Just Finished a Property Course? The Compliance Questions to Answer Before Your First Deal
Property training is very good at momentum: strategies, scripts, the encouragement to act. What the workbooks rarely carry is the regulatory frame those strategies operate inside, meaning the licensing schemes, the tax registrations, and the rule about inviting people to invest. None of it is a reason not to begin. All of it is cheaper to learn before the first deal than from the first enforcement letter. Here is the checklist we would want every new investor to complete in their first ninety days, updated for a tenancy regime that changed in May 2026. This is general information, not advice.
One: know which permissions your strategy actually needs
Each strategy carries its own permission map, and the map is local. Before the local detail, though, note the change that sits above all of it in England: the Renters' Rights Act 2025 took effect on 1 May 2026, and assured shorthold tenancies and fixed terms went with it. Almost every private tenancy is now a periodic assured tenancy, section 21 no-fault notices can no longer be served, inviting offers above the advertised rent is prohibited, no more than one month's rent may be required in advance, and a rent rise needs a formal notice with two months' warning. If your course notes still describe a twelve-month fixed term with a section 21 held in reserve, they describe a system that no longer exists. Further stages of the same Act, including a national database of landlords and properties, are still to commence, so the sensible posture is to expect more rather than to assume the ground has settled. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each run their own separate tenancy regime. On top of that sit the strategy-specific permissions. Shared houses engage HMO licensing, with national rules for larger houses and council-by-council schemes for smaller ones, and separately the planning restrictions that apply where an Article 4 direction has been made. Short stays engage planning limits, fire-safety duties, and often lender and lease consents. Renting a property in order to sub-let it needs a consent chain in writing from the owner's lender, any superior lease, and the insurer. Before money moves, write down the strategy's permissions for the specific address, and get the council's answer in writing. The trainer said it was fine has no weight with an enforcement officer, and the officer is not being unfair: the obligation was always yours.
Two: the money-raising rule that outranks every script
If your plan involves other people's money, learn this rule before any approach: inviting or inducing someone to engage in investment activity is restricted by section 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000, and unlawful promotion is a criminal offence under section 25. Casual settings do not switch it off; enthusiasm does not switch it off; the fact that everyone on your course was doing it does not switch it off. Exemptions exist and are narrower and more formal than forum folklore suggests, and they are confined to particular kinds of investment rather than covering any raise you care to make. The right professional for this question is a solicitor with financial-services expertise, consulted before the first pitch. It is the single most important referral in this article.
Three: register for the taxes your plan creates, on time
Gross rental income above the property allowance of £1,000 a year must be reported, and for most new landlords that means registering for self-assessment. The deadline is earlier than people assume: you must tell HMRC by 5 October following the end of the tax year in which the income arose, so rent that began in the current tax year has to be notified by 5 October 2027. Buying, refurbishing and selling is different: carried on as an activity rather than as one opportunistic sale, the profit is usually trading income rather than a capital gain, taxed at income tax rates and carrying Class 4 National Insurance on profits above the lower profits limit of £12,570. Whether a given run of transactions amounts to a trade is a question of fact rather than of labelling, and it is far better settled with an adviser at the outset than argued with HMRC some years later. Stamp duty land tax arrives at purchase, and in England and Northern Ireland a further 5% sits on top of the usual residential rates whenever the transaction leaves you owning more than one dwelling. It is not a UK-wide tax: Scotland charges land and buildings transaction tax with an additional dwelling supplement of 8% on the whole price, and Wales charges land transaction tax on its own higher-rate scale. The figure to budget for is the one that applies where the property stands, not where you live. And if you sell a residential property at a gain with tax to pay, the return and payment on account are due within 60 days of completion, a deadline that catches people precisely because it does not wait for January.
Four: hold the property in the right hands before, not after
Whether to buy personally or through a limited company is a genuine question with a fact-dependent answer, and mortgage pricing, your other income, the interest-relief rules, extraction plans and exit intentions all pull on it. One further weight has been added since most course material was written: from 6 April 2027 the income tax rates charged on property income rise by two percentage points, to 22%, 42% and 47%, which tilts the arithmetic again for anyone holding in their own name. What matters in the first ninety days is sequencing. The question is cheap to answer before the first purchase and expensive to reverse afterwards, because moving a property between yourself and a company is a disposal and a purchase, with tax and stamp duty on the journey. One hour of advice before the offer beats a restructuring memo two years in.
Five: keep records as though you will be asked for them
Every strategy you were taught produces numbers someone may one day test: HMRC on income and gains, a council on licensing, a lender on use, a tribunal on rent. Open a separate bank account for the activity on day one. Keep purchase completion statements, refurbishment invoices, letting records and nightly diaries, and correspondence with councils and lenders, contemporaneously rather than reconstructed. Good records are not bureaucracy; they are the difference between an enquiry that closes in a fortnight and one that runs a year. They are also, incidentally, how you will know whether the strategy is actually making money.
Six: build your own professional bench
A course community is not a professional adviser, and the confident person in the group chat is not insured for being wrong. The bench a new investor actually needs is short: an accountant who does property work and will show the arithmetic; a solicitor for conveyancing and, where money-raising or complex structures appear, financial-services advice; and a mortgage broker who knows the products for your strategy and will tell you what a lender must consent to. Interview them before you need them. A professional whose first answer to a hard question is that it depends, followed by what it depends on, is worth ten who say it is easy and everyone does it.
The spirit of the thing
None of the above says do not invest. It says the strategies are operated inside a framework of law that was there before the course and will be there after it, and that the framework moves: the single biggest change to English tenancy law in a generation landed in May 2026, between many readers signing up for a course and completing on a first property. The investors who last are the ones who treat that framework as part of the craft rather than as an obstacle to it, and who check it again each year instead of trusting a workbook. Ninety days spent answering these six questions costs less than any single one of them costs when discovered the other way round.
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This article is general information only and does not constitute tax advice. Figures and dates are current as at the date of writing; any worked example is illustrative. Always consult a qualified adviser before acting.