The landlord register isn't a one-off: the 28-day rule for landlords in Clapham, Brixton and surrounds

A Facebook post has been doing the rounds. It says the new landlord register is NOT a one-off form but a "live record", where every change - a new gas certificate, a rent rise, even your tenant's partner moving in - must be updated within 28 days or you face a fine of up to £7,000. And, of course, there's a handy checklist "in the comments".

Credit where it's due, the post is mostly right. But "mostly" is doing a lot of work there.

So what's actually happening?

The register comes from the Renters' Rights Act 2025, with the detail in the draft PRS Database Regulations 2026, laid before Parliament on 9 September. Two things the post leaves out:

• The regulations are still a draft. Both Houses have to approve them before they're made.
• The penalties aren't in force. They need a separate commencement order, which hadn't been made when I checked.

Nobody in SW4 is getting fined next week.

The 28-day rule

Under the draft regulations, when any information or document on your landlord or property entry "becomes out of date", you have 28 days to update it. Registering isn't fire and forget.

What's on the record for each property:

• the number of occupants and households
• HMO, additional or selective licence status and numbers
• the gas safety record, EICR and EPC
• the rent, how often it's paid and which bills are included
• whether it's furnished, and whether it's currently let

So yes, a partner moving in changes the occupant count, and the NRLA reads renewed certificates and rent changes as updates too. (The draft regulations don't list trigger events, and official GOV.UK guidance isn't out yet.)

But "every change"? No. Tenant names, deposits and repairs aren't on the list. Fixing the boiler isn't a register event in itself.

It's annual too

Entries must be renewed every 12 months. GOV.UK puts the fee at £65 per property per year, though it can change. And if you have more than one property, they all share the renewal date of your first one.

Quick numbercrunch for a landlord with three flats: 3 x £65 = £195 a year, all due on the same day. Put it in the diary.

What the penalties really are

• Up to £7,000 for failing to register or keep entries up to date. That's a maximum. Each council sets the amount, and there's no minimum.
• Up to £40,000, or prosecution, for knowingly or recklessly giving false information, carrying on more than 28 days after a penalty is final, or another breach within five years of a penalty.
• No rent repayment order just for being unregistered. An RRO only comes into play for the false-information offence, or for carrying on after a penalty.
• No possession order without an active entry. Apart from two anti-social behaviour grounds, a court can't make a possession order while you have no active landlord or property entry. An entry you didn't renew counts as inactive, and so does one where the tenancy and safety details weren't added within 28 days.

A correction from me

In my last post on the register I said the penalty for ignoring it could be two years' rent. That overstated it. Simply not registering means a penalty of up to £7,000 and a block on possession, not a rent repayment order. I also said tenants will be able to check whether their landlord is registered. That's the plan, but not at launch - public access needs further legislation and there's no date yet. I'd rather tell you straight.

But what does it mean for Clapham, Brixton and surrounds?

London is the second-last region. Duties start on 15 July 2027 and the deadline is 14 October 2027, for Lambeth, Wandsworth and Southwark alike. So Streatham, Brixton, Battersea and most of Dulwich all register in the same window. It depends on where the property is, not where you live.

Picture an accidental landlord with one flat off Abbeville Road. She registers in August 2027 and forgets about it. Next spring her tenant's partner moves in and the rent goes up. On the NRLA's reading that's two updates, each with its own 28-day clock. Then, in August 2028, the renewal.

A letting agent can update the tenancy and safety details and whether the property is let. What they can't do is register you in the first place. That's on you.

Who wins? Organised landlords with one folder per property. Who loses? The shoebox brigade.

About that checklist in the comments

I'm not calling any particular post a scam. But "link in the comments" is a classic engagement-bait trick, and those links are sometimes lead-capture forms, paid "compliance packs" or pages dressed up to look like GOV.UK. Register only through the official GOV.UK service (or its official paper form), where the only fee mentioned is £65 per property. Don't pay a third party to "register" you, and be suspicious of any unsolicited "register now" message before the service opens on 15 December 2026.

My take

The post is broadly right, just early and breathless. Good landlords already know when their gas certificate is due. The real risk in Clapham and Battersea isn't a £7,000 fine landing on the doormat. It's a stale entry quietly going inactive just when you need possession.

In summary

So there you have it. A 28-day update duty for the listed items, an annual £65 renewal on one shared date, and penalties not switched on yet. London's window is 15 July to 14 October 2027.

Are you a landlord in Clapham, Brixton or Dulwich, and have you got a system for keeping your paperwork current? I'd genuinely like to hear how it's playing out on your street. Drop me a line at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

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Sources: Draft PRS Database Regulations 2026 and Explanatory Memorandum (legislation.gov.uk), Renters' Rights Act 2025, GOV.UK Housing Hub, GOV.UK civil penalties guidance, NRLA.

The landlord register opens in December: what landlords in Clapham, Brixton and Streatham need to do now

For the first time ever, England is going to keep a single list of who lets property and where. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have had one for years. Now it's our turn, and it comes with a fee, a deadline and a lot of paperwork.

So what's happening?

The new Private Rented Sector Database, better known as the landlord register, opens in the West Midlands on 15 December 2026. Other English regions follow in stages until August 2027, according to Property Reporter (16 October). Landlords will have three months to register once their region opens, and the fee is £65 a year per property.

To register, you'll need each property's gas safety record, electrical safety report and EPC. Property Reporter's guest piece from Logan Ransley of Landlord Studio (12 October) makes the point that this is where many landlords will discover something missing or out of date. That gas certificate buried in an old email. The electrical report that quietly expired last spring.

And there's teeth. Tenants will be able to check whether their landlord is registered, and once the rules are fully in force a tenant renting from an unregistered landlord can apply to get back up to 24 months' rent. Two years' rent. That should focus a few minds.

Councils are also being funded to enforce the Renters' Rights Act. Ransley's FOI request found Newham's funding more than doubled in a year, from around £169,000 in 2025/26 to more than £364,000 in 2026/27, even though Newham landlords won't have to register until next summer.

It all lands in a busy year. Making Tax Digital started in April for landlords with qualifying income over £50,000, most of the Renters' Rights Act came into force in May, and Property Reporter (12 October) noted only 35% of landlords can name their own MTD start date. TwentyCi found around 560 rental properties a day were sold in Q3 2026, up from around 500 a day a year earlier and fewer than 170 in 2020.

But what does it mean for Clapham, Brixton and surrounds?

Our patch straddles Lambeth, Wandsworth and Southwark, with Streatham and Brixton in Lambeth, Battersea in Wandsworth and Dulwich mostly in Southwark. If Newham's "next summer" is a guide, London landlords probably have a few months yet. Registration for Lambeth, Wandsworth and Southwark landlords is expected in 2027.

Bear in mind that your deadline depends on where the property is, not where you live. If you live in Dulwich but own a flat in Birmingham, you could be registering that one first, from 15 December.

Think about who lets in our area. Accidental landlords who kept a flat in Clapham Old Town when they moved out to start a family. Long-term investors with a few conversions off Streatham Hill. Owners of new-build flats around Battersea Power Station. The professional, fully managed landlord will barely notice. It's the one-flat, do-it-yourself landlord who is most likely to be caught out.

Quick numbercrunch for a landlord with three flats:

• Registration: 3 x £65 = £195 a year
• Risk of not registering: up to 24 months' rent per tenancy

Not a hard choice.

Who wins and who loses?

• Good landlords. Mostly fine. As Dirk Dette of Campions Group put it via Property Reporter, the information requested largely relates to obligations landlords should already be meeting. The difference is that gaps become visible.
• Disorganised landlords. Expired certificates and missing paperwork will show up quickly.
• Rogue landlords. That's the theory, anyway. Veco's chief executive Richard Murray asks the obvious question: will those determined to operate outside the rules simply choose not to register?
• Tenants. A public way to check their landlord is legitimate, and a powerful remedy if not.

My take

I'll be honest, I share Veco's scepticism. The compliant majority will dutifully pay their £65 and upload their certificates, while the cowboys at the bottom of the market carry on as before unless councils have the people and the will to chase them. The Newham funding figures suggest the money is starting to arrive. Whether that becomes enforcement on the ground in Lambeth and Wandsworth is another matter.

That said, I'm not going to pretend this is a disaster. Another layer of admin, yes. Another £65 per property, yes. But for good landlords it's a chance to prove they do things properly, and in a market where tenants have more choice than ever, being visibly compliant could become part of what you're selling.

Practical steps for now, borrowing Ransley's three-step plan: check which region each of your properties sits in; pull all certificates, expiry dates and tenancy agreements into one place per property; and start logging rent, costs and tenant messages as they happen rather than at year end. An hour a month beats a lost week when the council or HMRC comes knocking.

In summary

So there you have it. The register opens on 15 December, costs £65 a year per property, and the penalty for ignoring it could be two years' rent. London's turn looks like 2027, but the paperwork you'll need is paperwork you should already have.

Are you a landlord in Clapham, Brixton or Streatham, and is your certificate folder in order, or more of a shoebox? I'd genuinely like to hear how it's playing out on your street. Drop me a line at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

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Sources: Property Reporter (12 and 16 October 2026), Landlord Studio, Veco, Campions Group, TwentyCi.

Room rents in inner London just hit £1,002: what it means for sharers in Clapham

Spend ten minutes on the Common on a Saturday and you'll spot them: two or three mates, coffees in hand, walking back from a viewing they've just queued for. Flatshares are the engine room of Clapham. They always have been. And this week the numbers caught up with what I've been seeing on the ground all autumn.

Room rents in inner London have reached an average of £1,002 a month. That's up 2.3% on the quarter and 1.1% on a year ago, and it's within a pound of the all-time record of £1,003 set at the end of 2023 (figures reported this week via SpareRoom). Nationally, the average UK room now costs £769 a month, itself a fresh record, up 1% on the year. So renting a single room in a shared flat down here now costs more than renting a whole one-bed does in large parts of the country.

It isn't a blip either. Surveyors expect more of the same: a net 37% of them told RICS they think rents will keep rising over the next three months. Demand is up, supply is down, and nothing in the pipeline suggests that flips soon.

For a young professional moving to Clapham, Balham or Stockwell, the sum is sobering. A £1,002 room is roughly £12,000 a year before a single bill, before council tax, before the Northern line. Share a three-bed off Abbeville Road or near Clapham Common and the landlord is collecting around £3,000 a month for the flat. That's why so many sharers I speak to are staying put rather than moving in the autumn. The devil you know is cheaper than the devil advertised on the portal.

For landlords, it looks like a win, and in cash terms it is. But I'd read it with a cool head. Rents at or near record highs are not a sign of a healthy market. They're a sign of a market that has run out of homes. Tenant demand keeps climbing while rental stock keeps shrinking, and squeezing more out of a smaller pool is not a strategy, it's a symptom. When affordability stretches this far, you get more arrears, more churn and more tenants who simply can't take the next increase.

Here's my take. If you're a sharer in SW London, the smart move right now is to lock in. A good flat with decent flatmates at a fair rent is worth holding through the winter rather than rolling the dice in a market where every viewing has a queue behind you. Talk to your landlord about a longer term before your renewal lands, because stability cuts both ways and most will take a reliable tenant over a void. And if you're a landlord sitting on a flat that works, resist the temptation to chase the headline number to the last pound. The best tenants are the ones who stay, and in this market keeping a good one is worth more than a £50 bump that pushes them out the door.

Are you sharing in Clapham and feeling the squeeze, or a landlord weighing up a renewal this winter? I'd genuinely like to hear how it's playing out on your street. Drop me a line at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

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The £65 landlord register is here - what every Clapham landlord needs to do now

I had a call this week from a landlord who owns one flat near Clapham Common - a flat she used to live in, now let to a lovely couple. She isn't a property mogul. She's an accidental landlord with a single tenancy and a full-time job. And she wanted to know if "this new register thing" applied to her. It does. So if that sounds like you, read on.

The government has now launched the private rental registration service and confirmed the timetable for the mandatory database of landlords and rented properties in England. The headline figure is a £65 annual fee - per property, not per landlord - to register. Alongside it, HMRC is being lined up to handle rent-increase disputes, which is a real shift: the argument about whether your rent rise is fair moves into a formal channel rather than a conversation on the doorstep. This is all part of the machinery of the Renters' Rights Act finally being switched on.

Here is what the register actually is, in plain English. It's a national record of who lets property and which properties are let, tied to your compliance paperwork. Think of it as an MOT logbook for the rental sector. You register the landlord, you register each property, you pay the fee, and you keep the details current. It is not optional and it is not something you can quietly ignore, because it plugs into the wider enforcement regime - the same one where licensing breaches under the Act can now carry fines of up to £40,000.

For a Clapham or Balham landlord, the practical to-do list is short but real. First, get your compliance file in order before you register, not after - gas safety certificate, EPC, electrical safety report and deposit protection details. Registering with gaps in that paperwork just paints a target on your back. Second, budget for the fee across your portfolio: £65 on one flat is nothing, but if you hold four or five conversions around Abbeville Road or Stockwell it adds up and it recurs every year. Third, get your head around the rent-review process now, because with HMRC in the mix the days of an informal "I'm putting it up £150" are over. Do it properly, in writing, on the right form, at the right time.

My take? This is more admin, and no landlord enjoys more admin. But I'd resist the urge to see it purely as a burden. A register that pushes the worst operators out - the ones letting damp, unsafe flats and dragging the whole sector's reputation down - is no bad thing for the good landlords who already do it right. If you keep a decent flat, look after your tenants and hold your paperwork properly, this changes very little about how you operate. It just writes down what you were already doing. The landlords who should be nervous are the ones who've been cutting corners, and frankly, in a market as scrutinised as SW London, those days were numbered anyway.

The one thing I'd say clearly: don't leave it. Registration and the new rules are being rolled out on a fixed timetable, and the landlords who scramble at the deadline are the ones who make expensive mistakes.

Are you a landlord in Clapham or the surrounding area wondering how the register affects your flat? I'm happy to talk it through - drop me a line at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

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London rents just jumped 9.8% in a month. Here's what's really going on in Clapham

Stand outside any letting board on Clapham High Street for ten minutes and you'll see it: a viewing, then another, then a couple already filling in a holding form on their phone before they've left the pavement. The queue is real. And this week the numbers caught up with what we've been living down here all summer.

Advertised rents across London rose 9.8% in August. That is not a typo, and it is not annual growth dressed up as a monthly figure - that is where asking rents landed last month as landlords listed higher. At the same time, flatshare supply fell 3.2% and room rents hit a fresh record high. Fewer rooms, fewer flats, more people chasing them. Nationally, gross rent on the average landlord's portfolio has climbed to somewhere between £88,454 and £90,000 a year, and rental growth is now accelerating across five English regions since the Renters' Rights Act landed.

So what is actually driving it? Part of it is the Act itself. With Section 21 gone and rent reviews tightened, a lot of landlords are front-loading: if you can only realistically move the rent once a year through a formal process, you set it higher at the start. That is not greed, it is arithmetic, and it is showing up in the asking prices from Stockwell to Streatham. The other part is plain supply. Every landlord who has sold up over the last two years, spooked by tax and regulation, is a flat that has left the rental pool for good. Down here, where two-bed conversions off Abbeville Road and around Clapham Common are the backbone of the market, that thinning stock bites hard.

If you're renting in SW London right now, the honest advice is to move fast and come prepared. Have your references, deposit and proof of income ready before you view, not after. A well-presented flat near the Common at a fair rent is gone in days, and the person who gets it is usually the one who could say yes on the spot. Stretching your budget by £100 a month to widen your search into Tooting or Balham will often get you far more than holding out for a bargain that isn't coming.

If you're a landlord, this is the moment to be careful, not cocky. A record asking rent means nothing if the flat sits empty for three weeks or the tenant leaves in six months because the price never stacked up. Voids are the quiet killer here - four in ten portfolios nationally are carrying them - and an empty month wipes out most of the gain from a punchy headline rent. Price it to let quickly to a good tenant who stays, and you'll almost always beat the landlord chasing the top of the market.

My take: this is a supply problem wearing a price-rise costume. Rents aren't high because tenants suddenly have more money - they're high because there isn't enough to go round. Until we get more homes into the SW London rental market, not fewer, this pressure isn't easing. And every well-intentioned rule that nudges another landlord towards selling makes it a little worse for the renters it was meant to help.

Are you feeling the squeeze on the rental market in Clapham - as a tenant or a landlord? I'd genuinely like to hear how it's playing out on your street. Drop me a line at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

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