In order to rent your house out to tenants in Wales, there are a number of things you’ll need to do, including registering as a landlord with Rent Smart Wales (a legal requirement since November 2015), having a landlord electrical safety certificate in place, an annual gas safety check (if the property uses any gas appliances) and a valid EPC.

You’ll also need to arrange occupation contacts for your tenant (previously known as tenancy agreements) and ensure compliance with safety rules by having appropriate smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors installed.

Once you have tenants lined up, they need to be vetted to ensure they are eligible for the Right to Rent scheme before the tenancy starts. You might also wish to check references for prospective tenants.

You will also need to conduct an inventory on the property, protect your tenants’ deposit through one of the official schemes and make sure that you have the correct insurance in place before the tenant moves in.

New laws introduced in December 2022 in Wales for landlords and tenants have changed some of the processes involved in renting out a property. Through a staged rollout throughout 2023, landlords need to ensure they are compliant with the new rules or could face fines or even prosecution.

In brief, the rules are:

• Tenants are to be known as ‘contract-holders’ and tenancy agreements have changed to become known as ‘occupancy contracts’
• No-fault notice periods have been extended to six months minimum (formerly two months), but this doesn’t apply if the contract has been breached e.g. rent arrears or antisocial behaviour. This also means that no no-fault notices can be given until the contract-holder has been in the property for at least six months
• The property must be considered safe and fit to live in and be maintained as required by the landlord.

At the time of writing, landlord licence costs vary, depending on whether it’s a new registration or a renewal (every five years), and whether applied for online or on paper.

Currently, a new registration (also a revoked registration) cost is £45 online and £84 if done on paper. A renewal of registration costs £36 online and £67.20 for paper. The renewal must be completed before the registration expires to pay the lower renewal fee. If the registration expires before being renewed, the landlord must pay for a new registration.

Landlords in Wales need to have a Rent Smart Wales licence in order to rent a property out

From December 2022, landlords in Wales need to ensure that they have a valid landlord electrical safety certificate for each property they rent out. This means that an electrical engineer has done checks on the electrical system in the property to make sure that it meets safety requirements. The certificates remain valid for up to five years.

Landlords must also ensure that the property has a gas safety check at least annually, and a record of this needs to be provided to contract-holders within 28 days of the check.