What we shipped

From 15 December 2026 every landlord in England needs an entry on the government’s “Register your rental property” service, and an entry for each property they let. A new Property register page shows when your region opens and the deadline that follows it, then goes through every field the register will ask for and marks what HomeDash already holds and what is missing, with a link to fill each gap. When you are ready it builds a pack you can work from, and once you have registered you can record the numbers the service gives back. It updates the 28-day clock when something you registered changes — a new tenancy, a rent change, a notice served. HomeDash cannot register on your behalf; it gets you ready and keeps the dates. The dates come from the draft regulations laid on 9 September 2026 and can change before they are made.

Not every notice suits a digital signature, and posting one through the door left HomeDash holding the unsigned version as the record — including in the tenant’s own portal. You can now print a notice from the list or from the notice itself, sign it by hand, and upload a scan or photo of the copy you actually served. That version becomes the record from then on. Signing digitally now asks you to confirm first, because it retires the unsigned copy and cannot be undone — so print before you sign, if paper is the plan.

HomeDash now produces the official Form 4A rent increase notice from the tenancy record. It checks the timing before it will produce anything — two months’ notice, at least 52 weeks since the last increase, and a start date that falls on the first day of a rental period — and if the date you picked does not work it tells you the earliest one that does. Sign it digitally and the signature lands in the form’s own Signed box, not on the first page. Serve it by email and HomeDash sends the signed PDF itself as an attachment, rather than a message asking the tenant to go and look. On the day the new rent starts, the tenancy is updated to match.

Section 48 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 says rent is not lawfully due until the tenant has been given an address in England or Wales where documents can be served on you. HomeDash now tells you which of your tenancies have never been given one, and produces them all together in a single step. It is a start-of-tenancy duty with no expiry date, so it applies to a tenancy that began years ago just as much as one starting tomorrow.

The Renters’ Rights Act requires a written statement of terms for tenancies from 1 May 2026. HomeDash generates it from the tenancy you already hold — parties, property, rent, rental period, deposit and start date — and can email it to the tenant directly. There is no prescribed form and no signature requirement, so producing and giving it is the whole duty.

Tenants can now see the meters at their home and submit a reading with a photo, and the landlord sees it against the property straight away. Every reading is announced, not just the first, and the notification opens the Meters tab rather than the top of the page. The tenant dashboard is also noticeably faster to load.

Each property now carries a completion score showing what is still unanswered — compliance records, tenancy details, the practical knowledge like where the stopcock is. It is a nudge and nothing more: no reminder, alert or feature is ever withheld because a score is below 100%. Free text is left out of the maths so 100% stays reachable.

Clicking a calendar entry now opens the record it refers to and offers the actions that belong to it, instead of a side panel that summarised it and made you go looking. The panel has been retired.

Settings has a new Your Data section with one button that downloads your whole account as a zip of CSV files: properties, tenants, tenancies, deposits, every rent charge, issues and their notes, inspections, a documents index with download links, contacts, mortgages, insurance, property knowledge, meters and readings, utility accounts, valuations and your team. Every plan, including Free. It is your data, and being able to leave with it is part of why you should trust putting it here.

When a tenant replies to a HomeDash WhatsApp message, or sends a photo, it now appears on their chat thread in the portal beside everything else they have said. If it reads as a repair, or comes with a photo, it is raised as a Tenant Request issue with the photo attached, and gas, carbon monoxide, flooding and no-heating messages arrive as High priority. You are notified the same way as any tenant-reported issue.

Smart Fix now reads the property’s own record before it answers: the boiler make and model, where the stopcock and consumer unit are, and what has gone wrong at that address before and how it was fixed. Advice is for that home rather than a generic one, for landlords diagnosing an issue and for tenants troubleshooting on their dashboard.

Choose a gas safety, EICR, EPC or licence certificate and HomeDash reads it — including scanned ones — and fills in the type, the expiry date and, for an EPC, the rating. It only fills fields you have left empty, says what it read so you can check before pressing Add, and warns if the certificate looks like it belongs to a different address.

Each tenancy now carries its own start-of-tenancy checklist on the contract view, with a record of when and how each duty was done and which document proves it. Tenants gained a “right to rent checked on” date, distinct from the recheck date, and a tenancy that starts on HomeDash with no check on record is flagged. Certificate and licence reminders can be raised as a maintenance job in one click. All of it appears on the calendar too.

A new tenancy raises its own to-do list the moment you create the contract: protect the deposit and serve the prescribed information (each on a 30-day clock from the day the deposit is received), give the How to Rent guide and the Renters’ Rights information sheet, and get the inventory signed. Record when and how each was done and the row clears for good. Tenancies that started before you joined HomeDash are never chased for these.

The invitation email now names you and the property in the subject line and explains that the link creates the tenant’s login — and that the Sign up button on this website is for landlords. The landlord signup page says the same thing above the form.

The Free plan allows up to 3 properties instead of 1, still with no card and no time limit. Essential moves up to 5 properties at the same £7/month. Existing Free accounts get the higher allowance automatically.

Rent reminders and tenancy messages to tenants over WhatsApp are now sent by HomeDash itself, with per-landlord control in Settings, a full sent log alongside email in Tenant Communications, tenant opt-out honoured, and sends held to daytime hours (8am–8pm UK).

Record insurance policies as first-class records — one policy can cover several properties — with renewal dates on the calendar and a warning when a property has no cover recorded.

One widget that gathers what genuinely needs a decision — expiring certificates, unprotected deposits, overdue rent and more — with actions to dismiss, snooze, mark as in hand, or not applicable, so the list stays honest.

When arrears reach the stage where HomeDash deliberately stops chasing the tenant automatically, you now get an alert telling you it’s time to step in personally.

Subscribe to your HomeDash calendar from Google, Apple or Outlook; add your own one-off reminders; acknowledge, snooze or dismiss any event; and see rent in a dedicated Payments view. The default look-ahead is now a focused 3 months.

The daily/weekly rent digest now opens with a portfolio snapshot, shows compliance alerts and upcoming renewals only when there are any, and groups collections into overdue, outstanding and received — with received rents showing the date the money actually arrived.

Agree a repayment schedule with a tenant in arrears: set the total and the instalments, and HomeDash tracks progress — automated arrears chasing pauses for the arrears a plan covers, while new rent is still monitored as normal.

Type a landlord question, get a plain-English answer drawn only from our editorially reviewed guides, with links to check every claim. Free, three questions a day.

A dedicated Deposits page: record each deposit, track protection status and the 30-day statutory deadline, and see held totals across the portfolio at a glance.

The website, portal, and every email now share the same visual identity — matching the HomeDash logo exactly.

The Buy-to-Let Yield & Cashflow Calculator, Landlord Cashflow Tracker, Portfolio Stress Test, and True Cost of a Void Calculator moved out from behind email capture. Seven free tools now live at /tools.

A new free planner for the confirmed EPC C deadline: enter your band and what the property already has, get an indicative upgrade plan with the £10,000 cost cap and available grants applied.

Upload photos to any property: a cover photo on the property list, a gallery carousel on the detail page, and a photo manager for adding and removing images in bulk.

Tenants who receive WhatsApp reminders can now opt out themselves from their portal — no need to ask their landlord.

A free plain-English hub for the Renters' Rights Act: ten in-depth guides, every possession ground explained, and a Regulation Radar tracking what changes when — each page sourced and dated.

A single grounded weekly digest of UK landlord news replaces the old daily feed — compiled from cited sources, human-reviewed before publishing, every Friday.

Fixed three tenant notifications that could fail to send, made sure property addresses (not internal short names) appear in every email, and tidied the mobile layout of sign-in pages.

A first-run wizard walks new accounts through adding their first property, tenant, and contract — and the tenant portal gained its own guided tour.

Tag any property with its legal owners — you, a partner, or both for joint ownership — then filter the property list, rent tracking, and inspections by owner. Built after a landlord asked how to keep his, his wife’s, and their joint properties distinct in one account.

The AI assistants merged into a single HomeDash Assistant that can answer from your live portfolio — your actual properties, tenancies, rents, and compliance dates — with a shared daily usage allowance shown transparently.

Send a tenant their annual rent statement straight from the Contracts page — and a scheduled sweep sends them automatically each April.

Contracts, rent, inspections, documents, and welcome emails now all come from the portal with consistent branding — plus a sent-log page and BCC preferences so landlords can keep copies.

Conduct a full property inspection on a tablet with no signal — photos included. Everything syncs automatically when you’re back online.

The whole portal — landlord and tenant sides — now follows your device theme, with a manual toggle.