The first-time
landlord kit

Best overall — the wireless interlink most letting agents already expect; my top pick above

One smoke alarm per storey is a private-landlord duty dating to 2015, not the 2022 regulations most people credit it to. The Ei650iRF is what social landlords and agents standardise on: RadioLINK+ wireless interlink covers up to twelve alarms with no cable pulled, a sealed 10-year battery removes the most common cause of a dead alarm, and it interlinks directly with the heat alarm below. More on interlink rules and alternatives is in the smoke and heat alarm guide.

Typically £55–£75

The kitchen partner to the Ei650iRF — heat, not smoke, where cooking happens

A heat alarm triggers on a genuine temperature rise, not particles in the air, which is why the kitchen gets this instead of a smoke alarm — steam off a pan would trip a smoke sensor often enough that someone pulls the battery. It shares the Ei650iRF’s RadioLINK+ protocol and joins the same mesh out of the box. Not a national legal requirement, but BS 5839-6 recommends it and many HMO licences make it compulsory in practice.

Typically £55–£65

The other statutory item — any room with a fixed combustion appliance, gas cookers excepted

Since October 2022, a CO alarm is a legal requirement in any room with a fixed combustion appliance — gas cookers excepted — with fines up to £5,000 per breach. The 10LLDCO is EN 50291-1 and Kitemark certified, with a sealed 10-year battery and a digital display with peak-level memory, turning “it went off while the boiler was running” into a stored number rather than an anecdote. The carbon monoxide detector guide covers further options.

Typically £23–£30

No legal duty, but the one agents, out-of-hours contractors and insurers already expect

No statutory requirement for a key safe, but a letting agent handing keys to a gas engineer without a landlord driving over, or an insurer that treats an uncertified box as a weak point, makes one an early purchase. The C500 Pro is the only option here tested to LPS 1175 Issue 8 A5, carrying Secured by Design’s Police Preferred badge — what an insurer actually checks for. Budget alternatives are in the key safes guide.

Typically £65–£75

Cheapest genuinely useful item here, and the one every kitchen should have regardless of what else is fitted

Cooking is still the most common cause of accidental house fires, and no single national law forces every let to carry a blanket — the Fire Safety Order 2005 covers shared and converted buildings, and old LACORS guidance most councils still inspect HMOs against expects one in every kitchen. At around £20 the grey area shouldn’t matter: 1.2m x 1.2m, Kitemark certified to BS EN 1869, no training needed — pull the tabs, cover the pan, switch off the heat. Certified extinguishers, and what never to do with water on a fat fire, are in the fire blankets guide.

Typically £18–£22

A dated, spoken record of a check-in walkthrough, in your own words rather than a memory of it

Deposit disputes turn on evidence of condition at the start of a tenancy, and “the carpet was already marked” recalled six months later rarely survives an adjudicator’s scrutiny the way a dated recording does. Walking every room narrating what’s there — a scuff, a working extractor fan — takes ten minutes and produces a timestamped file alongside whatever photos get taken. Wide stereo mics cope with an empty room’s echo, AAA batteries mean it’s never flat when it matters. More on what matters in a recorder is in the dictaphone guide, written for survey dictation but the same job here.

Typically £45–£65

Accurate room and furniture dimensions — the detail an inventory app or a memory gets wrong

Plenty of inventory disputes are about what was actually there and whether it fits — a tenant’s own furniture replacing a landlord’s, a claimed stain outside the room reported. A proper tape measure earns its place for that: real room dimensions recorded at check-in rather than guessed, noted in the same walkthrough as the recording above. The default professional tape in Britain, 32mm blade, a case that survives being dropped — more in the tape measures guide.

Typically £20–£28

The one to actually leave with a tenant — a display readable across the room, not just a logger

The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 puts damp and mould within a landlord’s repairing obligations, and recent policy attention on the subject makes a documented, proactive approach more sensible than waiting for a complaint. Left in a bedroom or bathroom, this does two jobs: a three-inch display readable across the room nudges a tenant toward opening a window, and 68 days of on-device logging with CSV export gives real data if a damp complaint arrives, rather than a dispute about whose fault it was. More on placement is in the hygrometer guide.

Typically £15–£22

Cheapest way to check what a void property, or a specific appliance, is actually costing

A first property is often empty for a stretch before the first tenant moves in, and an empty property still has things plugged in — an immersion heater left on, a fridge running for the next viewing. The Tapo P110 plugs inline, connects over wifi in minutes with no electrician, and logs that one socket’s consumption by the hour, day and month. It only sees the one socket — the home energy monitor guide covers whole-house options once there’s a specific question worth spending more to answer.

Typically £9–£15