For landlords
One company, one agreement, one point of contact.
Prime Orchard Residential leases licensed houses in multiple occupation from their owners, whole and empty, and lets each one to a single provider of supported accommodation for young people leaving care. One lease, one tenant, one payment. We do not let room by room and we hold no tenants of our own.
Three ways of working, and you choose
A long lease
We take a lease of three to five years, renewed annually, and pay you a fixed sum on the same date every month whether the property is occupied or not. The running costs, the bills and the empty weeks between tenants are no longer yours.
A lease with a share of the income
Your position is protected at what the property produces for you now, and what the arrangement adds on top is split. You give up nothing and you keep part of the upside.
A management arrangement
You keep the property and you keep the income. We bring the provider that will occupy it, and everything else stays exactly as it is.
Which of the three is right depends on you rather than on us, and we would rather understand what the property does for you now than put a number in front of you first.
The kind of owner this suits
Somebody who has decided the day to day is no longer worth it. An owner at a distance from the property. Somebody facing a licence renewal and wondering whether to go again, or coming off a year of arrears and a bad tenancy. Or an owner whose licensed house has just come empty.
The house needs to hold a licence in multiple occupation, or to have held one, because that is what the provider's service requires and because a house that has carried a licence has a history the company can check.
If you enjoy running it and it is going well, this is not for you, and we would rather say so than waste your afternoon.
How it works
The house is let to the company on a lease, and the company lets it whole to a supported accommodation provider registered with Ofsted. The provider runs the house day to day and pays its running costs: council tax, utilities, day to day repairs and the safety certificates. There are no fees of any kind: no tenant find fee, no management fee, no renewal fee and no commission.
Rent, term and the repairing split are agreed property by property and written into the lease before anything is signed. The company carries a break exercisable if the provider occupying the property leaves and is not replaced, which is the protection that lets it commit to a long term in the first place.
Where the property is let on to a supported accommodation provider, that provider stands as landlord to the occupiers and the company remains your tenant. Your agreement, your rent and your point of contact do not change.
Why the licence file matters
Since 1 May 2026 the exposure reaches the owner as well as the operator, and it is now criminal as well as civil. Section 105 of the Renters' Rights Act 2025 substituted section 72(1) of the Housing Act 2004 so that the offence of controlling or managing an unlicensed house in multiple occupation reaches a superior landlord. Section 103 made a rent repayment order available against a superior landlord, and new section 46A of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 requires landlords to be jointly and severally liable where an order is made against more than one of them. New section 72(4C) of the Housing Act 2004 removes the defence that a term in the head lease about occupation is enough on its own.
The practical effect for an owner who lets to an operator is that a failure further down the chain, an unlicensed house in multiple occupation being the obvious one, reaches back. A clause in the lease no longer answers it. Evidence does, which is why the compliance file rather than the rent figure is what opens the conversation.
Sources. Renters' Rights Act 2025, sections 103, 104 and 105, amending the Housing Act 2004 and the Housing and Planning Act 2016; brought into force by the Renters' Rights Act 2025 (Commencement No. 2 and Transitional and Saving Provisions) Regulations 2026. This is a commercial summary and not legal advice.
What the Act does not reach while the property is let to a company
Assured shorthold tenancies ended on 1 May 2026 for new and existing private tenancies, and with them the section 21 route to possession. An owner letting to an individual now holds a tenant with open ended security who can be removed only on a proved statutory ground. A company cannot be an assured tenant, because section 1(1)(a) of the Housing Act 1988 requires an assured tenant to be an individual, so a lease to the company sits outside the regime that changed and ends on a defined date. No occupier holds from you, so no rent challenge and no possession claim is yours to deal with.
What is needed from you
Five things, all obtained before the company proceeds and none of them taken on your word.
The planning position is checked separately, by the company, against the council's own records. In a district with an Article 4 direction that means establishing when the house in multiple occupation use began, because a licence is evidence towards lawful use rather than proof of it.
What the company is looking for
Licensed houses in multiple occupation, empty or coming empty, so that the house takes at least five young people, laid out like this.
- Five lettable bedrooms, or six with the one closest to the front door used as the staff room
- A kitchen big enough to take a dining table for everyone, or a separate dining room, and a living room as well as that
- A staff room by the front door. Not a bedroom, and used for private meetings and for staff staying over
- A WC on the ground floor, and better still a shower with it
- One bathroom for every three bedrooms
- A garden
- No bedsits. An en suite bedroom is fine, a bedroom with its own kitchen is not
Each provider adds its own requirements on top, such as walking distance of a town centre, or a bath rather than only a shower where bathrooms are shared.
Send us the address
Tell us where it is and what it does for you now. If it is not for us we will say so in a sentence, and if you would rather not hear from us again, say so and you will not.