A private tenancy applies when a tenant rents a property from a private landlord or company.
Private tenancies are now the most common type of tenancy in the UK and they cover a range of tenancy agreements.
By far the most common type of tenancy agreement is an Assured Shorthold Tenancy (AST), but there are others, most notably an Assured Tenancy and a Regulated Tenancy.
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 4.5 million households in the UK were in the private rented sector in 2017, up from 2.8 million 10 years earlier.
The type of tenancy depends mainly on:
the date of moving in
who the tenant lives with
who the landlord is
the type of housing