Void days are the landlord's money: how HWJ runs the major refresh
Short answer
A property that sits empty for fifteen days on a £3,500 per month rent costs the landlord around £1,700 in lost rent, plus another £150 to £200 in council tax and standing charges the tenant is no longer covering. Most agents absorb that as a surprise cost when a major refresh runs over. We publish a ten-day standard for the works, schedule the four-week marketing window in parallel rather than after, and treat every day past the standard as the landlord's money we are answerable for.
This post sets out the ten-day schedule, why our portfolio profile makes it defensible, and how the cycle slots into the post-Renters' Rights Act re-let economics.
What a fifteen-day void actually costs
The arithmetic is the part most agents skip past. On £3,500 per month, the daily rent is £115. Fifteen empty days is £1,727 in foregone rent before any standing charge is paid. Add council tax at central-London band C-to-E rates, the standing charges on gas and electricity that resume the moment the tenant's utility account closes, and the contents-insurance line that does not pause for unoccupancy, and the same fifteen days carry another £150 to £200 of cost the landlord is now picking up. The total cost of a half-month void on a single property is comfortably north of £1,800 before a single contractor has been paid.
That is the figure that defines the cycle. A refresh-window void that lands at ten days against a published standard is roughly £1,150 of foregone rent and around £100 of carrying: call it £1,250 in round terms. A refresh-window void that overruns to twenty days is closer to £2,400. The difference between the two is not labour cost. It is process discipline.
Why generic letting playbooks overrun
The thing that drives the generic refresh-window allowance long is stock that doesn't apply to a Harvey W James portfolio: stair-carpet uplift in maisonettes, painted bathrooms in older converted flats, whole-property carpet relays in stock with no hard flooring, fitted-furniture stripping in heavily customised period properties. The portfolio we manage (premium new-build flats, typically one to three beds, wooden flooring in receptions and halls, tiled bathrooms, carpets confined to the bedrooms) produces a Major refresh dominated by paint on walls and ceilings, bedroom carpet, and sealant and grout refresh. That is a ten-day job with capacity, not a sixteen-day job with allowances absorbed for cover.
We publish the schedule on that basis. If we managed a Victorian terrace, the allowance would be different and we would say so. Calibrating the cycle to the stock is half the discipline; the other half is sequencing the works so the calibration holds.
The ten-day schedule
Day 0 is the outgoing tenant's checkout: inventory clerk attends, keys back, Lettings notified, Aftercare on standby. Day 1 is the inspection. The Aftercare Manager walks the property, compiles the snag list, instructs anything urgent (damp, leaks, pests) the same day because none of it gets cheaper or smaller if it waits, and briefs the contractor on the full works scope before they leave.
Days 2 to 3 are the pre-works deep clean. This is the operational heart of the standard and the rule most often broken by contractors used to running it the other way around. Clean before paint, every time. Dust on walls causes paint adhesion problems and leads to peel, patchiness and a return visit; redecoration disturbs settled dust, so a deep clean after redecoration disturbs the new finish. A clean-then-redecorate void is consistently shorter than the alternative. Carpets that are scheduled for replacement come up at the same time.
Days 4 to 7 are redecoration: filling, sanding, priming, two coats; walls, ceilings and woodwork; rooms run in parallel where capacity allows. Day 8 is the trades day: bedroom carpet relay where in scope, sealant and grout refresh in bathrooms, minor joinery on kitchen unit doors, scuffed skirting and door edges. Where the property needs a decorator and a carpet fitter in parallel, the two run together, day 8 compresses, and day 9 becomes buffer. The buffer is the difference between a clean ten-day handover and an overrun.
Day 9 is the post-works light clean and the snag walk; the contractor remediates any defects on the spot. Day 10 is sign-off: the Aftercare Manager completes the form and Lettings formally accepts the property as marketable. Until that sign-off, Lettings does not photograph, does not commence viewings of the vacant property, and does not confirm the available date with a new tenant. The sign-off is the gate; without it the ten-day allowance is unenforceable.
The marketing window runs in parallel, not after
The four-week marketing window does not start at sign-off. It starts four weeks before the agreed available date, which is set as the Monday immediately after Aftercare sign-off. In a normal Major refresh that means the advert goes live two to three weeks before the outgoing tenant has even moved out, with the existing tenant in occupation, against the cooperative-viewings convention. The four weeks of marketing produce applicants for a void window the refresh works then run inside. This is the planning sequence we set out in the Four Week Rule.
The trade-off is honest. Where existing photographs do not represent the post-refresh state, the photoshoot moves to day 11 or 12, the available date and the launch shift accordingly, and the total void window extends by roughly the photoshoot-to-launch gap. The Lettings Manager makes that call against the photos on file and the works scope. Accuracy of marketing (Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 territory) wins over total void days every time, because a misrepresented property is a tenant who walks at viewing or, worse, complains six weeks in.
The August option
Where the outgoing tenant has signalled flexibility on the date rather than served a fixed two-month notice, a Major refresh becomes a planning lever. The August window has the highest enquiries-to-listings ratio of any month across our three-year dataset, and a re-let that lands on a Monday in mid-August catches the peak applicant pool, the strongest day-of-week, and the optimal day-one price under the post-RRA day-one-pricing rule. The refresh is the engineered hinge between the outgoing and incoming tenancies: the works happen on the published schedule against an available date that has been agreed for the August window rather than the immediate-next-available default. The mechanism, consent-based re-letting under our Assisted Tenancy Replacement Process, is set out in engineering the August re-let under the RRA. It is not always available, and we say which conditions need to hold; where it is, it materially changes the economics of the cycle.
Why this matters more post-RRA
The pricing economics make condition at re-let the single most consequential lever a landlord still controls. Section 13 follows the local market, not the landlord's wishes. Section 21 was abolished on 1 May 2026 and there is no longer any contractual route to end an assured tenancy on the landlord side except through Section 8 grounds. There is no "renewal" event at which the marketed figure can be reset upward. Re-letting after a tenant moves out is, in practice, the only moment at which the landlord can re-market against a current valuation. The condition of the property at that moment is what determines what the next valuation can defensibly support.
A landlord whose agent runs the refresh cycle on plan compounds the value of the property across tenancies. A landlord whose agent absorbs refresh-window voids as a surprise cost does not.
What to take from this
If your agent has not published a Major refresh standard for your stock (what the works cover, how many days they take, who signs them off and against what evidence) you don't have a void allowance. You have a guess. The figure that comes back at the end of the cycle is whatever the contractor billed plus whatever the property happened to sit empty for, and there is no shape in either number you can hold the agent to.
The ten-day standard, the schedule, the sign-off gate and the parallel marketing window are how we discharge the accountability of being told a property is empty and earning nothing. The full version sits on the refresh cycle page: if the standard is unpublished, the landlord has no way to tell whether the work is being done.
Sources
- Harvey W James, Redecoration & Refresh Cycle Playbook (28 May 2026)
- Harvey W James, Essential Terms and Charges v2.1.5, §73 (Redecoration & Cleaning at Checkout), §41 (Section 13 Rent Reviews), §44 (Mid-Tenancy Inspection), §68.1 / §68.2 (Consent-Based Re-Letting)
- Harvey W James, Lettings Valuation Guide v2.0, §4.1 to §4.3 (Four Week Rule), Timing Appendix §1 (August enquiry peak)
- Renters' Rights Act 2025; Housing Act 1988 sections 4A, 8, 13 (as amended); Protection from Eviction Act 1977 s.5(1ZA)(a)
- Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008
This post is a general explanation of how Harvey W James plans and runs the Major refresh cycle on the properties we manage. It is not legal, tax or financial advice. The ten-day allowance, the day-by-day schedule and the planning calendar are calibrated to a portfolio of premium new-build flats; different stock will need different allowances and the cycle adjusts at instruction. For a specific property or tenancy please speak to the Aftercare or Lettings teams directly.