“In the prime market, value is rarely lost to one big decision; it goes in the gap between knowing a change is coming and doing something about it.”
– Yasmin Ulhaq – Glenfield Property Management
The Chancellor stood up yesterday afternoon, but most of what will shape a Chelsea, Mayfair or Knightsbridge rental over the next two years had already been decided.
The Renters’ Rights Act has been live since May; a national landlord register opens on 15th December; property income tax will rise – now by 4% – in April 2027; a surcharge on £2m-plus homes will arrive in 2028; and priced-off values are being set now. None of it waits for the red box.
At the top of the market, the cost of getting this wrong is rarely the fine. It is the void, the lost tenant, the deal that stalls in due diligence. Here are the five things landlords should be settling before the end of December.
1. Know exactly which of your tenancies the Renters’ Rights Act touches
The Act abolished section 21 and turned assured shorthold tenancies into rolling periodic tenancies from 1st May, but it does not reach every prime let. Tenancies with rent above £100,000 a year, and lets to a company rather than an individual, sit outside the assured regime and can still run on common law terms.
That makes the threshold a line worth knowing to the pound. A flat let at £98,000 and one at £102,000 can sit on the same Knightsbridge street and live under entirely different rules on possession, rent review and notice. Recent figures show the market already pricing the gap: prime central rents below £100,000 rose 0.7 per cent in the quarter, against 0.1 per cent above it.
Do not treat the exemption as permanent – the £100,000 figure was set by statutory instrument in 2010, after sitting at £25,000, and it can be raised the same way without a new Act. Lawyers have already floated £200,000 as the inflation-adjusted figure.
The action: list every tenancy by rent, tenant type and renewal date. For anything near the line, know which regime you are in before you agree on a renewal figure. And check company lets are genuinely company lets: a tenancy in an individual’s name with a company paying the rent is not the same thing.
2. Get ahead of the landlord register, even though London goes last
The national “Register your rental property” service opens on 15th December, starting in the West Midlands and moving region by region. London’s window opens on 15th July 2027 and closes on 14th October 2027. The fee is £65 per property, every year.
The temptation is to file this as a job for next summer, but landlords should resist the urge. Landlords with property in several regions can register everything from 15th December onwards. Registration needs a landlord entry plus a separate entry for each home, so the work is in the paperwork behind it: compliance certificates, ownership details and tenancy information.
Responsibility to register sits with the landlord, even where an agent manages the property. False or lapsed entries can lead to rent repayment orders.
The register applies to assured tenancies, so a common law let above £100,000 may fall outside it. That is exactly the kind of judgement to make deliberately, not discover in an enforcement letter.
The action: use the quiet weeks before Christmas to assemble a single compliance file per property. Owners who hold through companies, trusts or family offices should confirm who the registered landlord actually is. For overseas owners, decide now who will hold the logins.
3. Treat EPC band C as a 2027 project, not a 2030 one
In January, the government confirmed that privately rented homes in England and Wales must reach the equivalent of EPC band C by 1st October 2030, up from band E today. There is a spending cap of £10,000 per property, or 10 per cent of value if lower.
The detail that matters most for prime stock is transitional. A home that achieves band C on a certificate issued before October 2029 will be treated as compliant until that certificate expires, even after the new EPC methodology arrives. In other words, a C secured under today’s rules can carry a property well past the deadline.
For period houses and mansion flats in conservation areas, that is not a box-ticking exercise. Secondary glazing needs consent, listed fabric limits insulation, and the right contractors book up fast once a deadline gets close. The landlords who move first get the trades, the consents and the better certificate.
The action: commission a current EPC and an improvement plan over the winter, while properties are between tenants or quieter. Fold the works into planned refurbishment rather than a forced programme in 2029.
4. Rework the numbers before the tax year does it for you
From 6th April 2027, property income tax rates rise by four percentage points to 24 per cent, 44 per cent and 49 per cent for landlords who hold in their own names. Company-owned property is not caught by that rise.
Then there is the High Value Council Tax Surcharge, due from April 2028 on homes in England worth £2m or more. The annual charge runs from £2,500 to £7,500 across four bands, and it falls on the owner, not the occupier.
That is the part landlords miss: a tenant who pays council tax today will not be paying this. The Valuation Office is setting the 2026 values that decide the band, and those values hold until the next revaluation five years on.
Add Making Tax Digital, live since April for landlords with qualifying income above £50,000. The second quarterly update, covering 6th July to 5th October, is due on 7th November. HMRC is not issuing penalty points for late updates this tax year, which is generous, but the self-assessment deadline of 31st January still bites.
The action: sit down with your tax adviser before the year end, not in March. Model the April 2027 rise against your ownership structure. Know which properties sit near a surcharge band edge and what evidence supports their value.
5. Winter-proof the homes nobody will be in over Christmas
The regulation above is predictable where the weather is not. Between mid-December and mid-January, a large share of prime London empties thanks to owners heading abroad, tenants travelling and staff on leave. It is the most likely time for a small fault to run undetected for days.
The pattern is familiar to anyone who manages at this level. A pipe behind a fitted wardrobe might leak quietly or nobody opens the door for a fortnight. By the time an issue is found, a repair has become a re-fit: joinery, flooring, plaster, the ceiling of the flat below and an insurer asking when the property was last inspected.
Almost all of it is preventable for the cost of a morning’s work.
The action: before the holidays, have every vacant or lightly occupied home checked. Service the boiler, set frost protection, test leak detection and alarms, and confirm stopcock locations are known to whoever holds the keys.
Check your insurer’s unoccupancy conditions, as many require regular inspections once a home sits empty beyond a set period. Then book the visits through January and keep the record. If something goes wrong, the paper trail is the difference between a claim and an argument.
The common thread
None of these five priorities is dramatic, and that is exactly the point. In the prime market, value is rarely lost to one big decision; it goes in the gap between knowing a change is coming and doing something about it.
The landlords who start January calm will be the ones who used December to check, file and fix.
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