Government claims Renters’ Rights Act benefits landlords

Now I’ve heard it all

I have been a landlord since 1981, I have never seen an industry like mine been taken over by investors to the degree of total collapse.
After the 2008 crash, property in the UK was unaffected, unlike the USA, we had Mark Carney stupidly bringing the interest rates to unprecedented lows, consequently people with savings started buying property so as to get a return instead of zero from the banks.
It turns out Over 83percent of landlords fell in this category, these new so called landlords
We’re never landlords and never wanted to be
They wanted a return on investment and understand that, but we cannot call these people landlords as the majority 99 percent had an agent running their investment, surely
The agent became the landlord and was responsible for running the tenancy on the owners behalf.
The mindset of the investor was return on investment not the tenants wants and needs
These were forced landlords in name only, some most of these leeches never saw the tenant in person and didn’t really want to spend
On repairs, they only wanted a return on investment.
The governments current policy’s towards landlords is based on this model which doesn’t reflect the real community landlords who chose to serve their tenants, I’m one of them,
Having been a supportive landlord for my local council through accomodation plus and rethink.fo almost 12 years.
The MPs are blind, they don’t know the history
Of the rental market, this basing their laws on a model that doesn’t exist, especially now as these self serving investors leave the rental market in shambles.
It’s a disaster unfolding in front of our eyes
I’m fed up with the witchhunt and have decided to sell up.
I am 69 , I have no mortgage on my portfolio
I have 4 flats ready to go but will keep them empty and they will remain empty.
As there is more risk now and I will only get taxed into oblivion if I let them.
Where has the common sense gone.
Yes I’m selling my portfolio and taking my money abroad, my country has failed me and others like me.
I feel there is an awakening coming the likes we have never seen.
I can

Reply to the comment left by at 03/07/2026 – 08:10
Yes, you are right that many landlords were pushed into property as a means of getting a return on their savings. This doesn’t mean that they don’t care about their tenants, or that they don’t care about the condition of their property. I would say that many, including me, charge lower than average rents and are quick to respond to problems. On the other hand we are disproportionately affected by bad tenants and rent arrears as we don’t have the economy of scale that a large organisation would have. We tend to be older, as we have mostly had to work to save the capital to but in the first place, and the incentive now is to sell up and go back to getting reasonable returns from investing in bonds and banks. Basically, the extra income from renting is not worth the hassle. What the RRA has done is provide a wake up call. Like you I’m 69 and when things become empty they are getting sold. In fact the way things are going I might be giving notice as the threat of tax and EPC changes will make it unviable

Will they be doing comedy like this at the Edinburgh Festival?

‘….so that landlords can regain their properties quickly when necessary’.

Define ‘quickly’ Pennycrook.

Benefit by £9pa? How was this figure arrived at when they don’t know what they are going to charge landlords for mandatory registration on Labour’s publicly accessible Landlords Database and Ombudsman’s Scheme?

Only 2 benefits to the RRA for PRS landlords that I can see are
1. A landlord can evict tenants to move into the property without having to have ever lived there, and
2. The reasons (Grounds) that prospective tenants had been evicted from previous rented properties will follow them from rental property to rental property. No more “It wasn’t my fault I was evicted “. And if found to be being untruthful then s8 Ground 17 can be added to the list.

Reply to the comment left by at 03/07/2026 – 08:10I could have empathised with your position; had you not been so of describing other providers of accommodation to tenants as “leeches” and “self-serving”. So, you weren’t self-serving when you collected rents from your tenants? Your choosing to be a community social worker landlord, who perhaps knew your tenants by first name didn’t mean that was either the right, or the only way to be a proper landlord.

Reply to the comment left by Richard at 03/07/2026 – 09:34
Well done for articulating things beautifully.

I think that if this statement is correct “Labour MP Tony Vaughan asked what steps the government was taking to support small-scale landlords in the private rented sector” then this is only the second time I have heard a labour MP ask a sensible question or say anything sensible about the private rental sector. We have in recent weeks had a labour MP call for rent controls, which is not only ignorant (given what happened when the SNP did it in Scotland), but stupid because the available evidence worldwide suggests that this is damaging. The first time I heard any labour MP say anything sensible about the private rental sector was Mark Drakeford, in Wales, who didn’t introduce rent controls when the SNP did it in Scotland because he said they would make things worse. At least that showed Mark Drakeford had the wit to learn something and it appears that labour in Wales were more competent than the SNP in Scotland.

It was George Osborne (conservative) who introduced the policy of stopping landlords from being able to offset their finance costs against rents; a limited company of course can continue to offset finance costs. This policy skews the market against small landlords and in favour of the bigger incorporated investors, constrains the supply of property, reduces competition and drives rents up.

In recent weeks we’ve had a labour MP suggest that landlords should be responsible for antisocial behaviour. But this again is both ignorant and stupid. Landlords have no powers at all to address antisocial behaviour; the only powers that landlords did have were no fault evictions; labour took those powers away with the Labour Renters Rights Act and then celebrated the fact that they’d done it.

This article claims that the Labour Renters Rights Act benefits landlords as it introduces measures to ensure “….that landlords can regain their properties quickly when necessary.” The truth is that this claim would only be true if the courts were actually working. Labour refused to publish the findings of their justice impact test on the courts:

https://www.property118.com/government-refuses-to-reveal-renters-rights-bill-court-impact-assessment/

Labour has said that they are going to fix the courts but they haven’t fixed them yet. They also said that they were going to grow the economy, but then they increased employers NI, dropped the threshold at which it would be paid, and proposed giving all employees employment rights from day 1. That’s not consistent with “growing the economy” and so if that’s the way this government has behaved….saying one thing but doing another…why would anybody believe that they are going to fix the court system. They haven’t the money to do it anyway.

So Tony Vaughan’s question isn’t a stupid question; it’s a sensible question to ask given that most landlords are small portfolio landlords who provide competition in the private rental sector, and that this benefits tenants. And in terms of what the government could do, the government could:

– reverse George Osborne’s policy of stopping landlords from being able to offset their finance costs against rents, at least for the energy efficient properties
– introduce capital allowances for energy efficiency improvements
– ensure that the courts do actually work so that landlords don’t have to drive rents up and don’t have to live in fear of not getting their properties back, therefore disincentivising them from letting them out, or making a much greater pool of tenants too high risk to house.

The Labour Renters Rights Act doesn’t benefit tenants. What it does is increase the risk of renting property to tenants, increase the costs of renting to tenants and drive rents up.

It is the labour government driving rents up, not landlords. Labour could still do something about this, but the answer isn’t rent controls.

Reply to the comment left by Richard at 03/07/2026 – 09:34
I’m definitely going to sell when tenants leave as I want out from the hostile environment this and the last government has created for small landlords. As the epc deadlines approach I’ll be giving notice to the rest of my existing tenants. Even including epc c property’s as too many fines are likely to be imposed by over zealous councils