RESULTS of the Property118 Landlord Sentiment Survey (Q2 2026)

2,096 landlords completed our second quarterly Property118 landlord survey.

If you were one of them, Thank You. Following the record-breaking response to our Q1 survey earlier this year, this second quarter gives us something we have never had before: a like-for-like comparison. For the first time we can show not just what landlords think, but how their sentiment is shifting from one quarter to the next.

We have published the high-level results below, but as always, the devil is in the detail. The raw data will allow us to drill down into thousands of additional datasets in the coming weeks, cross-referencing age, gearing, region, and exit intentions to build a far richer picture of the private rented sector.

All data collected is, of course, anonymised for confidentiality purposes.

Throughout this article, the teal bars show this quarter’s results (Q2 2026) and the grey bars show the previous quarter (Q1 2026), so you can see the direction of travel at a glance. Where a question was new this quarter, or where the wording changed, we have said so and shown the current figures on their own.

A Note on Comparisons

Before we begin, a word on methodology. Between Q1 and Q2 we refined several questions in response to your feedback. Some now offer more answer options, one changed its time horizon, and a few are entirely new. Where a genuine quarter-on-quarter comparison is possible, we show it. Where it is not, we have flagged it clearly rather than present a misleading trend. We would rather give you an honest gap than a false line.

Portfolio Direction: Selling Still Outweighs Buying

We opened, as before, by asking landlords how their portfolios have changed over the past two years.

Key Insight: This picture has barely moved since Q1. Just over half of landlords (53.8%) report their portfolio has stayed roughly the same size, while four in ten (40.2%) have been shrinking through sales. Only 6% have been growing. The near-perfect stability of these figures quarter-on-quarter tells its own story: the balance between sellers and buyers has not corrected. For every landlord expanding, more than six are holding steady or actively reducing.

The Outlook for Property Values

New for this quarter, we asked landlords what they expect to happen to property values over the next three years.

Key Insight: The mood is distinctly downbeat. Almost half of landlords (48.7%) expect values to stagnate or fall below inflation, and a further 43.3% expect them merely to keep pace with inflation. Only 8% anticipate real-terms growth. Put another way, more than nine in ten landlords do not expect property to outpace inflation over the next three years. For a sector whose long-term investment case has historically rested on capital appreciation, that is a striking loss of confidence in the growth story.

Future Intentions: The Exit Signal Strengthens

We then asked what landlords consider most likely for them over the next three years. Note the change of time horizon here: in Q1 we asked about the next twelve months, whereas this quarter we extended the window to three years, so part of the movement below reflects the longer period rather than a pure change in sentiment.

Critical Finding: Even allowing for the longer horizon, the direction is unmistakable. More than two-thirds of landlords (67.7%) expect to sell some properties or exit the sector entirely over the next three years, against fewer than one in ten (9.5%) planning to buy. The proportion intending to exit completely has climbed to 27.1%. For every landlord planning to expand, more than seven are planning to contract or leave. This is not a market in equilibrium, and the imbalance has, if anything, hardened since the spring.

Remortgaging: A Rising Refinance Burden

We asked whether landlords expect to remortgage one or more properties within the next twelve months. This question is directly comparable with Q1.

Key Insight: The share expecting to remortgage has risen to 34.2%, up from 31.1% last quarter. With interest rates still well above pre-2022 levels, this rising cohort will be refinancing onto materially higher repayment costs. For many, this is not borrowing to expand, but the arrival of fixed-rate deals reaching maturity. The upward drift is modest, but it points to growing financial pressure that could accelerate disposals among those least able to absorb higher costs.

What Would Tempt Landlords to Buy?

We asked landlords to rank the factors that would most influence a decision to purchase more rental property. The chart below shows the weighted score for each: the higher the score, the more important the factor. This question is directly comparable with Q1.

Key Insight: The ranking is remarkably consistent with last quarter. A reversal of Section 24 remains the single biggest incentive that would draw landlords back into buying, ahead of falling interest rates and a repeal of the Renters’ Rights Act. Lower Stamp Duty ranks last of the four. That Section 24 continues to top this list, quarter after quarter, is a pointed reminder to policymakers: the tax treatment of mortgage interest, more than any other single lever, is what suppresses landlord appetite to invest.

How Would Landlords Structure a Purchase?

For those who would buy, we asked which ownership structure they would use. This question is directly comparable with Q1.

The Incorporation Shift: The limited company (SPV) route remains dominant and has edged up further to 53.1%, while purchases in a personal name continue their slow decline to 29.2%. Interest in Family Investment Companies has ticked up to 11.2%. The message is consistent and strengthening: landlords who would still buy are overwhelmingly choosing incorporated, tax-efficient vehicles, a direct consequence of the same Section 24 changes they identified as their biggest barrier to buying in the first place.

What Would Drive a Decision to Sell?

We significantly expanded this question for Q2, asking landlords to rank six potential triggers for selling, up from three in Q1. Because the number of factors and the scoring scale have both changed, we are showing this quarter’s results on their own rather than attempting a direct comparison. As before, a higher weighted score means the factor was ranked more important.

Key Insight: Two financial factors sit clearly at the top and are effectively tied: higher interest rates (4.14) and a desire to realise gains before any change to Capital Gains Tax (4.13). The regulatory pressures of the Renters’ Reform Act and new EPC rules form a middle tier. Circumstantial triggers such as tenants moving out or the death of a spouse rank lowest. The takeaway is that the strongest push towards the exit is financial, the cost of borrowing and the tax position on disposal, with regulation a significant but secondary force.

Number of Properties Owned

We asked landlords how many rental properties they own. Because a small number of very large portfolios distort the average, we have shown both the typical figure and the mean.

Key Insight: The typical landlord in our survey owns five properties. The mean average of 11.8 is far higher, pulled upward by a long tail of portfolio landlords, one of whom reported 500 properties. This distinction matters: headlines that quote only the average risk overstating the scale of the typical landlord’s holdings. The reality is a sector built on many modest portfolios, with a smaller number of large operators at the top.

Who Are the UK’s Landlords?

As before, we captured the composition of the respondent base: where they own, how they own, who they let to, and how they manage.

UK Regions

Landlords could select every region in which they own property, so the percentages total more than 100%. This quarter, every region showed a higher figure than last, which most likely reflects respondents selecting more regions each on average rather than a genuine wave of acquisition. We would therefore caution against reading the changes as growth, and focus instead on the relative concentration.

Regional Spread: London (24.6%) and the South East (23.1%) remain far and away the most common regions for landlord ownership, together dwarfing the rest of the country. The North West and South West form a clear second tier. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland remain lightly represented. The geographic story is one of continued concentration in higher-value southern markets.

Ownership Structure

This question captures how landlords currently hold their property, as distinct from how they would structure a future purchase. It is directly comparable with Q1.

Key Insight: Personal ownership still dominates the existing stock at 61.8%, with only a gentle drift towards company ownership (up to 14.9%). Compare this with the 53% who told us they would use a company for future purchases, and the incorporation story comes into focus: landlords hold overwhelmingly in personal names today, but picture buying through companies tomorrow. Change to the existing stock is slow, because moving personally-held property into a company can trigger significant Capital Gains Tax, locking many landlords into legacy structures.

Tenant Types

Landlords could select more than one tenant type, so these figures total over 100%. Some of the larger movements this quarter probably reflect respondents choosing more specific categories rather than defaulting to “a mixture”, rather than a real change in who they let to.

Key Insight: Working tenants dominate the sector by a wide margin, housed by roughly three-quarters of landlords. Benefits and student tenancies each remain a modest minority. The private rented sector continues to be, first and foremost, housing for people in work.

Property Types

We separated houses, flats and bungalows into distinct options this quarter, having combined them in Q1. Because the answer options have changed, this question is shown on its own rather than compared. Landlords could select more than one type.

Key Insight: The sector’s stock is concentrated in standard residential property, with houses (70.3%) and flats (56.8%) the mainstay, and many landlords holding both. HMOs (13.1%) and commercial property (8.5%) remain a smaller specialist segment, notable given the heavier regulatory burden that HMOs in particular carry.

Property Management

How landlords manage their properties, directly comparable with Q1.

Key Insight: Self-management remains the most common approach at 39.1%, though it has slipped slightly, while full management by agents has risen to 26.1%. It is a small move in a single quarter, but the direction is worth watching: as regulatory complexity mounts through the Renters’ Reform agenda and tightening EPC rules, some landlords appear to be handing more of the burden to agents. Even so, a clear majority still rely on their own time and expertise rather than professional management.

Mortgage Gearing

The average loan-to-value across landlords’ portfolios, shown in gearing order and directly comparable with Q1.

Key Insight: The sector remains conservatively financed. Nearly a third of landlords (29.3%) hold no mortgages at all, and adding the sub-30% band, roughly four in ten are very lightly geared or mortgage-free. Only around 9% are geared above 70% LTV. There is a faint shift this quarter from the lowest gearing bands into the middle of the range, hinting at marginally higher average leverage, but the headline is unchanged: this is a sector with substantial equity buffers, which helps explain why the widely predicted wave of forced sales has not materialised despite higher rates.

Tax Residency

New for this quarter, we asked whether respondents are UK residents for tax purposes.

Key Insight: The respondent base is overwhelmingly UK tax resident (95.8%), confirming that these results reflect the sentiment of domestic landlords, with only a small overseas minority. This provides useful context for interpreting every other finding in the survey.

What Does This All Mean?

Taken together, this second quarter reinforces and sharpens the story our Q1 survey first told. The UK’s private rented sector is held largely by landlords who own standard residential property, let predominantly to working tenants, hold their portfolios in personal names, and manage much of the work themselves. They are conservatively geared and financially resilient. None of that has changed in three months, and nor would we expect it to.

What has come into sharper relief is the mood. Landlords are now more pessimistic about property values than they were in the spring, with more than nine in ten expecting no real-terms growth over the next three years. The intention to sell or exit has, if anything, strengthened. The factors that would tempt them back, chief among them a reversal of Section 24, remain exactly where they were, unaddressed. And the incorporation trend continues its slow, structural pull, as landlords picture a future built around companies while remaining locked into personally-held legacy portfolios by the Capital Gains Tax cost of moving.

The comparison between the two quarters is itself the finding. This is not a sector in temporary difficulty waiting for confidence to return. It is one in which caution is settling into something more permanent. The financial case, higher borrowing costs and the tax position on both income and disposal, is now doing as much to drive landlords towards the exit as regulation itself.

For policymakers, the message from Q2 is the same as from Q1, only louder. Without meaningful reform, or at the very least a pause in the pace of change, the supply of privately rented homes looks set to keep contracting. The tenants these landlords house will need somewhere else to go, at a time when social housing waiting lists are already at record levels and housebuilding remains well short of target. We will keep asking these questions every quarter, and we will keep showing you how the answers move.

Why Your Constructive Feedback Matters

We run the Property118 Landlord Sentiment Survey around the last day of every quarter. Much of what improved between Q1 and Q2, the sharper questions, the new topics, the extra answer options, came directly from your feedback. The more you tell us in the comments below, the better each future survey becomes.

These surveys are YOUR way to influence future legislation, and perhaps even to help bring about u-turns and repeals of existing legislation. Please help us by sharing this article on LinkedIn, X, Reddit, Facebook and beyond, to reach as many landlords as possible before the next quarter.