No, landlords aren’t crying – we are packing up

I don’t really use Facebook but was surprised to see a post from one of the tenants’ campaign groups come on my feed. If you’ve never had the joy of appreciating how a tenant activist organisation thinks and what landlords are having to deal with, please read on. If you are of a nervous disposition, or on heart drugs, please don’t.

The post began with: “Do landlords ever stop crying? The entire housing system in this country is designed to line the pockets of these people, they’ve had it all their way for decades. Yet they never seem to stop moaning.”

Now, we are all entitled to an opinion and, goodness knows, I vent at someone or something most weeks.

Landlords selling up

But this post was accompanied by a montage of headlines about landlords selling up or facing ‘struggles’ and was followed by a barrage of gleeful comments: tiny violins, calls for landlords to sell everything, and smug predictions that house prices would crash once the ‘parasites’ were gone.

I almost gave a ‘thumbs up’ (or whatever you do on these things) to this particular gem: ‘Good, wealth extracting parasites are never needed or indeed desirable!😉’. How rude.

While tenant groups cheer the ‘crying’ of landlords, the real victims are tenants staring at a shrinking rental pool.

Landlords aren’t weeping into their spreadsheets; many are quietly exiting the market.

Properties once rented out affordably by small, local landlords are being snapped up by large corporations – think BlackRock-scale investors – who face lower effective taxes via limited company structures and can absorb compliance costs far better than the average mum-and-dad landlord.

Brave landlords comment

The Facebook comments unwittingly proved the point. I admire all of the landlords who post comments to show just how bad things are – a brave move in the circumstances.

One landlord shared giving notice to tenants, offering them first refusal to buy at a discount.

Not only could they not afford it, they also couldn’t afford the rising rents in their area either.

But, you know, let’s blame the greedy landlords.

Doing so avoids a simple truth that successive governments, that’s Tory and Labour alike, have targeted individual landlords with punitive taxes (Section 24 limiting mortgage interest relief, higher stamp duty etc).

Apparently, rents may have dipped slightly in 2025 due to softer demand, but that’s down to tenants staying in their homes for longer.

I expect a reversal this year after May’s Renters’ Rights Act stamps its size 12’s all over the PRS.

Rent rise complaints

Landlords have genuine concerns, including what will happen to their tenants once they take possession of the property.

The organisation’s response to legitimate concerns? Mockery. No evidence-based rebuttals, just emotion and class-war rhetoric.

When landlords point out that costs must be passed on, for example, a modest £15 monthly rent rise to offset tax hits, they’re dismissed as greedy.

The name of the game is to squeeze small landlords out but there won’t be any ‘affordable housing’ to replace us.

Instead, there will be corporate dominance, less choice and much stricter tenant vetting.

The government says that tenants can appeal to a tribunal when they want to contest a rent rise.

That’s all well and good, but what happens to market rents when they are being set by corporations with deeper pockets and less personal accountability?

Tenants might romanticise a world without private landlords, but then reality will bite with fewer homes to rent, at higher prices.

Who is crying now?

So, let’s end on this note: The number of properties bought by landlords fell to a record low last year.

According to Hamptons, just 10.9% of property purchases in 2025 were made by investors.

That is down from 12% in 2024 and the lowest figure since records began in 2012, when the share was 14.1%.

The slide in investment will continue and more landlords will vote with their feet.

It’s a real shame because landlords are the buffer between families and homelessness, often providing homes for those the social sector can’t (or won’t!) do.

But if policies keep demonising us, we’ll sell up and watch the housing waiting lists grow and rents soar.

So, keep mocking the ‘crying’ landlords all you activists want, but just remember that when the last small landlord waves goodbye, it won’t be us shedding tears – it will be the tenants left out in the cold.

Until next time,

The Landlord Crusader