Renters' Rights Act fines: what limited company landlords need to do before 31 May 2026

Key takeaways

• Existing landlords have until 31 May 2026 to serve tenants with the official Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet. The penalty for an initial breach can be up to £7,000 per property.
• The Act, in force from 1 May 2026, has changed three underwriting assumptions for buy-to-let lenders: tenancy structure, rent review mechanics, and eviction routes.
• For limited company directors with property held in an SPV, the impact lands on rental coverage calculations and the documentation a specialist lender now wants to see.
• Specialist lenders such as The Mortgage Lender, Foundation, Melton, Aldermore, and Vida Homeloans can in certain cases assess director-landlord portfolios more flexibly than the high street, particularly when retained profit and SPV trading history are part of the picture.
• If a fixed-rate buy-to-let product is ending in the next nine months, the right time to start the remortgage conversation is now, not at the six-month-out window most landlords use.

If you let property in England and you have not served your tenants with the official Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet, you have 14 days from today before the operational compliance deadline lands. Miss it and you may face penalties of up to £7,000 per property for an initial breach.

That is the punchy version. The longer version is that the Renters' Rights Act came into force on 1 May 2026. It is the most significant piece of private rental legislation in England in three decades. The headlines have focused on tenants. The quieter shift, which most landlords are now starting to feel, is happening inside mortgage underwriting departments. And the 31 May deadline is one piece of compliance with knock-on effects in both directions.

If you are a limited company director with one or more buy-to-let properties held through an SPV, the next remortgage you complete will look slightly different to the last one. Some of the changes are paperwork. Some are mechanical. A few may affect what you can borrow and which lenders will look at the case.

This is what is actually happening behind the scenes, and what to do about it if your fix ends in the next twelve months.

What has the Renters' Rights Act actually changed for landlords?

Four changes are the ones lenders care about.

Section 21 no-fault evictions are gone. Landlords can no longer end a tenancy without a legal ground. The Section 8 routes that remain have been tightened. Rent arrears need to reach three months before an eviction ground can be relied on, up from the previous threshold.

Fixed-term assured shortholds are gone. All tenancies convert to periodic by default. Renters who sign a new tenancy now are protected for twelve months. A landlord wanting to move back into a property or remarket it cannot do so within that window unless the tenant breaches the contract or another specific ground applies.

Rent reviews can only happen once per year. The new mechanism is a Section 13 notice, which requires at least two months' written warning. Rent review clauses in existing tenancies can no longer be relied on for new increases after 1 May 2026. Landlords also have to advertise a clear figure and may not accept higher bids on the property.

Tenants have a right to request a pet. Landlords cannot unreasonably refuse, and must provide a written reason for a refusal within 28 days. Pet damage is then a risk landlords carry directly, as separate pet deposits are not permitted under the Act.

The 31 May 2026 Information Sheet deadline

Every existing landlord in England has until 31 May 2026 to provide each of their tenants with the official Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet. The Information Sheet is a standard document issued by government, explaining tenants' rights under the new Act.

Failure to serve the Information Sheet on time may carry a penalty of up to £7,000 per property for an initial breach. For a portfolio landlord with five properties, the maths is unforgiving.

There are three ways to do this in practice. Email a PDF to each tenant. Post a physical copy through the door. Hand it over in person and keep a dated receipt. In each case, what matters is the audit trail. Evidence that the document was delivered before the deadline. Some letting agents are doing this on behalf of landlords; others are not. Worth asking the question explicitly if you use one.

Why does this change buy-to-let underwriting?

Mortgage underwriting models for buy-to-let are built on three assumptions about how a rental property behaves: who pays the rent, how much that rent is, and how quickly a landlord can recover possession if the rent stops.

All three of those assumptions have moved.

Specialist lenders such as Aldermore, Foundation, Vida Homeloans, The Mortgage Lender, and Melton Building Society have spent the last six months recalibrating. The high street lenders, with more standardised criteria, are moving more slowly, which has widened the gap between the two routes for director-landlord cases.

What specifically changes for limited company landlords?

Five practical points are worth knowing.

One. Rental coverage assumptions on variable-rate stress tests. Most BTL stress tests assume the rent can be increased to track the market every six to twelve months. With Section 13 capping increases at one per year, lender stress test models can in certain cases produce a lower assessed rental income figure. Specialist lenders have been tweaking these models; high street BTL lenders less so.

Two. Documentation around tenancy structure. Some lender criteria still references "minimum twelve-month AST" wording. That wording does not match the new periodic tenancy structure. A specialist broker who knows which lenders have updated their criteria saves time at the application stage.

Three. Portfolio review questions. Lenders are starting to ask whether all existing tenancies are RRA-compliant. The Information Sheet question is now standard. For directors with several properties, a clean compliance file makes the portfolio side of the application faster.

Four. Capital expenditure on EPC and pet damage risk. A small but growing number of lenders are factoring expected upgrade costs into their portfolio affordability models, particularly where energy performance requirements are likely to require work. This does not affect headline borrowing for most cases, but it can affect maximum loan-to-value on tighter applications.

Five. Director remuneration questions are getting sharper. Specialist lenders that include retained profit in income calculations are still doing so, but the underwriting questions are more detailed than they were twelve months ago. Two years of full company accounts plus SA302s and clean business bank statements is now the floor, not the ceiling, of what gets reviewed.

A specific case to illustrate the point

Here is a recent case that maps onto what most director-landlords will see in the next twelve months.

A limited company director with three buy-to-lets in his SPV, looking to add a fourth. The new property is a four-bed in Northampton intended for a single professional household tenant. Application total: £640,000 against a £820,000 purchase.

Two high street lenders declined. The reason in both cases was rental coverage. They valued the rent at the lower of market and contractual, applied a 5.5% notional stress rate, then ran the cover ratio. The numbers fell below their 145% threshold. The applications closed at that point.

The Mortgage Lender can, in certain cases, assess portfolio landlord cases differently. Their underwriters looked at the existing three properties, factored in the director's salary and dividend mix from the trading business, and applied a stress test that recognised the five-year fixed product the borrower was selecting. The application completed.

The Mortgage Lender also cut buy-to-let fixed rates by up to 35 basis points in the week ending 15 May 2026, with headline BTL rates now starting at 4.14%. For limited company landlords whose existing fix is ending, this is the kind of fresh news that should sharpen the question of which lender to approach first.

Two things made this case work. A two-year track record in the SPV with clean rental returns. And a broker who knew which lender to approach without working through the high street panel first.

If your fixed rate is ending in the next twelve months

The default approach for most landlords is to wait until six months before the fix ends and start the remortgage conversation then. In a fast-moving lender criteria environment, that window has narrowed.

For director-landlords specifically, two things tend to be worth doing earlier.

Run a portfolio compliance check at nine months out. Confirm every tenancy is RRA-compliant. Confirm the Information Sheet has been served. Confirm the rent review pattern across the portfolio. Have the file ready for an underwriter before the lender hunt begins.

Have a broker compare specialist and high street routes side by side at seven to eight months out. A product transfer from the existing lender is one option. The market may have a meaningfully better one, particularly under specialist lenders that have updated their criteria.

Frequently asked questions

What are the Renters' Rights Act fines if I miss the 31 May 2026 deadline?

The penalty for failing to serve the Information Sheet on tenants by 31 May 2026 can be up to £7,000 per property for an initial breach. Repeat breaches can carry higher penalties. The penalty is per property, so portfolio landlords face proportionally larger exposure.

Has the Renters' Rights Act stopped specialist lenders from accepting limited company buy-to-let cases?

No. Specialist lenders' appetite for limited company buy-to-let remains intact. Several have launched or extended limited company BTL ranges in May 2026. What has changed is the documentation and the underwriting questions, not the willingness to lend.

Will my existing buy-to-let mortgage be affected by the Act?

Not directly. Your existing mortgage product terms remain in place. The Act affects new tenancies and changes to existing tenancies from 1 May 2026 onwards. The next time your mortgage product or rate changes, the lender's underwriting questions will reflect the new regime.

Should I move my buy-to-lets into a limited company before remortgaging?

That depends entirely on your tax position, which is a question for your accountant. From a mortgage perspective, limited company holdings now access a more developed specialist lender market than personal-name BTL, but the move triggers stamp duty and capital gains considerations that need separate professional advice.

My fix ends in eleven months. Is it too early to talk to a broker?

No. For a director-landlord, a pre-remortgage review at nine to twelve months out is increasingly the better practice, particularly if the portfolio has grown or changed since the last application. The conversation does not commit you to anything.

Are there any lenders that have not updated their criteria yet?

Yes. Lender criteria adoption has been uneven. A broker who tracks lender criteria changes weekly is in a better position to route an application to a lender that has fully updated its underwriting approach than one that has not. This is part of what specialist broking is for.

Next step

Two practical actions for any limited company landlord reading this.

Today. Confirm the Information Sheet has been served on every tenant in your portfolio. If your letting agent is doing it, get written confirmation of the dates. If you self-manage, serve them before 31 May.

This month. If your buy-to-let fix is ending in the next twelve months, the right move is a fifteen-minute portfolio review call, not a full application. The goal of the call is to map out what your remortgage conversation should look like nine months from now, what documentation needs to be in order, and which specialist lenders are best placed to assess your file.

Book a call or use the Track My Mortgage tool if you would like to self-serve a starting point.

About the author. Kieran Ali is a mortgage and protection adviser at CiK Finance, specialising in complex income mortgages including limited company directors, business owners, contractors, and portfolio landlords. The information in this article is for general guidance only and does not constitute personal financial advice.

CIK Financial Ltd is an appointed representative of PRIMIS Mortgage Network, a trading name of First Complete Limited which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Most buy-to-let mortgages are not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage. A fee may be charged for mortgage advice. The precise amount will depend on your circumstances.