England has no national landlord register. Scotland and Wales both do, and putting the property into a limited company does not remove the duty in either nation. What incorporation changes is who the applicant is, and the two registers answer that question very differently: Rent Smart Wales publishes plainly that the company itself is what gets registered, on its Companies House number, while the Scottish register does not publish a corporate route at all.
Where a register is silent on how a corporate applicant is treated, this page says so plainly, dates the check, and names who to ask, because a confident guess about a criminal-offence regime is worse than an open question. Everything asserted below as fact was verified at source on 2 September 2026 against mygov.scot, the Scottish Landlord Register and Rent Smart Wales. For the English side of a mixed portfolio, our landlord licensing guide has it, and the property SPV hub covers the incorporation decision itself.
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Scotland: landlord registration for a company-owned property
Scotland runs a single national landlord register administered by local authorities. Registration is compulsory before letting begins, and letting out an unregistered property is a criminal offence carrying a fine of up to £50,000. That is the sharpest compliance fact in this whole area, and it is worth reading twice by anyone who has just moved a Scottish rental into a newly formed company and assumed the old paperwork travelled with it.
Registration lasts 3 years and must then be renewed. Renewal runs through the Scottish Landlord Register online, which is why renewal queries dominate the search demand around this scheme: three years is exactly long enough to forget. The practical discipline is to diary the expiry the day the registration is granted, because an expired registration leaves you in the same position as never having registered.
The fees are set nationally, not by each council, so they do not vary by area:
| Item | Fee |
|---|---|
| Principal fee | £85 |
| Per property let | £20 |
| Principal fee, applying online to more than one local authority | £42.50 per authority (50% discount) |
| Late application | £170 |
| HMO properties, and Scottish-registered charities | No fee |
Where a property is jointly owned, every joint owner must register, but only the lead owner pays the principal fee and the others apply free of charge. Several categories sit outside the scheme entirely: resident landlords, lets to family members, holiday lets (which may instead need a short-term let licence), property managed by a religious organisation, agricultural and crofting tenancies, and services regulated by the Care Inspectorate.
Here is the honest limit of what can be stated. Neither mygov.scot nor the Scottish Landlord Register publishes how a body corporate applies. They do not say whether the company is entered as the registered landlord, whether a director must also be named and assessed for fitness, or how the joint-owner rule is applied where a single company holds the title. We checked both sources again on 2 September 2026 and the position is unchanged. Do not infer the answer from the Welsh scheme, which is published and is built differently. Before applying for a company-owned Scottish let, ask the local authority for the property to confirm the applicant route in writing, and keep that reply on file.
Wales: Rent Smart Wales for a company-owned property
Wales splits the duty into two separate requirements, and that split is the answer to most company-landlord confusion about the scheme.
Registration is the base requirement. The immediate landlord must complete it, and must do so themselves. Licensing is the second layer and turns on who does the work: a landlord who personally carries out letting and management activities must hold a licence as well as being registered, while a landlord who is not personally involved in that work registers and appoints a licensed agent instead. A company that hands the property to a managing agent therefore registers and relies on the agent's licence. A company whose own people show tenants round, sign the tenancies and handle repairs needs the licence too.
On the core question this page exists to answer, Wales is explicit. Where a company, charity or trust is the landlord, it is the organisation's details that are registered, not those of the individual completing the paperwork, and the entity's Companies House company number is required on the application. The registered landlord is the company. Licence applications capture the company number and registered office as well, which indicates corporate applicants apply directly rather than through a licence held personally by a director. One detail is not settled on the published guidance: whether a named individual must be designated on a corporate licence, and who must complete the associated training. Confirm that with Rent Smart Wales rather than assuming it.
| Rent Smart Wales item | Online | Paper |
|---|---|---|
| Landlord registration | £60 | £102 |
| Registration renewal (within 84 days before expiry) | £48 | £87 |
| Landlord licence | £254 | £327 |
| Landlord licence, early renewal 42+ days before expiry | £230 | £302 |
Agent licence fees are graduated by portfolio size, with discounts for members of UKALA, ARLA, RICS and Safeagent. Registration and licences each last 5 years, renewable from 84 days before expiry, with the anniversary date protected so an early renewal does not shorten the term.
One point that a landlord incorporating a Welsh portfolio needs to settle early. Because the Welsh register is built around the identity of the registered entity, a registration held personally cannot be assumed to survive a transfer of the property to your company. Secondary Rent Smart Wales material points toward a change of owning entity requiring a fresh registration and a fresh fee, but that was not confirmable on the primary registration, licensing or FAQ pages when we checked on 2 September 2026, and the change-of-ownership page did not resolve it. Put the question to Rent Smart Wales before the transfer completes, and budget for a new £60 registration in case the answer is yes.
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Does the director register, or the company?
Side by side, for a residential rental owned by a limited company:
| Question | Scotland | Wales |
|---|---|---|
| Is there a national register? | Yes | Yes |
| Who is the registered landlord when a company owns the property? | Not published; confirm with the local authority | The company, identified by its Companies House number |
| Is a Companies House number captured? | Not published | Yes, on registration and on licence applications |
| Registration cycle | 3 years | 5 years |
| Base fee | £85 plus £20 per property | £60 online |
| Separate licence layer? | Only for HMOs, under separate legislation | Yes, licence or licensed agent, depending on who does the work |
| Penalty headline | Criminal offence, fine up to £50,000 | Registration and licence are the gateway to lawful letting and management |
The useful takeaway is that the two schemes are not the same shape, so an answer imported from one is not evidence about the other. Wales has resolved the corporate question on the record and Scotland has not published it. The three-year Scottish cycle against the five-year Welsh one is the other thing worth diarising: a company holding property in both nations is renewing on two different clocks.
Worth remembering when either form asks who stands behind the company: the directors and people with significant control are recorded at Companies House, and if you are unclear on who those are for your own structure, our guide to setting up a property investment company covers it.
What about HMOs and selective licensing?
Landlord registration is the base layer. It is not a licence, and it does not stand in for one.
In Scotland, letting a property as a house in multiple occupation requires an HMO licence from the local authority, a separate requirement under separate legislation, in addition to being on the landlord register. Registering does not license the HMO and the licence does not remove the registration duty. A company letting a Scottish HMO needs both, though no landlord registration fee applies to HMO properties.
In Wales, the licensing layer described above is the Rent Smart Wales licence, which turns on who carries out letting and management work rather than on the property being shared.
In England there is no national register at all. The equivalent compliance question is selective licensing, which is designation-based and applies only where a council has brought a designation into force, and it is covered in full in our landlord licensing guide, with the deeper mechanics in the HMO and selective licensing mechanics guide. That is the whole of the England point on this page.
Registering a portfolio held across nations
A company or group holding rentals in more than one UK nation is running separate compliance exercises, not one. None of the regimes recognises another's paperwork: a Welsh registration does nothing in Scotland, a Scottish registration does nothing in Wales, and an English selective licence does nothing in either. The registers are national schemes with their own applicants, fees, cycles and enforcement.
For a company landlord, that produces a short standing checklist:
- Per nation, not per company. Work out which nations the properties sit in, and treat each as its own registration project with its own renewal date.
- Register before letting, not after completion. Scotland makes letting unregistered a criminal offence, and Wales gates lawful letting and management work behind registration and, where needed, a licence with training attached. Start alongside the conveyancing.
- Re-check when the owning entity changes. An incorporation, a transfer between two of your companies or a group reorganisation changes the legal owner. Ask the relevant register whether a fresh registration is required before the transfer, not after.
- Keep the confirmations. Where a register does not publish the corporate route, as in Scotland, the written reply from the council is the evidence that you asked and followed what you were told.
- Fees are deductible running costs of the letting business, in the company as they would be personally. They are small next to the penalties, which are not deductible.
The registration question is rarely the reason anyone incorporates, and it is usually discovered late, after the transfer is under way. It is cheap to get right in advance and expensive to get wrong, particularly in Scotland where the exposure is criminal rather than civil. If you are weighing up moving a Scottish or Welsh portfolio into a company, settle the register position at the same time as the tax position, not afterwards.