Your home goes live on a Thursday afternoon. By the following Tuesday, there are three letters on the mat, two of them handwritten, and somebody has knocked on the door to say they were just valuing a property round the corner.
Landlords in England now have a date, and a price. The government has confirmed that the new national register of landlords and rented homes opens on 15 December 2026, and rolls out region by region through the following year. Registration will cost £65 per property, every year.
Most sellers assume the awkward questions come later. Somewhere in the solicitor's pack, weeks after an offer, when the buyer's conveyancer starts digging. That is not how it works any more. A good deal of it has to be sorted before your home is even advertised, and the phrase for it is material information.
If you have been half following the EPC story for the last few years, you would be forgiven for thinking nobody knows what is happening. A standard was proposed, then delayed, then dropped, then revived. Dates came and went. 2025, 2028, 2030, all of them quoted confidently by somebody.
The message usually arrives on a Sunday evening, and it is always polite. "We have been thinking about getting a dog. Would that be OK?" Since 1 May 2026, how you answer that is no longer just a matter of preference. There is a process, there is a deadline, and there are reasons you are allowed to give and reasons you are not.
There is a phone call we take every year in the first week of September. Someone has decided, somewhere between the last barbecue and the first uniform run, that this is the year they move. Then comes the question. "Could we still be in by Christmas?"
