Big agents face ‘714 days’ to upload data onto landlord register
An agent managing 10,000 rental properties would need 714 days to load them onto the new rental database, Shadow Housing Minister Gareth Bacon has told MPs.
An agent managing 10,000 rental properties would need 714 working days to load them onto the new rental database, MPs have been told.
Shadow Housing Minister Gareth Bacon, (pictured), gave the figure during a committee hearing on the draft Private Rented Sector Database Regulations 2026.
He said a portfolio of 3,000 properties would take 214 days, a calculation based on 30 minutes per property and working solidly seven hours a day to upload the data.
Each property requires around 70 data points and the regulations do have no provision for bulk uploading.
The Government estimates 10 minutes per property, which would mean 1,600 staff hours for a 10,000-home portfolio.
Knight Frank, Hamptons and Chestertons put the figure at a minimum of 20 minutes, which would double it.
Many of the industry representatives I’ve spoken to thought the Government had heard their concerns and were making adjustments, only to discover later that they had been totally ignored.”
Bacon said the design is “alien to any common sense” and has been built around landlords with a handful of properties rather than portfolio landlords or managing agents.
He also said landlords must begin and end the upload process themselves, with agents able to do only part of the work.
That contradicts the Government’s original claim that agents could handle the process on a landlord’s behalf, he said.
Landlord database
Bacon told the committee the National Residential Landlords Association considers the regulations “a costly mess”, and that the industry regards the Government’s approach as “a total disaster”.
He said: “Many of the industry representatives I’ve spoken to thought the Government had heard their concerns and were making adjustments, only to discover later that they had been totally ignored.”
He added that the industry, including the NRLA, is “broadly in agreement” that greater transparency would be a good thing if the database is designed and managed properly.
Housing minister Matthew Pennycook responded to the criticisms before the committee voted the instrument through by 11 votes to six.
The new service will be known as Register your Rental Property. There’s an annual £65 registration fee per property, and this registration will need to be renewed every year.
A second statutory instrument is still to come. Landlords and agents must have complied by 14th November 2027.
Another example of the Government failing to understand the realities of running a lettings business!
The proposed landlord database could require around 70 pieces of information PER PROPERTY, yet the Government apparently believes registration will take just 10 minutes!
And no bulk-upload facility?
Having run my own property business for nearly 25 years and trained thousands of landlords and agents, I find this extraordinary.
Managing agents already hold much of this information. Why force businesses to duplicate work, increase costs and spend valuable staff time manually entering data?
At £65 per property annually, the costs could be substantial, particularly for larger portfolios.
I support sensible regulation that protects tenants and raises standards, but this must be proportionate, practical and properly thought through.
The private rented sector needs effective regulation, not endless bureaucracy!
I quite agree, the three month deadline makes this an impossible task. We need six months as a minimum and that would still be a struggle.