Buy-to-let landlords may be inadvertently breaching HMO (Houses in Multiple Occupation) licensing laws, according to Property Hawk.
The advice website warns that two years after the laws were introduced there is still a lack of awareness among landlords about what is required of them.
HMO licensing laws were brought in on July 6th 2006 to protect tenants and raise management and health and safety levels in the private rented sector.
They require all residential landlords whose lettings are classed as HMOs to apply for a licence to prove that their properties meet minimum standards in terms of the number of bathrooms, cooking and laundry facilities they have, for example.
Chris Horne, editor of Property Hawk, said some landlords who have been letting HMOs for several years could fall foul of the legislation simply by "carrying on as they've always carried on".
"One of the big problems with HMO licensing is that it's covered by several aspects of the law, one related to planning legislation and the other came in under the housing regulations," he explained, pointing out: "That confuses a lot of landlords."
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