Rent-to-rent: who holds the licence, who carries the offence

Scope: England and Wales. Verified against the legislation on 14 August 2026. This is an area where the specific contractual structure decides the answer — treat it as a map of the questions, not advice on your arrangement.

In a rent-to-rent arrangement an owner lets a property to an intermediary company on a guaranteed rent, and the intermediary sublets to occupiers and keeps the difference.

The attraction for the owner is that somebody else does the managing. The risk is that the statutes do not allocate responsibility the way the contract does.

Three different questions, three possible answers

"Who is the landlord" has no single answer, because different statutes ask different things.

Who must hold the licence

Licensing under the Housing Act 2004 attaches to the person having control of or managing the property. Those are defined terms, and they usually point at the intermediary who receives the rack rent from occupiers — not the owner receiving a guaranteed rent.

But "usually" is doing real work. Where the arrangement is loose, undocumented, or where the owner retains practical control, the owner can be the person managing. Two people can also be liable, and a council can pursue either.

Who commits the offence

The offence of controlling or managing an unlicensed property tracks the same definitions. So the intermediary is commonly the offender — and an owner who assumed the arrangement moved the risk entirely may find it did not, particularly if the intermediary is a company with no assets that dissolves when enforcement starts.

The consequences do not shrink because the structure is complicated: a civil penalty of up to £30,000, a rent repayment order, and potentially a banning order. See the full consequence set.

Who the occupier's landlord is

For the occupier's tenancy, their landlord is the intermediary who granted it. That matters for deposits, for notices and for possession — an owner cannot serve Form 3A on somebody who is not their tenant.

It also means the occupier's deposit is the intermediary's to protect, and the intermediary's failure is a live claim.

The rent repayment order problem

Rent repayment orders are made against the landlord who received the rent. In a rent-to-rent structure the occupiers pay the intermediary, so the order usually follows the intermediary. Where the intermediary is insolvent, tenants and councils look for another route — and whether an owner is reachable depends on the facts of control, not on the wording of the agreement between them.

What the owner should actually check

• Is the property licensable? Mandatory HMO thresholds, or a council's selective or additional designation. Subletting to sharers frequently creates an HMO where the owner's own letting was not one.
• Does the licence exist, and in whose name? Ask for the licence number and check it against the council's register.
• Does the head lease permit subletting? For a leasehold flat, see what your lease bans.
• Does your mortgage permit it? Consent to let rarely contemplates a commercial subletting arrangement.
• Does your insurance? An undisclosed occupancy type is a common ground for declining a claim — what cover actually does.

The honest summary

Rent-to-rent moves the day-to-day work and some of the legal exposure, but it does not reliably move all of it, and it introduces failure modes an owner does not control: an intermediary that does not licence, does not protect deposits, and is not there when a tribunal looks for someone to pay.

Run the free compliance check for the address to see which licensing regimes apply to it, whoever is managing it.