The £65 database, the £40k fines - and why serviced accommodation is exempt

The Government has announced the next phase of the Renters' Rights Act: a national landlord database with real fines attached. Here are the dates, the costs - and the exemption nobody is talking about.

On 9th September, the Government quietly published the next phase of the Renters' Rights Act: the Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026. Every landlord in England with a normal rental property will have to register on a new national database - and this time there's a fee attached.

The database - officially the 'Register Your Rental Property' service - goes live region by region, starting in the West Midlands on 15th December 2026. Registration costs £65 per property, per year. For a block of flats, it's £65 per flat, not per building. And it's the landlord who has to do it: even if you pay a letting agent to manage everything, the duty to register sits with you. An agent cannot do it for you.

The dates that matter

• West Midlands: the service opens 15th December 2026, with landlords there having until 14th March 2027 to register
• The North West follows on 15th May 2027 - that's Chester, Manchester, Liverpool and Warrington
• Every eligible property in England must be registered by 14th November 2027

Miss your region's window and the penalties are not symbolic. Failing to register can mean a fine of up to £7,000 per property. Serious or repeat breaches can cost up to £40,000, alongside rent repayment orders and losing the right to regain possession of your own property. Registration also comes with compliance evidence attached - tenancy details and safety documentation have to follow within 28 days for occupied homes. It is yet another thing for the landlord to think about, track and pay for.

The part nobody is talking about

Here's the detail that matters more than the fee. The PRS Database doesn't apply to holiday lets, Airbnb-style accommodation, company tenancies, lodgers or purpose-built student accommodation. It mainly covers normal assured and regulated tenancies - the traditional long let.

Read that again. If you're a savvy landlord who has already moved to a rent-to-rent solution or a professionally managed serviced accommodation model, this new regulation doesn't touch you. No £65 a year. No registration window to diarise. No £7,000 or £40,000 exposure. While every other traditional landlord in the country deals with yet another layer of compliance, cost and admin, serviced accommodation operators are completely outside its scope.

This is the pattern, not an accident

Look at the last few years as a sequence. Section 24 crushed buy-to-let margins by restricting mortgage interest relief. The Renters' Rights Act added void risk, longer possession timelines and compliance cost. Now the PRS Database adds annual fees and fines of up to £40,000. Every single one of these regulations lands on the traditional landlord, and not one of them favours the old model.

We're not going to claim short lets are unregulated - they carry their own obligations, and we've written about those honestly before. But the direction of travel is unmistakable: government policy is steadily loading cost and risk onto the standard long-let model, and each round rewards landlords who run their property as a flexible, professionally managed business instead.

Where Ruso Property fits

Under our guaranteed rent model, we become your tenant: we pay you an agreed fixed rent every month whether the property is booked or empty, and we carry the operational load - pricing, guest communication, cleaning, compliance, all of it. Under our 15% fully managed service, you keep the income upside and hand us the day-to-day. Either way, which new database, fee or fine applies to a guest's stay stops being your problem to track.

The PRS Database is the third act in a decade of policy that doesn't favour the traditional landlord. If the direction of travel bothers you - or the £65, the deadline and the fines simply add to a pile you never asked for - that's the moment to look at a model built for exactly this environment.

Get a free income estimate for your property and we'll show you what guaranteed rent or fully managed serviced accommodation would look like in practice - no pressure, no tie-ins.