Until now, England has never had a single list of who lets property and where. Some councils run their own licensing schemes, but Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have had national landlord registers for years.
That changes in December, when the new national register opens in the West Midlands before rolling out region by region through 2027. Landlords will have to register each property they let, at £65 a year per property.
This is the latest development in a year full of changes. Making Tax Digital started in April for landlords with qualifying income over £50,000, and most of the Renters' Rights Act came into force in May. But research shows that some landlords aren’t happy with these changes.
TwentyCi found around 560 rental properties a day were sold in the third quarter of 2026, up from around 500 a day at the same point last year and fewer than 170 in 2020. For the landlords who are staying, all of these changes come back to the same thing: being able to show your records when someone asks for them.
Councils are being funded to check
Councils are being given money to deliver the Renters' Rights Act. In Newham, which has one of the largest private rented sectors in England, that funding more than doubled in a year, from around £169,000 in 2025/26 to more than £364,000 in 2026/27, according to a Freedom of Information request we made to the council.
That's the money the central government gives councils when it hands them new jobs, and under the Act those jobs include enforcement. Councils have had stronger powers to investigate landlords since the end of last year. Newham's landlords won't have to register until next summer, yet the funding has already doubled. It's only one council, but it suggests councils won't wait for the register before they start checking.
What the register will show up
To register, you'll need each property's gas safety record, electrical safety report and EPC. That's where many landlords will find something missing or out of date. The gas certificate might be buried in an old email from the engineer, or the electrical report ran out last spring without anyone noticing.
Tenancy agreements often end up in a drawer at home. Plenty of landlords get by like this for years, but it becomes a problem as soon as a council asks to see something or a tenant challenges you, because there's no quick way to show what you've done.
Tenants will also be able to check whether their landlord is registered. Once the rules are fully in force, a tenant renting from an unregistered landlord can apply to get back up to 24 months’ rent.
This is behind a lot of the pressure landlords feel this year. The sector has run for decades on spreadsheets, shoeboxes of receipts and a once-a-year look at the numbers, and the new rules make that much harder to get away with.
The good news is that one habit helps with all of these rules. If you record things like rent payments and certificates as they happen, you'll have what you need for the register, your quarterly MTD updates and any possession claim. The same records also show how each property is really doing. Tracking rent and costs as they happen lets you see yield and cash flow property by property, rather than waiting for a picture at the end of the year.
Good records make the changes easier
Landlords who already run their lettings like a business won't find much of this new. An hour a month keeping records up to date is much less painful than losing a week rebuilding them when HMRC or the council gets in touch.
A new generation of landlords is also entering the market with different expectations. Many use digital tools from the start, check how each property is performing at any time and treat lettings as a business from day one, and it’s raising the bar for everyone.
Three steps to get ready
You don't need to be new to the market to keep good records, whether you've got one property or twenty, and the first steps are simple.
First, check which region each of your properties is in. Your deadline depends on where the property is, not where you live, so a portfolio spread across the country could have several.
Second, pull your certificates, their expiry dates and your tenancy agreements into one place for each property.
And finally, start logging rent, costs and messages with tenants as they happen, rather than piecing it all together at the end of the year. Property management software makes that last part much easier, because it records each payment as it lands and keeps every document together.
Most of the Renters' Rights Act is already in force, and councils are getting the money to act on it. The register buys landlords a bit more time, as most regions won't open until next year.
The register is designed to help councils find rogue landlords. For landlords who keep good records, it’s a chance to show they do things properly. Use the time to get your records in order now, so the answers are already there when your region opens, or a council comes asking.
