Property Hawk Alternative: Where UK Landlords Should Move in 2026

What is happening to Property Hawk?

Property Hawk's Property Manager, also known as PM3s, is closing at the end of July 2026. The notice appears directly on the PM3s login page: "We will be shutting down Property Manager at the end of July 2026. You should move to another platform." No reason has been given publicly for the closure.

Property Hawk has been around for roughly two decades as a free tool for UK landlords to track rent, expenses and tenancy paperwork. It built up a loyal following among smaller portfolio landlords precisely because it was free and did the basics without fuss. But the product had not kept pace with what UK landlords now need. It has no Making Tax Digital support, at a time when MTD for Income Tax went live for landlords with qualifying property income over £50,000 on 6 April 2026. It has no tools for the Renters' Rights Act, which abolished Section 21 no-fault evictions on 1 May 2026. And updates had slowed to a trickle for several years before the closure was announced.

Whatever the internal reason, the practical outcome for landlords is the same: PM3s stops working at the end of July 2026, and any data left inside it becomes unreachable. If you have not already exported your records, that is the first job, not the last one.

Why Property Hawk built up such a loyal user base

It is worth being honest about why so many landlords stuck with Property Hawk for so long. It was free, which mattered a great deal to landlords with one or two properties who did not want a monthly subscription for something a spreadsheet could almost do. It covered the basics of rent tracking, expense logging and document storage without a steep learning curve. And because it had been around since long before the current wave of AI-powered property software, it had years of accumulated data sitting inside it for landlords who never had a reason to move.

That same longevity became the problem. A tool built for a simpler regulatory era did not evolve to cover Making Tax Digital, the Renters' Rights Act, or the PRS Database, because none of those existed when its core feature set was designed. Landlords who relied on it were, in effect, using 2006-era software to run a 2026 rental business.

What this means if you are still using it

If you are reading this because you logged into PM3s and saw the closure notice, the situation is straightforward but time-limited. You have until the end of July 2026 to get your data out. There is no indication that Property Hawk will extend the deadline, offer a paid extension, or provide an automated export-to-competitor tool. The responsibility for preserving your own records sits with you, and the clock started the day the notice went up.

There is also no indication of what happens to any data left inside a Property Hawk account after the shutdown date. The safest assumption is that it becomes permanently unreachable rather than merely inconvenient to reach, so treat the export step as a hard deadline rather than a soft recommendation.

What should I export from Property Hawk before it closes?

Export your property list, tenant details, full rent payment ledger, expense records, tenancy agreements and any stored certificate dates before the end of July 2026. Once Property Manager shuts down, none of this data will be accessible, and there is no published option to retrieve it afterwards.

Work through each of these in turn:

• Property list. Every address, whether it is a house, flat or HMO room, and any internal reference numbers you have used.
• Tenant details. Names, contact details, and which property and tenancy each tenant is linked to, including former tenants if you want their history kept.
• Rent payment history and ledger. The full record of what was due and what was paid, ideally covering every tax year you might need for HMRC purposes, not just the current one.
• Expense records. Repairs, agent fees, insurance, mortgage interest and any other costs logged against each property.
• Tenancy agreements and documents. PDF copies of signed agreements, deposit protection certificates, and any other tenancy paperwork stored in the system.
• Certificate dates. Gas safety, EICR and EPC expiry dates if you have been tracking them in Property Hawk, even informally.

If a section has no export button: not every part of Property Hawk offers a clean CSV download. Where that happens, select the table on screen, copy it into a spreadsheet, and save the result as a CSV. It is not elegant, but it preserves the data, and an AI-native import tool like the one described below can still read it.

Do this now rather than closer to the end of July. Export tools on ageing platforms tend to become less reliable as a shutdown approaches, and a business as small as Property Hawk is unlikely to offer white-glove support for stragglers.

Save more than you think you need

It is tempting to export only the current tax year and treat older records as done and dusted. Resist that. HMRC can query historical returns for several years after they are filed, and if a dispute ever arises over a past year's figures, having the original transaction-level ledger to hand is far stronger than a summary total in an old tax return. If your Property Hawk account holds five or ten years of history, export all of it while the option still exists, even if you never expect to look at most of it again.

Don't forget photos and correspondence

Beyond the structured data, check whether Property Hawk holds any property photographs, inspection notes, or saved email threads with tenants or contractors. These are easy to overlook because they do not sit in a neat export button, but they can matter later, particularly if a tenancy ever ends in a dispute over the condition of a property or the timing of a repair.

How do I move my Property Hawk data to LandlordOS?

Sign up to LandlordOS free, open Ace (the AI property manager built into the dashboard), click the + button and choose "Migrate from another app", then upload your Property Hawk export files. Ace reads whatever format the files are in, shows you what it found, and asks for confirmation before saving anything.

The steps

1. Sign up. Create a free LandlordOS account at /signup. No card required.
2. Open Ace. Ace is the AI property manager that runs the LandlordOS dashboard. It is the default screen after login.
3. Click the + button and choose "Migrate from another app". This starts the import flow.
4. Upload each export file. Properties, tenants, rent ledger, expenses, tenancy documents, whatever you exported from Property Hawk. Upload them one at a time or together.
5. Review what Ace found. Ace summarises what it has read from each file in plain English and asks you to confirm before anything is saved.

Why this is different from a normal CSV import

Most software asks you to match your export to a fixed template: rename your columns, reorder them, delete the ones it does not recognise. LandlordOS does not work that way. The importer is AI-native: it reads and reasons about whatever file layout you give it, whatever the column names, whatever the order, and even if several record types are mixed together in one file. There is no template to match and no column-mapping screen to fight with.

In practice that means:

• Any column layout works. Whether Property Hawk called a field "Rent Due", "Monthly Rent" or just "Amount", Ace works out what it means from context, not from a fixed header list.
• Mixed record types in one file are fine. If your export has properties, tenants and transactions all in one spreadsheet, Ace separates them out correctly.
• Ace shows its working. Before saving anything, it tells you what it found, how many properties, tenants and transactions, so you can check it against what you expect.
• Duplicates are detected. If a property or tenant already exists in your LandlordOS account, Ace flags the match rather than creating a second copy.
• Nothing saves without confirmation. Every migration step is a proposal until you approve it. Ace never writes data to your account silently.
• Anything it can't place gets listed, not dropped. If a row in your export does not clearly map to a property, tenant or transaction, Ace tells you about it instead of quietly discarding it.

What does LandlordOS do that Property Hawk didn't?

LandlordOS adds Making Tax Digital submissions, automatic compliance reminders, an AI property manager, AI-drafted tenancy agreements, bank statement import, arrears chasing, mid-term inspections and a full set of UK landlord forms, none of which existed in Property Hawk.

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax

MTD for Income Tax went live on 6 April 2026 for landlords with qualifying property income over £50,000, and the threshold drops to £30,000 in April 2027. Property Hawk never built any MTD functionality, which means anyone still relying on it for record-keeping has been bridging the gap manually or with a separate tool. LandlordOS has quarterly submissions built in and sandbox tested against HMRC's systems. LandlordOS is currently in the final stage of HMRC's production approval process, so submission goes live on the interface the moment that approval lands, and your migrated transaction history is already in a shape that supports it.

Compliance tracking with automatic reminders

Gas safety certificates, EICRs and EPCs are tracked against every property, with reminders sent at set intervals before each one expires. This is one of the clearest gaps in Property Hawk: it recorded dates if you typed them in, but it never proactively told you anything was about to lapse. An expired gas certificate is not just a paperwork problem, it weakens your position in any Section 8 proceedings and will be visible on the PRS Database when it launches later in 2026.

Ace, an AI property manager

Ace is a conversational agent built into the LandlordOS dashboard. You can ask it to log a repair, chase a certificate, categorise a transaction, explain a Renters' Rights Act rule, or pull up the rent status of a specific tenancy, and it does the work rather than pointing you to a menu you have to hunt through. This is the same agent that runs the migration tool described above: it is not a separate chatbot bolted onto the product, it is the interface the whole platform is built around.

Bank statement import with AI categorisation

Upload a bank statement as a PDF or CSV and transactions are extracted and categorised automatically, rather than typed in by hand line by line. This uses the same underlying AI reasoning as the migration tool: it reads the actual statement format your bank produces, whatever that looks like, rather than requiring a specific export template from a specific bank.

Rent arrears detection and chasing

Overdue rent is flagged automatically against each tenancy, with a staged chase process: a reminder, then a formal warning, then a Section 8 route if arrears persist. Every step is logged on the property's timeline, which matters under the current regime because a documented chase history is part of the evidence a Section 8 claim needs.

Maintenance tracking with a tenant portal

Tenants can report issues directly through a portal rather than by phone or text message that gets lost in a thread. Landlords can also log issues themselves when something is spotted on a visit, and every issue is tracked through to resolution with a timestamp, so there is a record of when a repair was reported and when it was completed.

Mid-term inspections

Structured inspection records per property give you a dated condition history rather than a memory of what a place looked like on your last visit. This becomes useful evidence at the end of a tenancy if a deposit deduction is disputed, and it is another area Property Hawk never covered.

UK landlord forms and tenancy agreements built in

Property Hawk was best known for its free tenancy agreement downloads, and LandlordOS goes further: it drafts a complete tenancy agreement for your specific letting. Tell it your requirements in plain English ("no smoking indoors, tenant maintains the garden, they have a cat") and it produces a periodic assured tenancy agreement that is correct for the law since the Renters' Rights Act, using your real property, rent, deposit and tenant details. Anything unenforceable you ask for, such as a blanket pet ban or a banned fee, is left out and flagged with an explanation instead of being written in, which is a meaningful upgrade on a static template that lets you add unlawful clauses without warning. Section 8 notices, Section 13 rent increase notices, rent arrears letters, a Renters' Rights Act information sheet, deposit return letters and move-in packs are also generated from the platform, pre-filled with your property and tenancy data rather than a blank template you fill in from scratch. Since these depend on accurate tenancy start dates, rent amounts and tenant details, having that information already migrated in correctly from Property Hawk means the forms are usable immediately rather than needing manual data entry first.

Comparison: LandlordOS vs other Property Hawk alternatives

LandlordOS is the only free option among the realistic Property Hawk replacements that also covers MTD, an AI assistant and UK-specific compliance tracking in one place. Landlord Vision, Landlord Studio, Rentila and August each cover part of the job, at a cost.

A quick note on each option

Landlord Vision has been serving UK landlords for over 15 years and has a strong accounting track record from the original MTD pilot programme, but it is accounting-focused rather than all-in-one, and its interface has not been substantially redesigned in some time. Landlord Studio is US-origin software adapted for the UK market, with the best dedicated mobile app of the group, though its MTD and UK compliance coverage is thinner than UK-native tools. Rentila is the most basic of the group, useful for simple rent and document tracking but with no MTD or compliance automation at all. August is a newer AI-assisted entrant with bank feed integration and compliance reminders, positioned similarly to LandlordOS on features but without the free Early Access pricing or the AI-native migration path.

The pattern across the paid alternatives is the same: every one of them asks you to reshape your Property Hawk export to fit their own import template before it will accept it. That is a manual job, done by hand, for every property, tenant and transaction row. LandlordOS is the only option in this table where the migration tool reads your export as it actually is and does the mapping itself. See our wider roundup in best landlord software UK and our free vs paid landlord software comparison if you want the fuller pricing picture beyond this migration decision.

How long does the migration actually take?

Most self-managing landlords with one to five properties complete the migration in under an hour, including exporting from Property Hawk. Larger portfolios take longer mainly because of the export step on the Property Hawk side, not the import into LandlordOS.

What takes the time

The slowest part of any migration off an old platform is usually finding and gathering the data, not importing it. If Property Hawk offers clean CSV exports for everything you need, gathering the files is a five to ten minute job. If some sections need the copy-paste-into-a-spreadsheet workaround described earlier, budget extra time proportional to how many properties and tenancies you have, because each one needs a manual look.

Once you have the files, the import side is fast. Ace reads a file and returns its summary of what it found within moments, not minutes. Reviewing that summary against what you expect is the only step that requires your judgement, and for most landlords that is a case of scanning a list of properties and transaction counts and confirming they look right.

Should I wait until closer to July, or move now?

Move now. There is no advantage to waiting, and several risks to it. Property Hawk's own notice gives no guarantee that export tools will keep working right up to the closure date, ageing platforms under wind-down often see support and reliability degrade before the final date arrives. Moving early also gives you time to spot and fix any gaps in your migrated data (a missing tenancy, a certificate date that didn't carry across cleanly) while you can still cross-check against the original Property Hawk records, rather than discovering a gap after the source data is gone for good.

Migrating a larger portfolio

If you manage ten or more properties, the same process applies, just with more files and a longer review step. There is no need to migrate everything in a single sitting. Bring properties and tenants across first, confirm they look right, then add historical transactions in a second pass. Ace treats each upload as its own confirmed step, so splitting the work across a few sessions causes no problems.

The Renters' Rights Act angle

Section 21 no-fault evictions were abolished on 1 May 2026, so every possession claim now needs documented grounds under Section 8, and every rent increase on a periodic tenancy goes through the Section 13 process. Property Hawk was never updated for this. LandlordOS has both built in.

This matters more than it might first appear when you are choosing where to move your data. Under the current regime, your rent payment history, compliance certificates and communication logs are not just admin, they are potential evidence in a Section 8 possession claim. A platform that only tracks income and expenses, which is what Property Hawk did, leaves you exposed on this front regardless of how good its accounting was.

Moving to a platform that generates Section 8 notices with the correct grounds and notice periods, produces Section 13 rent increase notices, and keeps a dated audit trail of everything that happens in a tenancy is no longer a nice-to-have. It is close to a practical necessity for any landlord managing a tenancy that runs into difficulty.

What the PRS Database means for your migrated data

The Private Rented Sector Database is expected to launch in late 2026 and will require all private landlords in England to register. Having your property, tenancy and compliance data already structured and accurate in a system like LandlordOS puts you ahead of that requirement, rather than facing a scramble to gather the same information from a shut-down Property Hawk account after the fact.