Hooray!

What is in the new law?

EDIT: I read a summary. Most things listed are fairly straightforward and already in place in the US, which brings up two questions for me.

1. How do any of these rules make renting not economically viable?
2. How fucking horrible was it to be a renter in the UK?

I'd be careful before crying victory. This most likely means those houses will be bought by PE, not individual buyers. The end result will be higher prices still.

How does a landlord quit?

They own the property, don't they?

I imagine they're either selling their properties to corporations or hiring someone to manage the rentals for them.

But we can 🎶

You know we can 🎶🎶

No more banging young impressionable tenants

Yeah I would imagine this would lead to slightly reduced property prices and increased rent prices as the market adjusts.

That's like half the movies I watch

so it's working better than expected!

Yall this doesnt mean theyre letting people live in these houses for free, it just means theyre off the rental market. Considering poorer people generally rent and richer people generally buy property, this is probably a regressive change.

Why? This will increase supply of housing available to buy and reduce the supply available to rent. So house prices will go down slightly, and rents will go up slightly.

Quitting means selling, yes.

Oh, so it only hurts the poorest and benefits those who can already afford to buy? How uplifting.

Why would PE buy them if not to rent & be subject to the same renter's bill of rights? Holding a vacant house isn't a good 😊 investment, they have upkeep costs, are subject to property taxes, and depreciate faster when unoccupied.

Because there isn’t a free market in housing anymore, they’ve all been caught colluding to keep pricing up even when there’s a huge glut of available units/houses in an area. They have been caught using apps to do it, and when faced with threats to stop that practice were found to use traditional means to collude. The free market is a myth in 2026, stop believing in fairy tales. Ayn Rand was a charlatan and capital isn’t going to ever be allowed to work for the poors.

That article has so little information, that it is effectively a big trust-me-bro. It does not mention, what the new law contains or how this is connected to the law. They tell ums some numbers without proper context explanations. So, ok, over 500 rental properties get sold off per day. What does this number actually contain. If they are not available to rent anymore, what happens with them?
And then the semingly rising numbers between this year, last year (looks only like a moderate rise to me) and 2020, which is during the pandemic. No mention about different effects on the numbers and the causal connections.

Sorry, this is just a low effort article telling us nothing but what this property guy whats us to think.

And to the people being happy about this news: If this would really happen, then it would just mean more consolidation of the market into bigger corporations, which would make the situation even worse. I'm not against renters protections. Though celebrating less rental properties without having a significant public housing rise would not help rentners.

Good direction but not enough, no private entity must be allowed to hoard housing. All rental properties must be under local council control to allow proper maintenance, fair pricing and finally getting rid of landlord scum

In a lot of European countries, small private landlords are relatively rare and apartments are owned and let out by corporations that own (and in many cases build) entire developments, like Deutsche Wohnung in Berlin. Given that continental Europe typically has a more stringent regulatory environment than the Anglo-American world, this does not end up with the sort of predatory monopolies one sees in the US where private equity have cornered regional markets, and the landlord companies have support desks and maintenance contractors that can be more responsive and professional than your typical small landlord.

I think you're thinking of a case in the USA that colluded on rental prices? I don't know of any evidence that there is collusion on house prices in the UK. People separately talk about investment companies buying up housing in the US as if that will have much impact on prices, but the proportion of housing under discussion is miniscule and unlikely to have any effect on prices - at least, outside of limited areas.

I'm guessing at what you're referring to here so feel free to get specific. But cases in the USA are not that relevant to the UK, where the government is far more willing to enforce free market conditions than the "free market" idiotlogues in America who think that you can have a free market without regulation.

I wish quitting meant a six figure windfall in my profession....

The Renters Rights Act overall benefits renters by making sure they can do such shocking things as keep a pet and make requests of the landlord without being evicted in revenge. This imposes a restriction on landlords, which amounts to a "cost" (in the sense of cost/benefit, not necessarily monetary) which means it was inevitable some would sell up. That part - landlords selling - does hurt the poorest, at least in the short term.

However, the effect will be small in the long run: because houses for sale will increase a bit in supply, those prices will come down, enabling more people to exit the rental market. That will bring down prices at the top of the rental market, and eventually a portion of the decrease in house prices will feed through to a mitigation (not a reversal) of the increase in rents at the bottom of the rental sector as well. So a small effect to begin with (because it's not like 50% of landlords will sell up without being replaced) and mitigated because while there's no perfect exchange between the rental and owner-occupied sectors, there is some exchange.

It's therefore a small price to pay for basic standards of decency for renters.

The true mitigation will come from building more social and affordable housing. The government has committed to do this but has so far abjectly failed, like many governments before them.

Holding a vacant house isn’t a good investment

This is in many cases demonstrably false. PE is holding on to vacant properties all over the US, and sometimes don't mind holding them for years unoccupied, waiting for a redevelopment opportunity

How would having lower demand increase prices?

If you're quitting because of this, it probably means you have a buy-to-let mortgage, quite possibly on a long term/interest only. You might therefore not get that much back, and what you do get back is essentially a liquidation of your savings asset.

But I guess what you're getting at seen another way is that it's nice when your savings can pay enough for you to retire.

Oh NO! Won't ANYONE please think of the Landlords that Take your Money and do Nothing in RETURN?

Why? He has nothing to do with England.

They should be forced to give their tenants an offer to form a union and purchase the property before they're allowed to sell it to someone else.

As well as holding onto housing stock to maintain a local monopoly.

It isn't as big a deal when you know any potential renter will be renting from you regardless of it is this unit or that unit. They are still forced to be your customer and you don't have to compete with lower prices from another landlord.

🎻

Artificial scarcity got hands

They've withdrawn their labour? 🫢

Do people think the corporate landlords will be better?

They were already renting, and when someone sells that pushes the property value down.

Tax incidence does not work that way!

Didn't pay close enough attention, commented without thinking.

You overlooked the most important outcome: landlords selling property to individuals who will live there.

This is a good thing because it reduces property prices, moves the market away from rentier capitalism towards people owning their own homes, and reduces economic inequality and insecurity.

Eh?

Why do you think that this will result in there being more corporate landlords? I don't think people think that is true, so I don't think they have an opinion on whether they'll be better or worse.

1. They don’t. The landlords who are whingeing are just rentier capitalists who resent any regulation.

2. Very dependent on the landlord (usually bad) & the property (ditto) & the willingness (ditto) of the local council to intervene when needed. IME, it was shit.

They're going to get sold to corporations who rent out even higher with no value add

Right, but if landlords are exiting the market that probably means they are selling to someone who wants to live there, meaning rental properties are going off the market. Which is good for first time homebuyers but bad for renters. Either that or this is just landlords consolidating which which wont make much of a difference either way.

When someone decides to sell a good because market conditions have changed, the price of the good goes down.

Rental prices are proportional to overall housing prices. In general, more homeowners is correlated with lower rents. Renters are also removed from the market.

Lol I can't believe this article frames the whole thing as if it's terrible news that the economy will never recover from.

Actually, I can believe it. It's just disgusting.

Violin too big

If you had a fixed interest only mortgage from several years ago that is now expiring you are also about to get fucked by the increased interest rates. Not as bad as they were a few years ago but could still be a lot worse than a decade ago.

No need to feel any sympathy for them, they are still making a shitload of money for little to no actual work from the whole thing.

The first time buyer was previously renting though, so the renter could go there. Total number of people and houses hasn't changed in this simplified example.

Before, landlords could evict you because they feel like it.

When someone decides to sell a good because market conditions have changed, the price of the good goes down

Yes i agree with that part

Rental prices are proportional to overall housing prices. In general, more homeowners is correlated with lower rents. Renters are also removed from the market.

That is correlation without causation. When there isn't enough housing, rent and property prices will both be high. However, if properties get taken off the rental market and are put up for sale instead, with no changes to population or overall housing supply, that is going to drive up rental prices. There will be fewer people renting, by necessity, but the people who want or need to rent will not change by as much, creating an imbalance between supply and demand that will drive up rental prices.

Not to mention another thing we haven't touched on which is why landlords are leaving in the first place. Those who remain in the now-less-profitable environment may try to raise rent to compensate.

Right but a lot of renters cannot or do not want to buy property. Thus, rental units leaving the market creates a supply demand imbalance in the rent market, driving up prices (and driving down property prices, for the inverse reason)

Plenty of renters do want to buy and house prices coming down would allow that for some of them. If no one buys it and the landlord wants to sell, all they can do is lower the price until someone does buy it.