Latest / STR Unpacked / £1,400 A Property
Transcript
- Ben: Good morning and welcome to your short-term rental bulletin on the 17th of September. So, Wales has opened its visitor accommodation register for the next month. Joining is free, which is awfully nice of them, but ignoring it will cost you £1,400 per property. So, from October, anybody who takes a booking overnight stays in Wales must register with the Welsh Revenue Authority. The deadline is the 31st of March 2027, 195 days from today. And it applies whether or not your council ever introduces the visitor levy. So the penalty ladder sits in section seven of the Visitor Accommodation Act 2025. So it's £100 for each unregistered premises. Then it's £10 a day for the following 30 days, then a further thousand pounds per premises. Gov.Wales gives the total at £1,400 per premises, and the arithmetic is in the act, matches it exactly. So note per premises. So for example, if you've got 10 cottages, that's 14,000 pounds. So the levy is separate and later. Councils can bring it in from April 2027 at 75p or £1.30 a person per night. And Cardiff has already approved it. So two things sit in the act that the guidance pages don't put up front, but they are definitely worth knowing about. So go to section two. This defines visitor accommodation by a 31-night test. if a unit ever takes bookings of 32 nights or more, it falls outside of this act. So, I think depending on your strategy, this is definitely worth taking into consideration. Section three says a provider is a person who offers accommodation in the course of trade or business and is an occupier of the premises. If you run units on an agency basis and the owner is an occupier, then it is not obvious which of you is registrable person. The gov.wells guidance does not answer that. Two practical points. Registration runs through gov.uk. One login and you can create that account now rather than in a queue in October. And the licensing is a separate act, which is a legal default of March 2030. So what opens next month is a register, not a license. So free to join, 1400 pounds per property to ignore. And the part still unanswered is essentially whose name goes on it. So thank you for watching, and I'll see you tomorrow.