Register your rental property: a letting agent's access-link log and landlord email

Who it’s for

Letting agents and property managers in England who will update the register for their landlords

Time to set up

About an hour once, then a few minutes per property

Difficulty

Beginner

Monthly cost

£0

You are helping a letting agent in England send a landlord a short email about the new Register your rental property service. A Google Sheet has already written every line, using the GOV.UK guidance and the landlord's details. Your only job is to lay its lines out as an email.

Sheet lines:

Write the email like this:
1. Copy every sheet line exactly, word for word, in the same order. Keep every name, date and email address exactly as written.
2. Put a blank line between lines.
3. If a sheet line is blank, leave it out and do not mention it.

Rules:
- Give only the email text, starting with Hi. No subject line, no heading and nothing before or after the email.
- End the email with the last sheet line, the sign-off and name, and put nothing after it: no extra name, no job title, no contact details and no placeholder line.
- Write the email address as plain text, exactly as it is in the sheet line.
- Do not reword any line, change any date, fill any gap or add any line of your own.
- No square brackets anywhere and no placeholders. If a sheet line has a gap, copy it with the gap and tell the agent about it in plain words, outside the email.
- British English.

On 29 October 2026, GOV.UK finally published the bit letting agents had been waiting for: how you’ll actually get into the new Register your rental property service on a landlord’s behalf. The short version is one link per property, one password per link, and no “forgot password” button. If you manage 80 doors, that’s 80 links and 80 passwords, and if somebody loses one, the landlord has to fix it.

Landlords are already asking the questions. On Property118 one asked, plainly, “What about HMOs? Do you have to register each room?” On Property Tribes, threads ask whether an out-of-date EPC can go on the database and what happens to tenants’ names on the certificates. Some of that GOV.UK has now answered. Some of it, it hasn’t, and this guide says so in plain words.

What you get: a free Google Sheet that logs every property’s access link (without ever holding the password), counts down each 28-day clock, and writes the email asking each landlord to add your agency when they register. A short AI prompt lays that email out. If you haven’t yet sorted which landlords fall into which region, start with our landlord register readiness tracker and come back here when the links start landing.

What does this automation do?

1. Writes the landlord email for you. Pick a property and the sheet writes a short, friendly email with that landlord’s region, opening date and deadline, your agency email address, and what you’ll do with the link. The AI only lays the lines out.
2. Logs every access link without storing the password. One row per property: when the link arrived, and the name of the entry in your password manager where the link and password live.
3. Counts down the 28 days. Once the landlord tells you the registration date, the sheet works out the last day for the tenancy details and certificates, and does the same for every later change.
4. Tells you what to do next. A status column says “Waiting for the access link”, “Tenancy details and certificates due by 11 Jan 2027”, “Overdue: update” or “Up to date”.
5. Keeps the unconfirmed bits honest. Where GOV.UK hasn’t said how something works yet, the guide says “not confirmed yet” rather than guessing.

What do you need before you start?

• A free Google account for Google Sheets. Set the sheet’s locale to United Kingdom (File, Settings) so dates read day first, and in the same box set the time zone to London. TODAY() follows the sheet’s time zone, and a sheet converted from Excel can start out on Pacific time, which can leave the day counts a day behind around midnight.
• A shared agency email address, such as a lettings inbox, rather than one person’s. GOV.UK sends each property’s link to the address the landlord gives, so it should outlive any one member of staff. That’s our suggestion, not a GOV.UK rule.
• Somewhere safe for links and passwords. GOV.UK says “You should plan how you’ll store these links and passwords safely.” A shared password manager your agency already uses is the obvious home. We haven’t priced one here, so if you don’t have one, that’s the one thing worth sorting first.
• ChatGPT Free, or the free Claude or Gemini. Text only: no file uploads, no paid features. ChatGPT’s pricing page lists “Unlimited text chats” on Free (checked 31 October 2026).
• About an hour to set up the sheet and add your properties.

How do I set it up?

Step 1: Get the 29 October facts straight

GOV.UK’s guidance for letting agents and property managers and its guidance for landlords both went up on 29 October 2026. The service comes from the Renters’ Rights Act 2025. Here’s what they confirm.

• The landlord goes first, always. “Landlords must start all property registrations.” They have the “legal responsibility to register each of their properties and make payment”. You can’t register a property for them.
• Helping is optional. “Using this feature is voluntary.” But GOV.UK adds: “You should discuss with your landlords how they’ll approach registering their properties before the service launches.”
• One link per property. When registering, the landlord can give “an email address for your agency”, and GOV.UK sends you a link. “You’ll receive a unique link for each property. The first time you use a property’s link, we’ll ask you to set a password.”
• Anyone with the link and password can update it. “Anyone in your agency can update a property’s registration, so long as they have access to the link and password. This means different departments can update different parts of the registration.”
• No password reset. “You cannot reset these passwords yourself. If you need to set a new password, ask the landlord to cancel the access link and send you a new one.”
• What you can fill in: HMO, additional or selective licence details; the number of tenants and households; furnished, partly furnished or unfurnished; the rent and whether bills are included; and the gas safety certificate (if there’s a gas supply), the EICR or EIC, and the EPC, with “issue/expiry information”.
• You own what you type. “You’re responsible for the accuracy of any property information you submit”. The landlord gets “a notification of any data you submit”, and “Landlords remain responsible”.
• HMOs: for a property with an HMO licence, the landlord guidance says to do “one registration for the whole property. You do not need to register each room individually.” That answers the Property118 question.
• Redress still applies. To do lettings or property management work, you must be on a redress scheme.

What this means for you: you’re the helper, not the registrant. Your job is to make it easy for the landlord to start, then be fast and accurate with everything after.

Step 2: Agree the plan with each landlord before their region opens

GOV.UK says registration opens region by region from 15 December 2026. Those dates and the 28-day rules come from draft regulations that committees in both Houses debated on 28 October 2026 but neither House had approved by 31 October, so they apply only if Parliament approves them. End dates are “before midnight” on the date shown. Landlords can register before their region’s start date too, so a landlord with property in several regions can do them all at once.

During the rollout, the agent guidance covers properties “let under an assured periodic or regulated tenancy at the time of the registration deadline for their region, or properties which become let after that deadline”. GOV.UK’s regions list shows which council falls where.

The money is the landlord’s: £65 per property per year, not subject to VAT, with no charge for updates. During the rollout it’s pro-rated. GOV.UK gives the formula as:

(fee / year_length) * (remaining_days - free_days)

Any days before 15 November 2027 count as free days, and the result is always rounded down. GOV.UK’s own example: a property registered on 15 December 2026 has 30 chargeable days out of 365, so (65/365)*(365-335) comes to £5.34.

What this means for you: the conversation to have now is “when you register, add our lettings email, and tell us the date”. The email in Step 6 does exactly that.

Step 3: Build the sheet

Make a new Google Sheet with four tabs.

Settings: A1 “Agency email for access links”, A2 “Agency name”, A3 “Your name”. Fill in B1, B2 and B3.

Regions: headings in A1 to D1: Region, Opens, Deadline (before midnight), In an email. Copy the nine rows from the table above into A2:C10 as dates, and in column D write how the region reads in a sentence: “the West Midlands”, “the East of England”, “the East Midlands”, “the South East”, “Yorkshire and Humberside”, “the North West”, “the North East”, “London”, “the South West”.

Properties: these headings in A1 to N1:

Email: A1 “Property ref”, and in B1 a dropdown from Properties!A2:A. A2 “Region”.

What this means for you: column G is the whole security model. The sheet says where the key is kept, never the key itself, so sharing the sheet with the team doesn’t share access to anyone’s registration.

Step 4: Add the formulas

The 28-day clocks. GOV.UK says the tenancy details and certificates must be in “within 28 days” of registering, and changes “within 28 days of that change or expiration”. The draft regulations, not yet final, count both as 28 days “beginning with” the day itself (regulation 6(2) for the first details, regulation 9(4) for changes), so the day counts as day one and the last day is the date plus 27. In H2 and L2:

=IF(E2="","",E2+27)

=IF(J2="","",J2+27)

So a property registered on 15 December 2026 is due by 11 January 2027, and a rent change on 1 March 2027 is due by 28 March 2027, the same counting as our readiness tracker. Working to day 27 is the cautious reading.

The status. In N2:

=IF(A2="","",IF(F2="","Waiting for the access link",IF(G2="","Save the link and set the password",IF(E2="","Ask the landlord for the registration date",IF(I2="",IF(TODAY()>H2,"Overdue: tenancy details and certificates","Tenancy details and certificates due by "&TEXT(H2,"d mmm yyyy")),IF(AND(J2<>"",OR(M2="",M2<J2)),IF(TODAY()>L2,"Overdue: update","Update due by "&TEXT(L2,"d mmm yyyy")),"Up to date"))))))

Copy H2, L2 and N2 down as far as your list goes.

The email lines. On the Email tab, B2 looks up the region:

=VLOOKUP($B$1,Properties!$A:$D,4,FALSE)

A3 is the greeting:

="Hi "&VLOOKUP($B$1,Properties!$A:$D,3,FALSE)&","

A4 is the dates:

="Registration for your properties in "&VLOOKUP($B$2,Regions!$A$2:$D$10,4,FALSE)&" opens on "&TEXT(VLOOKUP($B$2,Regions!$A$2:$D$10,2,FALSE),"d mmmm yyyy")&", and they need registering before midnight on "&TEXT(VLOOKUP($B$2,Regions!$A$2:$D$10,3,FALSE),"d mmmm yyyy")&"."

A5 is your email address:

="When you register each property, please give our email address, "&Settings!$B$1&", so GOV.UK can send us that property's access link. Please let us know once each one is registered, and on what date."

Type A6 to A9 as plain text:

• A6: We’ll then add the tenancy details and the gas, electrical and EPC certificate details within 28 days, so the registration doesn’t become inactive. You’ll get a notification of anything we submit, and the registration and the fee stay with you.
• A7: We can’t reset an access link’s password ourselves, so please don’t cancel a link unless we ask. If we do ask, please cancel it and send us a new one.
• A8: Any questions, just reply to this email.
• A9: Thanks,

A10 signs it off:

=Settings!$B$3&", "&Settings!$B$2

And A12 tells you whether it’s safe to copy:

=IF(OR(ISERROR(A3),ISERROR(A4),COUNTBLANK(Settings!$B$1:$B$3)>0),"To check: pick a property ref from the Properties tab, give it a landlord first name and a region, and fill in Settings B1 to B3",IF(A3="Hi ,","To check: pick a property ref from the Properties tab, give it a landlord first name and a region, and fill in Settings B1 to B3","Ready: copy A3 to A10 into the prompt"))

What this means for you: nobody has to count days on a calendar or remember which landlord is in which region. Sort by column N and the overdue ones float to the top.

Step 5: When a link lands, save it properly

When a link arrives, open it, set the password, and save both the link and the password straight into your password manager, under a name that matches the row, such as “KL-004 register”. Write that name in column G and the date in column F. GOV.UK says anyone with the link and password can update the record, so treat the pair like a front door key.

Two habits we’d suggest. These are ours, not GOV.UK’s:

• When someone leaves, ask whether they had the passwords. If they did, the only way to change a password is for the landlord to cancel the link and send a new one, so batch those requests rather than sending landlords five emails in a week.
• Split the work if it helps. GOV.UK says different departments can update different parts. Compliance might own the certificates and the lettings team the rent and occupants, as long as both know where the entry lives.

What this means for you: a lost password isn’t a disaster, but it is an awkward email to a landlord. Saving it properly the first time is much cheaper.

Step 6: Send each landlord the email

On the Email tab, pick a property ref in B1. When A12 says “Ready”, copy A3 to A10, paste them into the prompt below where it says “Sheet lines:”, and send it to ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. You get the email back laid out and ready to paste into your mail. Then fill in column E when the landlord replies with the date they registered.

What this means for you: one email per landlord, the same facts every time, and nothing in it that GOV.UK hasn’t said.

Step 7: Get the certificates ready, and know what’s not confirmed yet

For each property you’ll be entering the gas safety certificate if there’s a gas supply, the EICR or EIC, and the EPC, with their issue or expiry dates. GOV.UK’s agent page says “you may wish to begin preparing this in advance”. Our certificates inbox already logs those dates and chases renewals, and every renewal is a change you’ll need to record within 28 days, so add it to column J here too.

Three things landlords keep asking that GOV.UK hasn’t answered:

• Blanking out tenants’ names on certificates: not confirmed yet. Neither GOV.UK page says whether you can or should redact them. The landlord page says landlord and property information “will not be shared publicly” for now, and that a privacy notice update is to come.
• An expired EPC: not confirmed yet how the service handles it. The draft regulations, not yet final, expect this case: if the most recent EPC “is no longer valid”, the entry asks for “the date the current tenancy started” (Schedule 3). GOV.UK hasn’t said what the screen will ask for or accept.
• Details entered in any trial or test version carrying over: not confirmed yet. GOV.UK’s guidance doesn’t mention it, so plan to enter everything once the service opens.

What this means for you: get the certificate dates into the sheet now, and when a landlord asks one of the three questions, the honest answer is “GOV.UK hasn’t said yet”.

Step 8: Add a place for the registration numbers

In future, properties will need registering “before they can be marketed and advertised”, including empty ones, and adverts will need both numbers. “Landlord numbers are formatted L-XXXX-XXXX and rental property numbers are formatted P-XXXX-XXXX.” GOV.UK hasn’t given a date for that. Add two fields to your CRM or the Properties tab now, so the numbers have somewhere to go when the landlord shares them.

What this means for you: when the marketing rule arrives, the numbers are already on file rather than buried in a landlord’s inbox.

The copy-paste prompt

You are helping a letting agent in England send a landlord a short email about the new Register your rental property service. A Google Sheet has already written every line, using the GOV.UK guidance and the landlord's details. Your only job is to lay its lines out as an email.

Sheet lines:

Write the email like this:
1. Copy every sheet line exactly, word for word, in the same order. Keep every name, date and email address exactly as written.
2. Put a blank line between lines.
3. If a sheet line is blank, leave it out and do not mention it.

Rules:
- Give only the email text, starting with Hi. No subject line, no heading and nothing before or after the email.
- End the email with the last sheet line, the sign-off and name, and put nothing after it: no extra name, no job title, no contact details and no placeholder line.
- Write the email address as plain text, exactly as it is in the sheet line.
- Do not reword any line, change any date, fill any gap or add any line of your own.
- No square brackets anywhere and no placeholders. If a sheet line has a gap, copy it with the gap and tell the agent about it in plain words, outside the email.
- British English.

Before you send it:

• Check A12 on the Email tab says “Ready” before you copy anything.
• If Settings B1, your agency email address, is blank, A12 won’t say “Ready”, so fill it in first. Otherwise the email asks the landlord for an address that isn’t there, and the chat tool may copy the gap without a word of warning.
• Paste A3 to A10 straight under “Sheet lines:”, one line each, with nothing else added.
• Read the email back against the sheet. Every line should match word for word, and the email address should be exactly the one in Settings B1.
• Delete any subject line, heading or label the chat tool adds above “Hi”. ChatGPT sometimes shows the email in its own box, and copying it brings along the word “Email” or the landlord’s name at the top. If the email address turns into a link with brackets around it, that’s usually just the chat window’s formatting: copy it as plain text.
• Check that “Thanks,” and your name are on separate lines. ChatGPT sometimes joins them into one when you copy the email.

What can go wrong?

• The landlord registers with someone’s personal email. Then the link goes to that person. Ask for the shared agency address every time; the email does this for you.
• Nobody knows the registration date. The 28 days run from the day the property was registered, not the day you noticed the link. Column N keeps asking until you fill in column E. GOV.UK says it will send landlords a reminder if information is missing, but don’t rely on that.
• The 28 days run out. If the tenancy details and certificates aren’t in within 28 days, “the property’s registration will become inactive and the landlord may breach their legal duties”.
• Giving the wrong figures. You’re responsible for the accuracy of what you submit. GOV.UK’s landlord guidance lists penalties of up to £7,000 for not registering and up to £40,000 for knowingly or recklessly giving false or misleading information. The agent page doesn’t list penalties for agents.
• Passwords in the sheet. Don’t. Column G holds the name of the password manager entry and nothing else.
• The rules changing. Everything here is as GOV.UK and legislation.gov.uk state it on 31 October 2026, and the regional dates and 28-day rules come from regulations that are still in draft, so they apply only if Parliament approves them. Check the linked pages before you rely on them.

The access links are one part of the Renters’ Rights changes. Our free Renters’ Rights admin checklist covers the rest of the paperwork. 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 (MHCLG): Register your rental property service: guidance for letting agents and property managers (29 October 2026)
2. GOV.UK (MHCLG): Register your rental property service: guidance for landlords (29 October 2026)
3. legislation.gov.uk: Renters' Rights Act 2025
4. legislation.gov.uk: The Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026, draft, not yet made
5. legislation.gov.uk: draft PRS Database Regulations 2026, regulation 9 (the 28-day updates)
6. legislation.gov.uk: draft PRS Database Regulations 2026, Schedule 3 (what a property entry holds, including an EPC that is no longer valid)
7. GOV.UK: Registering with a redress scheme as a property agent
8. GOV.UK (MHCLG): Regions of England and their local councils (PDF)
9. Property118: comment asking whether HMOs register each room (9 October 2026)
10. Property Tribes: EPC out of date for landlord database
11. Property Tribes: landlord database data protection query
12. Property Tribes: just about ready for database

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.