Landlord register readiness tracker for letting agents

Who it’s for

Letting agents and property managers in England with landlords on their books

Time to set up

1 to 2 hours once (mostly exporting your property list), then 15 minutes a month

Difficulty

Beginner

Monthly cost

£0

Key dates for this: see UK small-business admin deadlines.

You write for a letting agent in England. Using ONLY the facts below, write (a) a table of this landlord's properties with region, the date registration becomes required, the deadline, and any missing certificates; (b) a short, friendly email to the landlord explaining what they need to do and by when. Facts: the 'Register your rental property' service opens on 15 December 2026. Regions and deadlines: West Midlands 15 Dec 2026 to 14 Mar 2027; East of England 15 Jan to 14 Apr 2027; East Midlands 15 Feb to 14 May 2027; South East 15 Mar to 14 Jun 2027; Yorkshire and Humber 15 Apr to 14 Jul 2027; North West 15 May to 14 Aug 2027; North East 15 Jun to 14 Sep 2027; London 15 Jul to 14 Oct 2027; South West 15 Aug to 14 Nov 2027. Deadlines follow the property's location. Fee: £65 a year per property, pro-rated during rollout. The landlord must start the registration and needs a GOV.UK One Login; we can upload some information for them once government publishes guidance for agents. They'll need gas safety record (if there's gas), EICR or EIC, and EPC details. Only let properties need registering for now. Registering early is allowed. After registering (draft regulations, not yet final): a let property's certificates and tenancy details must be added within 28 days of making its entry or the entry becomes inactive, and any change (new certificate, rent, tenancy) must be updated within 28 days. Do not mention fine amounts or any date not listed here. If anything is missing, add a short note in brackets saying in plain words what to check, for example (check whether this property has gas). British English.
Landlord and properties: [paste]

On 15 December 2026, England gets its first national register of private landlords, and it doesn’t arrive all at once. It rolls across the country one region a month, starting in the West Midlands and finishing with the South West on 14 November 2027 (government campaign site (Housing Hub); regional start dates in the draft Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026). So a letting agent with properties in three regions has three different deadlines, a fee per property, and landlords who will mostly hear about it from you.

The catch for agents: you can’t just do it for them. The landlord has to start the registration. What you can do is know who’s due when, have the certificates ready, and send every landlord a clear explainer before the rumour mill does.

What does this automation do?

1. You export your managed properties into a Google Sheet.
2. The sheet works out each property’s region, the date registration becomes required and the deadline.
3. It flags missing certificates: gas safety record, electrical report and EPC.
4. ChatGPT drafts a personal explainer for each landlord, using only the confirmed facts you paste in.
5. Each month, you (or Make) pull the “not registered yet” list and chase.

What do you need before you start?

• A property list from your CRM or property software: landlord, address, postcode, let or empty, certificate dates.
• A free ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini account, and Google Sheets.
• 20 minutes with the government’s information list, a government campaign site (Housing Hub), so you know what landlords will be asked.

How do I set it up?

Step 1: Get the confirmed facts straight

Confirmed by government (GOV.UK, 9 September 2026; government campaign site (Housing Hub)):

• The service is called ‘Register your rental property’. It opens on 15 December 2026.
• Landlords of assured or regulated tenancies must register themselves and each property.
• £65 a year per property, renewed every year, pro-rated during the rollout.
• Registration is a legal requirement, and landlords who don’t register “risk being fined”.
• Each region gets three months. After its deadline, councils in that region can start enforcement.
• For now, only let properties must be registered.
• The landlord needs a GOV.UK One Login. Offline routes will be available for landlords who need them.

After registering, the 28-day rules (draft regulations, not yet final). These come from the draft Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026, which have been laid before Parliament but have “not yet been made”, so the detail could change. They would apply in each region from its start date in the table in Step 3:

• A let property’s details: 28 days. A property that’s already let can be registered before its tenancy and safety details are in (occupants, households, licences, gas safety record, EICR or EIC, EPC, rent, furnishing), but they “must be provided before the end of the period of 28 days beginning with the date the dwelling entry was made” (regulation 6(2)). If they aren’t, the entry “becomes inactive” (regulation 11(2)(a)).
• Anything changes: 28 days. When anything in a landlord or property entry goes out of date, it “must be updated before the end of the period of 28 days beginning with the day the information or documents became out of date” (regulations 8 and 9(4)). A new gas safety record, EICR or EPC, a rent change or a change of occupants all count.
• One renewal date per landlord. Each property a landlord adds later gets “the same renewal date” as their existing entries (regulation 10(4)), so the first registration sets the date for the whole portfolio.
• A landlord entry with no property: 3 months. A landlord entry becomes inactive if no property is added “before the end of the period of 3 months beginning with the day the landlord entry was made” (regulation 11(1)(a)).
• What you, as the agent, can do. The tenancy and safety details “may be provided on behalf of a person who is making a dwelling entry by a letting agent or property manager appointed by them” (regulation 4(5)), and those details, plus whether the property is currently let, “may be updated on behalf of” the landlord “by a letting agent or a property manager appointed by them” (regulation 7(2)). So the 28-day upkeep can be your job, but the landlord still makes the entry.

Not confirmed yet, so don’t promise clients anything on these:

• When registration numbers must go on adverts. Government says it will happen “under future legislation” when the public part of the service rolls out, with guidance first. No date.
• When empty properties must be registered before marketing. Same: future legislation, no date.
• Exactly how agent uploads will work. The draft regulations, not yet final, say which details agents can provide and update (see above), but government will publish guidance for letting agents “ahead of service rollout”.

Step 2: Build the tracker from your property list

One row per property:

Once a landlord has registered, fill in Database update due whenever a certificate, the rent or the occupants change. Under the draft regulations, not yet final, the update is due within 28 days, and the 28 days include the day the details went out of date: for a change on 1 March, the last day is 28 March (the change date plus 27 days in Sheets).

Landlords with a personal portfolio and a company portfolio get a row per property under each name. They’re separate landlords on the register.

Step 3: Add each property’s region and deadline

Deadlines follow the property, not the landlord: a London landlord with a flat in Birmingham is on the West Midlands timetable (government campaign site (Housing Hub)).

Paste that table into a second tab called “Regions”, then fill the columns with a lookup: =VLOOKUP(E2,Regions!A:C,2,FALSE) for “required from” and …,3,FALSE) for the deadline. If you cover one area, you can type the region in by hand. If you don’t know which region a postcode is in, check before filling it in rather than guessing from the town name: border areas catch people out.

Landlords can register early, including every property in every region at once. For a landlord with properties in three regions, one sitting in December beats three in a year.

Step 4: Check the certificates landlords will need to upload

The full list is long (ownership type, number of households, licences, rent and what it includes), but the part that holds registrations up is health and safety. For each property, landlords will need (government campaign site (Housing Hub)):

• if there’s a gas supply, the gas safety record and its issue date
• the EICR (or an appropriate EIC) and its date
• whether they had to give the current tenant a valid EPC, and if so a copy, plus extra details if the EPC is no longer valid or the rating is below the minimum

Conditional formatting turns a missing or old certificate red. Those are the properties to sort first, because a missing EICR is a contractor booking, not a five-minute form.

Step 5: Draft each landlord’s explainer with ChatGPT

Paste one landlord’s rows into the copy-paste prompt. The prompt carries the confirmed facts itself and tells the model not to mention fine amounts or any date that isn’t listed, because the most damaging thing an explainer can do is confidently state a rule that doesn’t exist yet.

Read every draft before it goes. You know which landlords want the detail and which want one line.

Step 6: Chase the gaps every month

Around the 1st of each month, filter for “Landlord registered? = N” and the next region due. Ask landlords to send you their registration details once they’ve done it, and fill in the number. For landlords who’ve registered, also filter for any “Database update due” date in the next 14 days.

Optional Make version:

1. Schedule: the 1st of each month, 8am.
2. Google Sheets › Search rows where “Landlord registered?” is N and the deadline is within 60 days.
3. Gmail › Create a draft email to each landlord with their properties and deadline. Drafts only: you check them.
4. Gmail › Create a draft email to yourself: the month’s “still not registered” list.

Make Free is enough at this volume. We haven’t run this scenario end to end; the filter in this step does the same job by hand.

Step 7: Add a registration number field to your CRM now

Government has said letting agents and landlords will need landlord and property identifiers on adverts once the public part of the service rolls out. There’s no date yet, but when it comes, you’ll want the numbers already sitting against every property, not in 200 landlords’ inboxes. Add the field now and fill it as registrations come in.

The copy-paste prompt

You write for a letting agent in England. Using ONLY the facts below, write
(a) a table of this landlord's properties with region, the date registration
becomes required, the deadline, and any missing certificates; (b) a short,
friendly email to the landlord explaining what they need to do and by when.
Facts: the 'Register your rental property' service opens on 15 December 2026.
Regions and deadlines: West Midlands 15 Dec 2026 to 14 Mar 2027; East of
England 15 Jan to 14 Apr 2027; East Midlands 15 Feb to 14 May 2027; South East
15 Mar to 14 Jun 2027; Yorkshire and Humber 15 Apr to 14 Jul 2027; North West
15 May to 14 Aug 2027; North East 15 Jun to 14 Sep 2027; London 15 Jul to 14
Oct 2027; South West 15 Aug to 14 Nov 2027. Deadlines follow the property's
location. Fee: £65 a year per property, pro-rated during rollout. The landlord
must start the registration and needs a GOV.UK One Login; we can upload some
information for them once government publishes guidance for agents. They'll
need gas safety record (if there's gas), EICR or EIC, and EPC details. Only
let properties need registering for now. Registering early is allowed. After
registering (draft regulations, not yet final): a let property's certificates
and tenancy details must be added within 28 days of making its entry or the
entry becomes inactive, and any change (new certificate, rent, tenancy) must
be updated within 28 days. Do not mention fine amounts or any date not listed
here. If anything is missing, add a short note in brackets saying in plain
words what to check, for example (check whether this property has gas).
British English.
Landlord and properties: [paste]

What can go wrong?

• Promising dates that don’t exist. Adverts, empty properties and agent uploads all wait on future legislation or guidance. Say “not confirmed yet” and mean it.
• Using the landlord’s address for the deadline. It’s the property’s region.
• Doing it for them. The landlord starts and ends registration and stays responsible for the information, even if you upload some of it.
• Wales and Scotland. This service is England’s. Properties elsewhere fall under their own nations’ rules, so leave them out of this tracker.
• Expired certificates found in February. Run Step 4 now, while booking an electrician is easy.
• Treating the register as a once-a-year job. Under the draft regulations, not yet final, a new certificate, a rent change or a change of occupants means updating the entry within 28 days, and a let property registered without its details becomes inactive after 28 days. Upload each new certificate the week it arrives.
• Data. The prompt needs names, postcodes and certificate dates. It doesn’t need tenants’ names or anyone’s bank details.

The register is one part of the Renters’ Rights changes. Our free Renters’ Rights admin checklist covers the rest of the paperwork, and when a register-ready landlord’s property goes back on the market, our auto-reply for portal leads answers the enquiries. One practical automation like this, with the £ and the hours it saves, lands in your inbox every Friday if you join our free email.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. GOV.UK: Stronger protections and greater confidence for renters (9 September 2026)
2. legislation.gov.uk: draft Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026 (draft regulations, not yet final): reg 1(3), regional start dates (checked 21 October 2026); regs 4(5), 6(2), 7(2), 8, 9(4), 10(4) and 11, the agent, 28-day, renewal and inactive-entry rules (checked 22 October 2026)
3. Government campaign site (Housing Hub), MHCLG: Get ready: 'Register your rental property' service

This guide is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Tool prices and screens change; we re-check every guide regularly. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we’ll fix it.