Letting your home for the first time.

1. Before anything else: permission

• Your mortgage lender. A residential mortgage normally doesn’t allow letting. Ask for consent to let (some lenders charge a fee or change the rate) or move to a buy-to-let mortgage. Letting without consent is a breach of your mortgage terms.
• Your lease, if it’s a flat. Most leases allow letting but some need the freeholder’s consent or ban short lets. Read it, or ask us to.
• Your insurer. Ordinary home insurance usually doesn’t cover a let home. You’ll need landlord insurance, and it’s worth telling your insurer the date the tenant moves in.
• Moving abroad? HMRC’s non-resident landlord rules will apply, and your agent will usually have to deduct tax from the rent unless HMRC agrees otherwise. Our guide for overseas landlords explains it.

2. The certificates and safety checks

• Gas safety record from a Gas Safe engineer every year, if there’s any gas appliance or pipework. A copy goes to the tenant.
• Electrical installation condition report (EICR) at least every five years, with any remedial work done. A copy goes to the tenant.
• Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rated E or better. The government has consulted on raising the minimum to C by 2030; that isn’t law yet, but if your home is rated D or E it’s worth knowing what would lift it.
• Smoke alarms on every floor and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room with a fixed fuel-burning appliance such as a boiler or wood burner (gas cookers excepted), all tested on the day the tenant moves in.
• Legionella: a simple written risk assessment of the water system, kept on file.
• Furniture you leave in the home must meet the fire-safety regulations (look for the permanent label).

Every item is on our free landlord checklist, which you can tick off on your phone or print. Under Fully Managed we track every expiry date for you and book the work before anything runs out.

3. The rules since 1 May 2026

The Renters’ Rights Act changed how a tenancy works in England. The things a first-time landlord most needs to know:

• No fixed terms. Every tenancy runs month to month from day one. Your tenant can leave with at least two months’ written notice; you can only end the tenancy using a Section 8 ground (selling, moving in, serious arrears and others), each with its own notice period. There is no Section 21.
• One advertised rent. You can’t accept offers above it, and you can’t take more than one month’s rent in advance or any rent before the agreement is signed.
• A holding deposit of at most one week’s rent, and a tenancy deposit of at most five weeks’ rent (six where the annual rent is £50,000 or more), protected in a government-approved scheme within 30 days with the prescribed information given to the tenant. Nothing else can be charged to the tenant: no admin, referencing or inventory fees.
• Right to Rent. Every adult who will live in the home must have their right to rent in England checked before the tenancy starts. We do this as part of referencing.
• Written terms. The tenant must be given a written statement of the tenancy terms and the government’s information for tenants.
• Pets. A tenant can ask in writing to keep a pet; you must answer in writing within 28 days and can’t refuse unreasonably.
• Rent increases once a year at most, by notice on Form 4A with two months’ notice, and not in the first year.
• You can’t turn an applicant down because they have children or receive benefits.

4. The national landlord database

Every private landlord in England must register themselves and each home they let on the government’s Register your rental property service. It opens on 15 December 2026 and, for St Albans and the rest of the East of England, registration is required between 15 January and 14 April 2027. The fee is £65 per home per year. Registration is your own legal duty, so you start it (you’ll need a GOV.UK One Login); your agent can then add the tenancy and safety information, which is included in our Fully Managed service.

5. Setting the rent

The official average across the St Albans district was £1,934 a month in September 2026 (ONS). That includes long-standing tenancies, so new lets are often higher, and a one-bedroom flat and a four-bedroom house are obviously different. Our St Albans rent report has the averages by size and type of home, and a free valuation gives you a figure for your own home. Price to let within a few weeks rather than to a hopeful figure: an empty month costs more than a slightly lower rent.

If you’re weighing up letting against selling, our rental yield calculator turns a price and a rent into a yield.

6. What it costs

Our Let Only service (we find and reference the tenant, you manage the tenancy) is 6% + VAT of the first 12 months’ rent, one-off. Fully Managed (we look after everything) is 10% + VAT of the rent each month. Both have a set-up and marketing fee of £250 + VAT for the first let. On a home renting for £1,650 a month that’s a one-off £1,425.60 inc. VAT for Let Only, or £198 a month inc. VAT for Fully Managed, plus the £300 inc. VAT set-up fee either way. Every fee is published here, and our property management page explains what you get for the monthly fee. Budget too for the certificates above, an inventory, landlord insurance, and for keeping the home in good repair.

7. Tax, briefly

Rental profit is taxable income. You declare it on a Self Assessment tax return, after deducting allowable expenses such as agent fees, repairs, insurance and certificates. Mortgage interest isn’t deducted as an expense: since April 2020 individual landlords get a tax reduction worth 20% of the interest instead (GOV.UK explains how). HMRC’s Making Tax Digital rules are being phased in for landlords from April 2026 depending on income, which means quarterly digital updates for those it covers. Keep every statement and invoice from day one, and speak to an accountant before your first return. This is general information, not tax advice.

8. Do it yourself, Let Only, or Fully Managed?

You can do all of the above yourself, and some landlords do. Most first-time landlords want at least the tenant found and referenced properly, because a bad tenant is the expensive mistake. Whether you then manage the tenancy yourself comes down to how close you live, how much time you have and how you feel about being the person a tenant rings when the boiler stops. Fully Managed or Let Only sets out the difference.

Common questions

Related guides

All our landlord guides