Landlord exit surveys have trended sharply upward since the Act took effect. This piece argues that could squeeze rental supply and push rents higher, even while weighing the counterarguments.
If you rent your home in England, the Renters' Rights Act was sold to you as good news, and on paper it is. No more no fault evictions, capped rent increases, a ban on bidding wars. But there's a harder question worth asking before we celebrate: what happens to rent and housing costs when a meaningful slice of landlords simply decide it isn't worth it anymore?
The early evidence suggests that isn't a hypothetical. According to the NRLA's most recent landlord survey, 41 per cent of landlords now say they're likely to sell some properties in the next year, more than double the 19 per cent who said the same in 2023 to 2024. A survey of over 900 landlords by LegalforLandlords found 24 per cent plan to exit the market entirely because of the Act, with a further 13 per cent planning to reduce their portfolios. Among single-property landlords, the group least able to absorb extra compliance costs, more than half say they're unlikely to keep letting at all. Industry estimates put the pace of departures at roughly 700 rental homes listed for sale every day across the UK, with around 220,000 households, close to 5 per cent of the entire private rented sector, potentially leaving the market by the end of 2026. More than 65,000 of those exits are being attributed directly to the Renters' Rights Act rather than the broader run of tax and mortgage changes landlords have faced since 2022.
Basic supply and demand tells you what happens next. Rental stock in the UK is already around 23 per cent below pre-pandemic levels, and tenant demand hasn't gone anywhere. ONS figures put average UK rents at around £1,380 a month in early-to-mid 2026, up roughly 3 to 3.5 per cent year-on-year (the precise figure moves slightly from one monthly release to the next), and the average rent for a new tenancy now tops £1,000 a month in 52 per cent of British neighbourhoods, up from just 23 per cent in 2020. Fewer landlords competing to house the same number of renters, or more, doesn't ease that pressure. It tightens it.
There's a second, quieter cost here too. When landlords sell, they don't always sell to first-time buyers. A number are selling with sitting tenants in place, at discounts of 30 to 40 per cent below vacant possession value, specifically to other investors, because a tenanted sale is faster and simpler than an empty one. That keeps the property in the rental pool, which sounds like good news for supply, but it also means the professional, well-capitalised landlords are consolidating the market while the smaller, often more flexible ones walk away. Fewer landlords, and more of them running larger portfolios with less patience for individual tenant circumstances, is not obviously a win for renters either.
None of this means the Act's protections are wrong to have. Ending Section 21 evictions and stopping rent-bidding wars fix real, well-documented harms. But good intentions and good outcomes aren't the same thing, and it's tenants, not the politicians who wrote the bill, who will absorb the cost if supply keeps shrinking while demand holds steady.
To be fair, the picture isn't unanimous. Together's 2026 Property Investor Report found just 1 per cent of landlords planned to leave the market in the next 12 months, with 84 per cent planning to buy more, and larger portfolio landlords, those with 26 or more properties, are broadly staying put or expanding. Some analysts argue the sell-off has been a knee-jerk overreaction from smaller landlords who misjudged how the Act would actually work in practice, and that as the rules bed in, the exodus will slow. There's also a genuine economic argument that a landlord selling a property doesn't delete a home from existence: it just changes who lives in it, and for a tenant who's been saving for a deposit, a former rental hitting the sales market can be exactly the opening they needed.
Still, those counterarguments assume the properties landlords sell get replaced, one way or another, by supply that actually helps renters rather than buyers already close to owning. The early data doesn't obviously support that assumption yet. If you're renting, watch this space rather than assuming the reform that was meant to protect you can't also make your next tenancy harder to find, or more expensive, than it would have been otherwise.
This is an opinion piece and reflects one interpretation of early, still-developing market data. Figures will change as the Renters' Rights Act's full implementation continues through 2026 and beyond.