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Landlords will have to pay a £65 registration fee per property annually under the government’s new national landlord registration service. The government has confirmed that landlords will be required to register their rental properties through its “Register Your Rental Property” service as the PRS database is rolled out across England. The database will launch regionally, starting in the West Midlands in December, before being introduced across other areas over the following 12 months.

I’ve recently been asked a number of times if this still works under the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, I guess because I wrote and published the first book on what the Renters’ Rights Bill 2024 proposed. My response is that for private landlords, the answer would seem to be no. There is a caveat: if a landlord is undecided about selling, in other words it does not matter to them one way or another, a variant of the old model could still work.

Rent growth has accelerated across five of England’s nine regions since the Renters’ Rights Act took effect in May, despite the national rate being unchanged. Average monthly rent across England rose by 0.6%, from £1,442 to £1,451, exactly matching the increase recorded during the equivalent period before the Act’s implementation. The West Midlands recorded the biggest rise from 0.2% before the Act took effect to 0.8% afterwards.

Britain’s landlord base is set for a generational overhaul, with Millennials forecast to account for 44% and Gen Z 18% within a decade, research reveals. However, it won’t be a clean handover since Boomers and Gen X (those born between 1946 and 1980), who currently make up 54% of landlords, are expected to fall to 37%. Research from Rely, part of the OSB Group, surveyed 1,509 current and future landlords about how the private rented sector could change over the next 10 years.

Propertymark is urging the government to speed up leasehold reform after research found 93% of leaseholders would not buy another leasehold property. Its survey of more than 1,200 leaseholders and 200 Propertymark members found 86% had seen service charges rise during the past two years. Another 89% said challenging unfair service charges was difficult, while more than 78% of estate agents had removed at least one leasehold property from the market because it was unsellable.

The government has announced plans for a mandatory register for short-term lets, which could come into force by March 2027. Speaking in Parliament, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy confirmed that the government is committed to introducing regulation for short-term holiday lets. Under the proposed scheme, hosts will be required to register their property’s address and will be issued a unique reference number. This number must then be displayed on every platform where the property is advertised.

While growing numbers of landlords may be seeing fewer rent arrears, the problem is still causing issues for those with bigger portfolios. Pegasus Insight’s latest Landlord Trends research found 26% of landlords had experienced arrears during the past year, the lowest figure recorded since tracking began and down from 42% in 2020. There was a slight increase in the first quarter of this year, before arrears fell back again in the second quarter.

Hello everyone, I have come across a rental deal where you buy a property with a 25-year lease attached to the property. The property will be leased to a housing association, which will be the head tenant. The housing association then houses (sublets) to people who require assistance for day-to-day living.

A professor has warned the Renters’ Rights Act has caused changes in the private rented sector which are proving “ineffective or have perverse outcomes”. Writing in the Telegraph, Tim Leunig, professor of economic history at the London School of Economics, has warned the act has backfired on tenants. The news comes as a report in the Daily Mail reveals the Act has caused unintended consequences, with tenants struggling to find affordable places to live as landlords sell up.

All of us in the Scottish private rented sector understand the nature of difficult decisions. Many of us have friends and colleagues who are currently considering whether to remain in the sector, downsize their portfolios or simply leave it entirely. The statistics don’t lie. As of December 2025, over half of Scottish landlords were considering taking a step back, while fewer than one in ten were contemplating taking on additional properties.