How do I create a lease agreement?

Once you've found the right tenant, the next step is formalising things with a legally binding lease. We've digitised the whole process — no scanning, no printing, no chasing signatures — and the lease adapts automatically to your property's state, so you meet your legal obligations without needing to become a legislation expert overnight.

Creating your lease is part of our Rental Management subscription, and it flows straight into automated rent collection once signed.

Renewing an existing tenancy? You don't need to start from scratch. See How do I renew a tenancy or update the agreement?.

Create or upload?

The Create/Upload Tenancy Agreement button gives you two paths. Create is for a new tenancy with nothing signed yet: the agreement is generated for your property's state and goes through the e-signing workflow below. Upload a signed Lease Agreement is for an agreement that already exists and is fully signed, usually because you're moving an existing tenancy onto PropertyNow for rent collection.

An uploaded PDF can't be e-signed through PropertyNow, so if you want electronic signatures, create the whole agreement on the platform. If you'd rather use your own document and still sign electronically, a separate e-signing service such as DocuSign is the way to go.

Before you start: get your documents verified

You won't be able to create a tenancy agreement until all four of these are done:

• You've uploaded proof of property ownership
• You've uploaded your photo ID
• Our team has verified your ownership documents
• Our team has verified your ID

If the Create/Upload Tenancy Agreement button is greyed out, this is why. Check the verification badges on your property dashboard. If you don't have a listing — for example, you subscribed to manage an existing tenancy — you can upload both documents from your rental management dashboard or from the tenancy agreement page.

Step 1: Open the lease creator

1. Log in to your PropertyNow dashboard.
2. Go to 'Manage Property & Edit Listings', then select 'Tenancy Agreements' from your property overview.
3. Click the green 'Create/Upload Tenancy Agreement' button (top right).

Step 2: Enter the lease details

The creator is a step-by-step wizard — the questions adapt to your property's state, and you can save your progress and come back any time. You'll work through five sections:

• Tenancy details: names and contact information for you and all adult tenants.
• Lease terms: fixed-term vs periodic, start date, rent amount and payment frequency. You also choose when the bond and rent in advance are due. The date is up to you, but set it well before the start date, a week or two ahead is common, so the money has cleared before you hand over the keys.
• Utilities: who's responsible for electricity, gas and water, and how it'll be charged.
• Property rules: special terms like approved pets, smoking rules, maximum occupants and nominated repairers. Keep any additional special terms under 2,000 characters (roughly 300 words). Anything longer won't save, and you won't be able to move on to the Review step.
• Review: a final check of every detail before you send it to the tenant.

Step 3: The digital signing workflow

Once you hit Submit, our automated signature system takes over:

1. Tenant review: your primary tenant receives an email invitation to view and accept the terms. Any other tenants on the agreement are copied in on that email, but only the primary tenant accepts.
2. Landlord signature: after they accept, you'll be emailed a link to sign digitally.
3. Tenant signature: once you've signed, the agreement goes to every tenant on it, including co-tenants, to sign. While any are still outstanding, you'll get an email each time one signs, and you can follow progress under Tenancy Agreement Signing Steps when you open the agreement in your dashboard.
4. Done: both parties receive a fully executed copy by email, and it's stored in your PropertyNow account for easy access anytime. To download it, click Rental Management in the property menu, then Download Tenancy Agreement in the Tenancy Details panel.

Need to fix something before it's signed? See How do I change lease terms before the lease is finalised?

Step 4: Set up rent collection

Completing the lease triggers your automated rent schedule. To get rent flowing, both parties verify their accounts:

• You: go to your profile and add/verify the bank account where you'd like rent deposited.
• Your tenant: they add their bank account and set up a Direct Debit or PayTo agreement from their tenant portal.

On a renewal there's no rent in advance, but your tenant still needs a new PayTo agreement (or an updated direct debit amount if the rent has changed) before the new agreement starts. See Do I need to set up my payment method again for a renewal?.

From there, automated rent collection handles the rest — including receipts, records and arrears visibility, all in your account.

Updated on: 15/10/2026