet been regulated. You do this in the next step:
If you want to only display all tenancies where the "Can be regulated" date has passed, check the "Should be regulated today" box at the top of the page. This will display all tenancies where the "Can be regulated" date is today's date or earlier.
If you invoice in advance, it may be necessary to carry out the regulation in LAFT before the Can be regulated date has passed. This is so that the new rent will be included on the next invoice basis. In that case, it is easiest to use the Can be regulated filter (calendar view) on the page, to bring up all tenancies in the period you wish to regulate.
To carry out the regulation, check the rental conditions and click "Update rental price for selected rental conditions" on the right below the table. The rent is then updated and you can invoice with the new rental price.
Get rental price from rental property for selected tenancy conditions
On the left below the table you will see a blue button that says "Get rental price from rental property for selected tenancy". If you have updated the price of the rental property on the "Adjustment of price of rental property" page, you can use this to update the rent for the tenancy you select.
This page allows you to adjust the price of rental objects without affecting current or previous tenancies. This applies, for example, if your municipality sets new rent rates once a year that you want to update in LAFT. As described in the previous section, you can choose to pick up this price on current tenancies if you wish, but you can also let current tenancies keep their current price. New tenancies will automatically receive the rent you have set for the rental property here.
To update rent, you can either click directly in the table in the "Regulation" column and set a percentage that will update the rent accordingly, or you can click under "New rent" and manually enter a specific amount. Then click "Update price for selected rental objects". You can also scroll down the page and enter a percentage in the percentage field, or use the “SSB” (Statistics Norway) buttons. If you check multiple rental objects and click "Update selected rental objects with new index", both the "Regulation" and "New rent" fields will update.
Custom rent regulation date
This solution is suitable for those who regulate many tenancies on the same date, e.g. 01.01 every year. In the menu, this solution includes the two pages marked in the screenshot below:
When using this solution, you must manually enter the "Last regulated" date for your rental objects. This means that the solution does not take into account the start date of the tenancy. You can either do this in the table on the regulation pages, or when you import your rental objects and tenancies. In this solution, a restriction has been set so that a year must have passed between each time you index regulate, and three years between each time you adjust the current market rent. If you did not set a date for the last regulation when you imported your data into the rental module, you must manually enter and set this so that the system knows when you can regulate next time.
Change date of last regulation
Go to the page for price regulation or index regulation. Here you will see overdue and upcoming price regulations. How many tenancies you see here depends on what you have set in your settings. If you go to Settings in the main menu, and then click on the tab "Tenancy periods and price regulation". In the two bottom fields, you select how far in advance you want to see the date for regulation. For example, if you select 12 months, you will see tenancies in the table on the price regulation pages that can be regulated within the next 12 months. If you are going to mass update the date of the last regulation, you can set 36 months here so that you get all tenancies.
Go back to one of the price regulation pages. In the table here, you can either click directly in the table on the date under "Last regulated" to change the date.
If you are going to change many tenancies at the same time, uncheck the tenancies, scroll down the page and enter the date in the field "Update last regulated date for selected rental properties". Then press "Update".
How to regulate rent
The two different regulation sides (index and market) are used in the same way.
Rent regulation is done in two steps:
First, you must set a percentage for the regulation and approve it, before you can regulate the rent itself. The purpose of doing this in two steps is so that after you have set a percentage and approved it, you can send a letter to the tenant with information about the regulation in advance of the actual update of the rent.
Go to price regulation for either index or market rent. Check the rental properties where you want to regulate the rent. Then scroll down the page to the field "Update selected rental objects with new index". Here you can either enter the percentage manually, or use one of the SSB (Statistics Norway) buttons. Then press the green "Update selected" button on the right. The selected rental objects will then update with the new price in the table in the "New rent" column. You can now download a letter template by checking the same rental objects, scrolling to the bottom of the page to "Download letter template for active tenancies on selected rental objects". You can then choose the standard letter template that is included or any custom letter template.
When you click "Download", a compressed folder will be downloaded to your computer, which contains a letter for each tenancy. The letter automatically contains information about the rental object and tenancy, and what the new rent will be, as well as when it will come into effect.
NOTE that the rent has not yet been updated. To do this, go to the "Adjust rent" tab, check the rental conditions where you want to update the rent and click "Approve selected price regulations". The new rent will then take effect and be updated on the next invoice basis.
