The Renters’ Rights Act became law on 1 May 2026, and we’re now far enough past that date to look at what’s actually happened rather than what everyone predicted would happen. Some of it lines up with the warnings. Some of it doesn’t. And some of it, I’ve felt firsthand as a landlord myself, not just as the founder of a property management platform.
Here’s what the data says, and what it’s looked like from the inside.
Landlords are leaving, but not evenly
The exodus is real, but it isn’t hitting every landlord the same way. Analysis from property consultancy TwentyEA found that almost 850,000 rental properties have left the private rented sector across the UK over the last decade — around one in six of the stock that existed. The single highest year for landlord sales was 2025, with roughly 181,000 former rental properties sold as owners got ahead of the Act coming into force.
The National Residential Landlords Association’s Landlord Eye survey shows exactly who’s most likely to go: single-property landlords are far more nervous than portfolio landlords. In the survey, 9% of single-property landlords said they didn’t expect to still be landlords by the time the reforms came into force, against just 1% of multi-property landlords. Looking further out, 38% of single-property landlords rated themselves “unlikely” or “highly unlikely” to still be landlords by the end of 2026, compared with 21% of those with multiple properties.
When asked why, landlords split roughly into two camps: about a third pointed directly at the Renters’ Rights Act, while half cited tenant-related issues — arrears, evictions, and the practical difficulty of regaining possession. One single-property landlord from Inner London put it bluntly in the NRLA survey: “I have only one rental property left and I’m hoping the tenants will leave willingly so that I can sell it… It is now way too stressful.” That’s not an isolated sentiment — it’s the median experience for a lot of smaller landlords right now.
The rental supply paradox
Here’s the part that surprised a lot of people, including me: despite landlords leaving, overall rental supply has actually hit its highest level in seven years, up more than 17% so far in 2026 versus 2025. That’s not because individual landlords are expanding — it’s Build to Rent. Purpose-built rental listings were 22% higher in Q2 2026 than Q2 2025, and that institutional supply is filling the gap that departing small landlords are leaving behind.
Rightmove’s own numbers show the traditional side of the market shrinking slightly, with rental listings down 1% between April and June 2026 versus the same period last year. So the headline “rental supply is fine” hides a real shift in who owns the stock — fewer individual landlords, more institutional blocks.
Rent movements have also been anything but uniform. TwentyEA’s regional breakdown of asking rent inflation since the Act shows just how mixed the picture is:
| Region | Year-on-year rent change |
|---|---|
| Wales | +13.9% |
| West Midlands | +6.8% |
| East Midlands | +4.3% |
| Scotland | +1.9% |
| South East | +1.0% |
| Inner London | +0.4% |
| South West | -0.4% |
| North East | -1.6% |
| Outer London | -2.3% |
| North West | -2.4% |
| Yorkshire and the Humber | -4.0% |
| East of England | -7.7% |
Source: TwentyEA Property & Homemover Report, Q2 2026
Part of that spread comes from landlords pricing defensively. One lettings agency reported a 36% year-on-year increase in landlords raising their initial asking rents, with some pushing 5–10% above what they actually expect to achieve — because under Section 13, you only get to increase rent once every 12 months, so there’s a real incentive to ask high on day one rather than negotiate up later.
That defensiveness isn’t always working out, though. An analysis by LonRes of 200 First-tier Tribunal decisions on Section 13 rent increase challenges found that 73% of the time, the tribunal set the rent below what the landlord had proposed, and 47% of cases showed evidence problems with the landlord’s submission. If you’re planning to lean on a Section 13 notice to reset rent to market rate, the tribunal isn’t rubber-stamping your number — it wants comparable evidence, and most landlords currently bringing a case aren’t providing enough of it.
What I’ve actually seen as a landlord
Two of my own tenants, both on what had been long fixed-term contracts, gave notice within weeks of the Act coming in — the full two months, no negotiation. My first reaction was not a good one. Two vacant properties at once felt like a genuine problem, and losing tenants I’d had for years always stings a bit regardless of the legislation.
It turned out fine, better than fine actually. Both properties re-let at higher rents than before, and the void periods were only a couple of weeks each. The market absorbed it. If anything, it confirmed something the TwentyEA and Rightmove data both hint at: demand hasn’t disappeared, it’s just moving faster and rebalancing between landlords who are and aren’t willing to hold rents down.
The part that changed my behaviour more permanently was a tenant I turned down. She was lovely in the viewing and the application — genuinely a good fit for the property. But she was in the middle of a divorce, her credit reference came back weak, and while she offered her ex-husband as a guarantor, I got nervous and said no.
Before the Act, I’d have taken that chance. If the rent had stopped, Section 21 gave me a realistic, relatively fast route to get the property back. That safety net is gone. Every possession claim now has to go through Section 8, and the courts are not coping with the volume — Ministry of Justice figures put the average wait for a standard possession claim at around 34 weeks, worse in London where it stretches to 8–12 months, plus another 15 weeks or so waiting for bailiffs even after you’ve won. When getting a non-paying tenant out could take the best part of a year, the calculation on a marginal application changes completely. I turned her down not because she was a bad tenant, but because I couldn’t afford to be wrong.
I don’t think I’m unusual here. A lettings agent at Winkworth described tenants behaving “increasingly like buyers” — comparing, negotiating, walking away from anything overpriced — but the same shift is happening on the landlord side of the table. We’re all screening harder, because the cost of a mistake has gone up.
Where this leaves landlords, and where Alphaletz fits in
Put the data and my own experience together and the picture is consistent: the Act hasn’t emptied the rental market, but it has made it far less forgiving of loose processes. Landlords who can document everything — rent payment history, communication, compliance, the reasoning behind a Section 13 notice — are in a much stronger position than landlords relying on judgement calls and paper files, because judgement calls are exactly what’s now being tested at tribunal and in court.
That’s the thinking behind what’s coming in the next version of Alphaletz, due in September 2026. A lot of the new features come directly from situations like the ones above.
The one that changed my own pricing decisions is real-time property data, pulled in for over 30 million UK properties — market rent estimates, EPC ratings, council tax bands, property type, number of bedrooms, and more. It’s the same category of data the government is expected to require through the new Private Rented Sector (PRS) Landlord Database, due late 2026, so we’ve built Alphaletz to be ready for it. Seeing my own properties benchmarked against genuinely comparable local stock is what made me realise I was under-charging on two of them — not a guess, an actual market comparison. Given that LonRes found tribunals reject the majority of Section 13 increases that aren’t backed by solid comparable evidence, having that evidence sitting behind every rent decision matters a lot more than it used to.
Alphaletz also keeps a full audit trail on every tenancy — every notice, every message, every change logged and timestamped automatically. If a Section 13 notice or a Section 8 claim ever gets challenged, I have the documentation to back it up rather than trying to reconstruct a timeline from memory and old emails. And soon, that record is getting more complete: we’re adding a direct connection to your email, so correspondence with a tenant gets pulled in and stored against their tenant record automatically, instead of living in a separate inbox you have to search through manually when it actually matters.
It’s also built to be easier for us to extend as the rules keep shifting — the platform is optimised for AI-assisted development, so as the next phases of the Act land (the PRS Landlord Database, Awaab’s Law extension to the private sector, and whatever follows), we can adapt the product quickly rather than waiting for a slow release cycle.
The Renters’ Rights Act was never going to be static, and neither is how landlords need to operate under it. Three months in, the landlords doing best don’t seem to be the ones with the least risk — they’re the ones with the best information.
This article reflects general market data and personal experience, not legal advice. If you’re unsure how the Renters’ Rights Act affects your specific situation, speak to a solicitor or Citizens Advice.
