Another hit for landlords: England’s register starts in December at about £65 a year per property
From 15 December 2026 England starts rolling out “Register your rental property.” We will need to sign each let home up, pay an annual fee (widely reported as £65 per property), and do it within three months once our region goes live.
Another hit to us landlords. On 9 September the government confirmed the next stage of the Renters’ Rights Act register for England. It opens in the West Midlands on 15 December 2026, then moves around the country through 2027, with actively let homes meant to be on by 14 November 2027.
The fee is what most of us are reacting to. The NRLA and landlord press are reporting £65 per property, every year. Ten homes and we are looking at about £650 a year just to stay on the list. Best to use that as our working number for now and confirm it on the official service pages when they publish the full fee schedule.
For the first phase this is about homes that are already let, or that become let during rollout. Empty stock we are marketing comes later. And in most cases an agent cannot register it for us. We will have to do it ourselves.
Miss the window and it gets expensive fast. The NRLA points to civil penalties up to £7,000, rising to £40,000 if the breach is repeated or keeps going. That is not a risk any of us want on a portfolio.
Probably best we start budgeting across the portfolio now and get all our certificates together. Find the region date, pull address, ownership type, licences, HMO status, rent details, gas, EPC and EICR into one place, and put the three-month window in the diary so we are not scrambling in week twelve.
Same announcement also flags that rent increase challenges are expected to move toward HMRC’s Valuation Office over time. That service is not live yet, so the First-tier Tribunal route still applies for now.