Lettings Software After the Renters' Rights Act: What Changes

From 1 May 2026, the Renters' Rights Act moved private tenancies in England onto assured periodic tenancies, ended section 21, and set new rules for rent increases (once a year, 2 months' notice on Form 4A), possession notices (Form 3A) and pet requests (28 days to decide). Lettings software needs a new tenancy model, notice workflows with deadline jobs, and records for the PRS Database.

If you would rather have it built for you, see how RAITHub would build this below.

This is a software guide, not legal guidance. Every rule below is summarised from government publications as of October 2026 and may be changed by later regulations. It is general information; confirm how it applies to your business with your adviser. The Act applies to England; Wales and Scotland have their own tenancy law. For the wider PropTech picture, see the PropTech software development guide.

What is the Renters' Rights Act, and when does each part start?

The Renters' Rights Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025 and, according to the government's guide to the Act, affects about 11 million private renters and 2.3 million landlords in England. It starts in phases. The government's implementation roadmap sets them out:

Phase	When	What starts	Software impact
Phase 1	1 May 2026	Assured periodic tenancies, end of section 21, reformed possession grounds, new rent increase process, bidding ban, rent in advance limit, pet requests, discrimination ban	Tenancy model, notices, listings, pets workflow: needed now
Phase 2: PRS Database	"From late 2026"; the government's landlord guide gives 15 December 2026 for the West Midlands first	Mandatory landlord and property registration, with an annual fee	Registration status per landlord and property
Phase 2: Landlord Ombudsman	Mandatory membership expected in 2028	Landlords must join a redress scheme	Membership records, complaint handling, evidence export
Phase 3	To be confirmed in the roadmap	Decent Homes Standard and Awaab's Law for private renting	Repairs and hazard timelines; plan the data, wait for the rules

Councils also got new enforcement and investigatory powers from 27 December 2025, per the same roadmap. For software, the practical point is that Phase 1 is live, so any lettings product still offering fixed-term assured shorthold tenancies or section 21 notices for new English tenancies is out of date.

Which Renters' Rights Act changes need a software change?

Almost all of Phase 1 lands in the data model or a scheduled job. This is the mapping a lettings product team should work through.

Change	What the rule says (summary)	Software feature it needs
Tenancy type	Assured shorthold tenancies abolished for private rentals; new and existing tenancies become assured periodic (assured tenancy forms guidance)	A periodic tenancy type with no end date; migrate existing fixed-term records; remove "renewal" flows built around end dates
Tenant leaving	Tenants give at least two months' notice (landlord guide)	Tenant notice record, computed end date, move-out and inspection tasks triggered from it
Rent increases	Once per year, through the revised section 13 process, with notice "at least 2 months before it is due to take effect" (roadmap)	Form 4A generation, an eligibility check, served-date evidence, a scheduled job that applies the new rent on the effective date
Possession	Section 21 ended; possession by Form 3A on specified grounds (possession guidance)	Notice workflow per ground: evidence checklist, notice period, earliest court date, document pack
Selling or moving in	Grounds 1 and 1A "cannot be used until 12 months after the tenancy started"; selling needs evidence such as proof an estate agent is instructed	Block the ground in the UI until the date passes; attach evidence; flag any restriction on re-letting or re-marketing afterwards
Rent bidding	Ban on rental bidding (roadmap)	Listings show one rent; the offer flow cannot accept or invite more than the advertised rent
Rent in advance	Limited to one month's rent between signing and the tenancy starting (landlord guide)	A validation rule on payment schedules at offer and signing
Pets	Landlords have "an initial 28 days to consider their tenant's request" and need valid reasons to refuse (roadmap)	A pet request record with received date, decision due date, decision, reason and a reminder job
Discrimination	Landlords cannot discriminate because a tenant has children or receives benefits (rental discrimination guidance)	Remove "no benefits" or "no children" listing fields and applicant filters; audit screening criteria
Existing tenancies	An information sheet for tenancies that began before 1 May 2026, with a deadline of 31 May 2026 (landlord guide)	A sent-and-delivered record per tenancy, for evidence later
PRS Database	Mandatory registration with an annual fee, from late 2026	Registration number and status per landlord and property; block marketing if unregistered, once the rules confirm that
Landlord Ombudsman	Mandatory membership expected 2028	Membership record per landlord; complaint timeline and an evidence export

Arrears and other grounds have their own thresholds and notice periods in the Act's schedule of grounds. We have not reproduced every period here, because getting one wrong in software repeats the mistake on every tenancy. Hold them as configuration that a qualified person signs off, not as numbers in code.

How should lettings software handle rent increases now?

As a workflow with a check, a document and a scheduled job. The check asks whether an increase is allowed yet; the document is Form 4A, the landlord's notice proposing a new rent; the job applies the new rent on the effective date, if the tenant has not challenged it.

Keep the rule values in configuration so they can change without a deploy, and record which rule version each notice was checked against. A minimal eligibility check:

// Values summarised from government guidance, October 2026.
// General information only: confirm with your adviser before relying on them.
export interface RentIncreaseRules {
  version: string
  minNoticeMonths: number           // notice before the increase takes effect
  minWeeksBetweenIncreases: number  // "once per year"
}

export const ENGLAND_PRS_2026: RentIncreaseRules = {
  version: 'england-prs-2026-05',
  minNoticeMonths: 2,
  minWeeksBetweenIncreases: 52,
}

const addMonths = (d: Date, n: number) =>
  new Date(Date.UTC(d.getUTCFullYear(), d.getUTCMonth() + n, d.getUTCDate()))
const addWeeks = (d: Date, n: number) =>
  new Date(d.getTime() + n * 7 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000)

/** Earliest date a proposed increase could take effect, before period alignment. */
export function earliestEffectiveDate(
  servedOn: Date,
  lastIncreaseEffective: Date | null,
  rules: RentIncreaseRules,
): Date {
  const byNotice = addMonths(servedOn, rules.minNoticeMonths)
  if (!lastIncreaseEffective) return byNotice
  const byFrequency = addWeeks(lastIncreaseEffective, rules.minWeeksBetweenIncreases)
  return byNotice > byFrequency ? byNotice : byFrequency
}

Two details the code leaves to the next layer. First, the effective date usually has to line up with the start of a rental period, so round up to the next period start for that tenancy. Second, the served date depends on how the notice was served; store the method and the evidence, not just a timestamp. If a tenant challenges the increase at the tribunal, the scheduled job must hold the new rent until the outcome, so give the notice a status such as "challenged" that the job respects.

The payment side, collecting the new amount without double-charging, is covered in building online rent collection.

What should a possession notice workflow look like?

One record per notice, driven by the ground. Since 1 May 2026, possession notices use Form 3A, "or a form substantially to the like effect", per the government's possession guidance. For software, each ground needs four things:

• Eligibility. Can this ground be used yet? Grounds 1 and 1A, moving in and selling, are blocked for the first 12 months of the tenancy.
• Evidence. The guidance gives examples, such as an estate agent's instruction for selling, a rent statement for arrears, or witness statements for anti-social behaviour. The workflow should not let a notice be generated without them attached.
• Notice period and earliest court date. Computed from the ground's configured period and the service date, and shown to the user, not hidden.
• Audit trail. Who prepared, approved and served the notice, when, and how. If it reaches court, this is the record.

Notices served before 1 May 2026 follow different transitional rules, which the government covers in a separate guide. Keep old section 21 notices in the system as historical records with their own status, rather than deleting or converting them.

This is where scheduled jobs earn their keep. A daily job that finds notices whose period has ended, pet requests near day 28, and rent increases due tomorrow is a small piece of code with a large consequence if it skips a day or runs twice. PropDesk, the property management platform RAITHub built, runs 5 daily automation jobs for this kind of time-driven work, each tested to be safe to rerun.

How do you handle pet requests in software?

As a request with a clock. Record when the tenant's request arrived, compute the decision due date from the 28-day period in the roadmap, remind the landlord before it, and require a reason when the answer is no. If the landlord asks the tenant for more information, store that as an event, because it may affect the timeline. Rules on what a landlord can require as a condition, such as insurance, have changed during the Act's passage and through amendments to the Tenant Fees Act; hold those as configuration and check them with your adviser.

What do the PRS Database and the Landlord Ombudsman mean for your product?

More data per landlord and property, and better evidence. The roadmap says signing up to the PRS Database "will be mandatory for all PRS landlords" with an annual fee, rolling out from late 2026, and the government's landlord guide gives 15 December 2026 for the West Midlands first. Landlord Ombudsman membership is expected to be mandatory in 2028.

What to build now, while details are confirmed:

• Fields for registration number, status and renewal per landlord and per property, nullable until your region opens.
• A dashboard of unregistered properties, so agents can chase landlords before marketing.
• A complaint record and an export that bundles the tenancy's notices, messages and repairs history, ready for redress.

Do not build an integration against a database API until the government publishes one. We found no published developer interface when writing this, so treat any vendor claim of a "live" link with care until you can see the documentation.

How long does it take to update lettings software for the Act yourself?

For an in-house team that knows its own codebase, the Phase 1 changes are roughly 4–8 weeks: the periodic tenancy migration, Form 3A and 4A generation, the pet request workflow, listing and offer changes, and the scheduled jobs with tests. Phase 2 fields add a week or two, more once integration details exist.

The main risk is the data migration, not the new screens. Converting every fixed-term tenancy into a periodic one touches rent schedules, renewal reminders, deposit records and reports. Done without tests, it produces wrong notice dates for real tenants, quietly, months later.

Buy, build or hire?

Option	Example and cost	Choose this when	Watch out for
Off-the-shelf lettings software	Arthur Online from £82.50 a month for 55 units on its Standard plan (Arthur Online pricing)	You are an agency or landlord and want the Act handled by a vendor's product team	Ask each vendor for its Renters' Rights Act release notes; the pricing page we checked did not mention the Act
No-code or template	Bubble from $59 a month billed annually (Bubble pricing), or a spreadsheet tracker	You manage a handful of tenancies and need deadlines tracked, not a product	Deadlines depend on someone opening the file; no audit trail
Custom build or upgrade	Market cost depends on scope; see the PropTech guide	Lettings software is your product, or your workflow (build to rent, student lets, HMOs) is poorly served by existing tools	You own keeping up with every future regulation

For a small landlord, the comparison is in property management software for small landlords.

Why RAITHub for this

• PropDesk. RAITHub built this property management platform with Stripe rent collection, the lease lifecycle, 4 user roles, 5 daily automation jobs and 1,024 automated tests. It was not built for the Renters' Rights Act, but leases, notices on a schedule and role-scoped records are the exact patterns the Act requires. See the PropDesk case study.
• Rules as configuration. Notice periods and limits are versioned values with tests around them, so a change in regulations is a reviewed config change, not a hunt through code.
• Migration with tests first. RAITHub writes tests that pin current behaviour before converting live tenancy data, so the migration is proved, not hoped.
• Working hours. Remote from Dhaka, in English: 3 hours of working-day overlap with the UK in winter and 4 in summer, with written daily handoffs. RAITHub has no UK office.

RAITHub does not give legal advice and has no legal expertise in tenancy law. Your adviser decides the rules; RAITHub builds the workflow they run in.

When you don't need us

• You run an agency on established lettings software. Your vendor should ship the changes; ask for its release notes and test them against your own tenancies.
• You manage a few properties. A calendar, the government's forms and a good adviser cover it.
• You need someone to tell you what the law requires. That is a solicitor or lettings compliance adviser, not a software studio.
• You need MLS-style listing feeds. RAITHub has no MLS integration, and UK portal feeds are a separate question from the Act.

How RAITHub would build this

• Scope: the assured periodic tenancy model and migration of existing records; Form 3A and Form 4A workflows with evidence and audit trail; pet requests, the rent-in-advance check and the single-rent offer flow; PRS Database and ombudsman fields; daily deadline jobs with tests.
• Timeline: a new lettings MVP is 4–6 weeks at fixed scope; upgrading an existing product's backend for the Act is 6–12 weeks; a fragile codebase that cannot be changed safely starts with code rescue, 2–4 weeks.
• What you receive: automated tests and CI, including the migration and scheduled-job tests; handover docs and runbooks for the rule configuration; full IP assigned to you under NDA. Development uses synthetic tenancy data; production data stays in your own cloud account.

Next step: a free 15-minute technical audit, then a written fixed quote. RAITHub publishes no rates. See the PropTech service page or the API and backend development service, then book the free audit with your current tenancy model and which Phase 1 changes are still open.

Frequently asked questions

When did the Renters' Rights Act come into force?

It received Royal Assent on 27 October 2025. Phase 1, including assured periodic tenancies, the end of section 21 and the new rent increase process, started on 1 May 2026. The PRS Database rolls out from late 2026 and ombudsman membership is expected in 2028. General information; confirm with your adviser.

What does the Renters' Rights Act change for letting agents' software?

The tenancy model moves to assured periodic tenancies, possession uses Form 3A on specified grounds, rent increases use Form 4A once a year with 2 months' notice, pet requests need a decision within 28 days, listings cannot invite bidding, and landlords will need PRS Database and ombudsman records.

Can lettings software still send section 21 notices?

Not for new private tenancies in England since 1 May 2026. Notices served before that date follow separate transitional rules, so keep them as historical records rather than deleting them, and check their status with your adviser.

Is there an API for the PRS Database?

We found no published developer interface when writing this in October 2026. Store registration numbers and status per landlord and property now, and build an integration only once the government publishes one.

Should rent increase and notice periods be hard-coded?

No. Keep them as versioned configuration signed off by a qualified person, record which version each notice was checked against, and test the calculations, so a regulation change is a reviewed config update.

Does the Act apply in Wales and Scotland?

The Act's tenancy reforms apply to England. Wales and Scotland have their own tenancy law, so software serving all three needs jurisdiction as a field on every tenancy. Confirm the details with your adviser.

Can RAITHub tell me whether my notices are legally valid?

No. RAITHub builds and tests the software; it does not give legal advice. Your solicitor or compliance adviser sets the rules, and the software applies them consistently with an audit trail.