Letting your London flat from abroad: how the China Desk runs it end to end

Short answer: you can let a London flat while you live overseas, and you never need to fly in to do it. Our China Desk runs the whole tenancy on your behalf — viewings, referencing, digital ID, the tenancy agreement, rent collection and compliance — and reports to you in your own language. We handle the property; you approve the decisions. One all-in fee of 10% covers letting and management.

If your home is in Beijing, Shanghai or Hong Kong and your flat is in London, the distance is the whole problem. You cannot walk into our office, you cannot judge the local rent by eye, and you cannot sign a form in person. This post sets out exactly how we close each of those gaps, so you can see who does what before you instruct us.

Can I let my London flat if I live overseas?

Yes. Being a non-resident landlord is common and entirely legal, and it is the normal case for us rather than the exception: as at 9 September 2026, 58 of the 93 landlords with an active tenancy on our books live outside the UK — 46 of them in mainland China, the rest across Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany, the United States, Taiwan and Bangladesh. What changes when you live abroad is not whether you can let the flat, but how much of the work has to move to us. We become your presence in London: the person who opens the door for viewings, meets the tenant, checks the paperwork and holds the keys.

One point of reassurance on price. Since 1 May 2026 the Renters' Rights Act 2025 requires the advertised rent to be stated up front, and a tenant cannot be made to pay more than that figure — rental bidding is prohibited. For an overseas owner who cannot read the local market by eye, that matters: the advertised rent is the ceiling, so the marketing figure we agree with you is the number that governs the tenancy. You are not exposed to a bidding war you cannot see.

Overseas landlord advice: the seven things we tell every non-resident owner

Most of the questions we get from owners abroad are not about the flat. They are about the rules that bite harder because the owner is not in England to see them coming. These are the seven we go through with every new overseas landlord. Each one is checked against the statute as it stands on legislation.gov.uk (Housing Act 1988 revised to 29 June 2026; Renters' Rights Act 2025 and Tenant Fees Act 2019 to 22 June 2026; read 12 September 2026).

1. Give your tenant an address in England and Wales, or the rent is not legally due. Section 48 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 requires a landlord to give the tenant, by notice, an address in England and Wales at which notices can be served on the landlord. Until that is done, any rent otherwise due "shall be treated for all purposes as not being due". Section 47 adds that every written demand for rent must carry the landlord's name and address and, where that address is outside England and Wales, an address here for service. The address can be your agent's rather than your own, and for a managed tenancy that is the normal arrangement — ours is 1st Floor, 415 High Street, London E15 4QZ.

2. Expect tax to come off the rent at source unless HMRC has approved you for gross payment. HMRC treats you as a non-resident landlord if you live abroad for six months or more a year. A letting agent must then deduct basic-rate tax from the rent, after allowing for expenses it has paid, unless you have applied on form NRL1i and HMRC has approved you to receive the rent gross. Where there is no agent and the rent is more than £100 a week, the tenant has to deduct the tax instead — one more reason an agent is the simpler route from abroad. The scheme is set out in our NRL explainer; for the digital-reporting side, see Making Tax Digital for overseas landlords. Your return itself belongs with a chartered accountant, and we take no fee for the introduction.

3. The advertised rent is the rent, and rent cannot be taken months in advance. Section 56 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 requires the rent to be stated in writing in the advert, and forbids inviting or accepting an offer above it. Section 4B of the Housing Act 1988, inserted by the same Act, makes any tenancy term requiring rent in advance of no effect, except the initial rent for the first period of the tenancy. An offer of "six months up front", which overseas owners were often given before May 2026, is no longer something an agent can accept. The figure we agree with you is the figure the tenancy runs on.

4. Rent can rise once a year, by statutory notice, and the tribunal cannot go above your figure. A rent increase on an assured tenancy is by a notice in the prescribed form under section 13 of the Housing Act 1988, taking effect no earlier than two months after service and not within 52 weeks of the start of the tenancy or of the last increase; section 13(4A) makes any other mechanism, including a rent-review clause in the agreement, of no effect. The tenant may refer the notice to the First-tier Tribunal under section 14(A3). Under section 14ZB(5) the rent then becomes the open-market rent if that is lower than the figure in your notice, and otherwise the figure in your notice — the tribunal cannot set a higher rent than you proposed. So the notice figure should be the evidence-backed rent, not a bargaining position; ours comes from the live book, not a guess.

5. The deposit is capped at five weeks' rent, and you cannot make a tenant buy insurance. Under Schedule 1, paragraph 2 of the Tenant Fees Act 2019, any deposit above five weeks' rent is a prohibited payment (six weeks where the annual rent is £50,000 or more). On pets, section 16A of the Housing Act 1988 gives every tenant the right to ask in writing, and consent "is not to be unreasonably refused"; section 1(3)(b) of the Tenant Fees Act forbids a landlord requiring the tenant to enter into a contract of insurance. The reasoning is on our pet requests page. A landlord abroad who hears otherwise from a well-meaning friend should read the statute, not the friend.

6. There is no section 21 any more; possession runs on the Section 8 grounds. Section 2 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 removed assured shorthold tenancies from the Housing Act 1988 from 1 May 2026, and the "no-fault" section 21 notice went with them. A landlord who needs the flat back relies on one of the grounds in Schedule 2 to the 1988 Act, each with its own notice period — we list all 37 on our grounds for possession page. For an owner abroad, the practical consequence is that timing matters more than it did: selling or moving back in is a ground with a notice period, not a two-month formality.

7. Registration is coming, and the duty is the landlord's wherever the landlord lives. Section 82 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 places a duty on every residential landlord to hold an active entry for themselves and for each dwelling on the new Private Rented Sector Database; for the initial rollout the entries must be active by the time a tenant moves in, and the separate ban on marketing without them is to be switched on by later legislation (MHCLG confirmed this to us on 15 September 2026). GOV.UK's "Register your rental property" service opens on 15 December 2026 in the West Midlands and reaches London on 15 July 2027, with a registration deadline of 14 October 2027; the fee is £65 per property per year. We will raise it with every landlord we manage for as the London window approaches.

If you want these seven applied to your own flat, that is the conversation the China Desk has with every new overseas owner — in Mandarin, Cantonese or English.

How do you handle viewings and referencing when I'm not in the UK?

This is the part that worries most overseas owners, and it is the part we have built for.

Viewings are covered by our own team and by Viewber, a national network of vetted agents who attend the property, so a real person is always at the door — not a lockbox and a stranger. We photograph, describe and market the flat, then accompany every viewing and report back to you.

Referencing and identity are handled digitally through Goodlord and Credas. Credas verifies a tenant's identity electronically, which also solves your side of the problem: you can complete your own landlord ID checks and sign the management agreement from wherever you are, without posting documents or visiting a notary. The tenancy runs through Street, the CRM that keeps every step — enquiry, viewing, offer, reference, signing — in one auditable record you can be shown.

Behind all of this sits "James", our multilingual AI assistant. James speaks English, Mandarin and Cantonese, works 24 hours a day across chat, voice and WhatsApp, and is built to answer from our live system rather than from memory — when he does not know, he is designed to say so rather than fill a silence, and any figure he gives is a guide the team will confirm. When your evening in Shanghai is our middle of the night, James still responds, and a human on the China Desk picks it up in London hours.

How do I get paid, and how do I see what's happening?

Rent is collected and held through LettsPay, an FCA-regulated client account, with Client Money Protection through Propertymark. Your money is ring-fenced, not mixed with company funds. We reconcile the rent monthly and send you a statement, so every payment in and every cost out is accounted for on a fixed cycle rather than on request.

Deposits are protected with the TDS, one of the government-approved schemes. Compliance — gas safety, electrical checks, the certificates a tenancy legally needs — is tracked on your behalf, and repairs are coordinated so you are not fielding a plumber's call at 3am your time. You approve the decisions that cost you money; we handle the arranging.

What about UK tax on my rental income?

We are lettings and management specialists, not tax advisers, and we will not guess at your tax position. Under HMRC's Non-resident Landlord Scheme, a letting agent normally deducts basic-rate tax from your rent before paying you, unless you have applied to HMRC to receive it gross — you apply on form NRL1i, and HMRC must approve it first (gov.uk). That single line is as far as we will take it. For the detail of how the scheme works, read our dedicated explainer on the overseas-landlord NRL scheme.

For your actual return, we route you to YWC London LLP, a firm of Chartered Certified Accountants in Chinatown. Susan Ren ACCA and her team are bilingual and handle NRL registration, Self-Assessment, Making Tax Digital and the UK–China Double Taxation Agreement. We take no referral fee for the introduction — we route you to a chartered accountant and are not paid a penny for it, because your tax advice should be chosen for you, not for us.

Do you speak Mandarin and Cantonese?

Yes. Our China Desk has Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking staff, our full website is available in Simplified Chinese at /zh, and James handles chat, voice and WhatsApp in all three languages around the clock. You can reach us on WeChat at HarveyWJames. The point is simple: you should be able to ask a question about your own flat in your own language and get a straight, grounded answer — day or night, from a person or from James.

Who does what: the remote-landlord tenancy, stage by stage

Speak to the China Desk

If you own a London flat and live overseas, the next step is a conversation, not a commitment. Contact our China Desk — ask for Hanna Yu — through /china-desk, or add us on WeChat at HarveyWJames. We will walk you through the marketing, the fee and the timeline in your own language, and show you the same audit trail your tenancy will run on. For the wider picture, see how we work with overseas landlords, what full property management covers, the technology and partners behind it, and how we set the rent valuation.

Sources

• Harvey W James Ltd (Reg 11169043), 1st Floor 415 High Street, London E15 4QZ — lettings and management facts, operational stack (Street, Goodlord, Credas, LettsPay, Viewber, TDS), and China Desk details as stated
• HMRC, "Tax on your UK income if you live abroad — Rent from property" (Non-resident Landlord Scheme; basic-rate deduction and form NRL1i) — gov.uk
• Renters' Rights Act 2025, section 56 (requirement to state rent and to avoid rental bidding), in force from 1 May 2026 — legislation.gov.uk
• LettsPay client account and Propertymark Client Money Protection; TDS deposit protection — scheme facts as stated
• Landlord and Tenant Act 1987, sections 47 and 48 (landlord's name and address in demands; address in England and Wales for service of notices; rent "treated for all purposes as not being due" until section 48 is complied with) — legislation.gov.uk (Statute Law Database, revised to 2 July 2026)
• Housing Act 1988 as amended by the Renters' Rights Act 2025: section 4B (rent in advance of no effect except initial rent), section 13 (rent increase notices: two months, not within 52 weeks; subsection (4A)), section 14(A3) and section 14ZB(5) (tribunal determination: the lower of open-market rent and the proposed rent), sections 16A–16B (pets: written request, consent not to be unreasonably refused) — legislation.gov.uk (revised to 29 June 2026)
• Renters' Rights Act 2025, section 2 (abolition of assured shorthold tenancies; Housing Act 1988 Part 1 Chapter 2 omitted from 1 May 2026 by S.I. 2026/421) and section 82 (restrictions on marketing; landlord's duty to hold active database entries) — legislation.gov.uk
• Tenant Fees Act 2019, section 1(3)(b) (landlord must not require a contract of insurance) and Schedule 1 paragraph 2 (deposit above five weeks' rent — six where annual rent is £50,000 or more — is a prohibited payment) — legislation.gov.uk
• GOV.UK Housing Hub, "Get ready: 'Register your rental property' service" — regional rollout from 15 December 2026 (West Midlands); London 15 July 2027, deadline 14 October 2027; £65 annual fee per property — housinghub.campaign.gov.uk (read 12 September 2026)
• HMRC, "Tax on your UK income if you live abroad" — six-months-abroad definition; tenant deducts tax where there is no agent and rent exceeds £100 a week — gov.uk (read 12 September 2026)
• Harvey W James, Street CRM, 9 September 2026: 93 landlords with an active tenancy, 58 resident outside the UK (China 46, Singapore 4, Hong Kong 4, Germany, United States, Taiwan, Bangladesh 1 each)

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