More rules, fewer landlords

Why agents can thrive if they offer expert support

The Renters' Rights Act means extra demands on small-scale landlords; it’s the most demanding UK rental documentation regime in history.

At the same time, thousands of landlords have been leaving the sector. These two trends are not unrelated; they represent both a threat and an opportunity for agents. For those letting agents who get it, they could be a significant opening - see below.

The Exodus

The figures make sobering reading. According to data from Savills, advertised rental stock has fallen by around 17 per cent over the past two years. More than 250,000 properties that were previously let are now listed for sale. Around 700 previously rented homes have been moving to the sales market every day. 

This is not a small short-term trend; it represents something of a structural shift in the English private rented sector (PRS). It’s been building for several years, and successive governments have placed increasing demands on buy-to-let landlords, and it shows little sign of reversing right now. 

This shift has serious implications for tenants as they search in vain for vacant rentals, while letting agents find their client lists are rapidly diminishing.  

The causes have been well-documented. The phased removal of mortgage interest relief from 2017 onwards, the additional 3 per cent stamp duty surcharge now increased to 5 per cent on investment property purchases, rising interest rates, the cost of meeting tightening energy efficiency requirements, and this steadily increasing compliance burden. 

The Renters' Rights Act 2025, which came into force on 1 May 2026, has added considerably to that burden on landlords. For many smaller landlords it has been the trigger “the last straw” for a decision that was already forming in their minds.

Disclaimer: This article is for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Landlords and agents should seek professional guidance for their specific circumstances.‍

Professional support – a serious alternative?

The irony is, some of these leaving landlords might have considered another option: instead of self-managing, they could have adapted to the situation and used the services of professional letting agents to deal with the minutia, relieving them of all the extra demands the RRA brings. 

Many of those landlords now selling up own one or two properties, operate without professional support. They may have found themselves unable or unwilling to navigate an increasingly complex regulatory environment, but perhaps there’s still time to reconsider? 

These landlords are not necessarily leaving because the economics don’t work anymore – though it may be true for some – but because they can’t face the extra complexity and the work involved; the skills required and the administrative and legal demands have become more than they bargained for when they first bought a buy-to-let.

What does the Act demand?

For landlords who remain in the sector, and there are still many thousands of them, the new legislation has created a changed buy-to-let. The main changes are familiar by now: the abolition of Section 21 no-fault evictions; the automatic conversion of all assured shorthold tenancies to assured periodic tenancies (APT) with no fixed end date; and the introduction of Section 8 as the only remaining route to possession and rent increases. 

But it is the imperative of documentation requirements that is catching many landlords out. For example, many are probably still unaware of the requirement to have serviced the Information Sheet by the 31 May deadline. It’s here that the risk of costly errors looms.

The Act introduced several challenging obligations. Each has its own rules, deadlines and potential penalties. Understanding which applies to which and getting each document absolutely correct, to withstand perhaps a judge’s scrutiny, demands a level of knowledge and precision that many small-scale buy-to-let landlords do not possess. 

The Information Sheet deadline 

Every landlord in England with an existing written tenancy — one that was wholly or partly in writing as of 1 May 2026 — was required to serve the government's prescribed RRA Information Sheet on each tenant by 31 May 2026. 

This must be the exact PDF published document on the GOV.UK website, downloaded and served without alteration. The civil penalty for failing to serve it is up to £7,000 per tenancy.

Where a property is managed by a letting agent, the obligation does not fall solely on the landlord. The agent must also serve the Information Sheet on the tenant, even if the landlord has already done so. This is a point that some landlords and agents may have missed. 

For tenancies that were entirely oral the landlord or agent is instead required to provide a Written Statement setting out the key terms of the tenancy, including the landlord's full name and contact details, the property address, the rent payable, the deposit amount and protection scheme, and a range of other prescribed information. This obligation also carried a deadline of 31 May 2026.

For landlords who have missed either deadline, it requires urgent attention. As local authorities develop their enforcement capabilities under their new extended powers conferred by the Act, the risk of it being fined will increase.

The July deadline

For those landlords who served a Section 21 notice before 1 May 2026 and have not yet applied to the court for a possession order, they must issue proceedings before 31 July 2026. After that date, any outstanding Section 21 notice lapses and cannot be revived. 

Section 8 and form 3A 

From 1 May 2026, all new possession proceedings must be brought under Section 8 of the Housing Act 1988 using the new Form 3A. Section 21 no longer exists as an eviction process. 

Form 3A requires the landlord to specify the ground or grounds relied on from the revised Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988, as amended by the Renters' Rights Act 2025. 

The notice must cite the correct ground, give the legally prescribed notice period for that ground, and be served on the correct form. Using the wrong form, citing the wrong ground, or giving insufficient notice will render the notice invalid. 

Given the current delays in the county courts, an invalid notice means starting again and perhaps wasting months in rent arrears. 

The Act also expands and revises the grounds for possession. Landlords wanting to recover a property because they intend to sell, or because a close family member wishes to occupy it, must now meet specific conditions and observe prescribed notice periods. 

There is also a new ground — Ground 4A — for landlords of student houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), which allows recovery of possession for re-letting to new students. This is subject to a prior written notice having been served by 31 May 2026 in most cases.

Rent Increases and form 4A

Landlords seeking to increase rent must use Section 13 of the Housing Act 1988 and must now use Form 4A. Verbal agreements alone are no longer valid. The previous Section 13 notice has been superseded, and any rent review clauses contained in existing tenancy agreements are no longer a valid way to propose rent increases. From 1 May 2026, Form 4A is the only lawful route. 

Documentation errors are so costly

The cumulative effect of these and other RRA requirements is that the cost of getting the paperwork wrong has increased significantly. Under the old regime, a landlord who made an error in serving prescribed information, for example, failing to protect a deposit within the required period, could be penalised and barred from using Section 21 but could generally remedy the problem and serve a new notice. 

The new regime is even less forgiving. An invalid Section 8 notice must be re-served, with the notice period running again from the beginning. The practical consequence of a documentation error at the start of possession proceedings can be a delay of three to six months or more before the landlord can even apply for a hearing. 

An agent opportunity

All of this adds up to an opportunity for the professional (well-trained) letting agent. Letting agents are, in many cases, managing fewer properties than they were two years ago.

Less obvious is that the landlords who remain are, on average, more in need of professional support. The self-managing landlord who navigated the old AST regime with a template tenancy agreement, minimal legal knowledge and a degree of common sense could manage effectively.

Minimal knowledge and common sense alone is no longer an adequate guide to whether a Section 8 notice will withstand scrutiny, not to mention all the extra work the RRA now demands.

The agents who are prospering now are the ones who are actively reaching out to self-managing landlords, explaining what the Renters' Rights Act requires of them, and demonstrating the value of professional management in practical, concrete terms. 

Many self-managing landlords are already approaching solicitors for guidance, so agents who position themselves as the first point of contact for that guidance are the ones likely to convert those conversations into long-term management relationships.

There is an argument that says the landlord who previously managed competently without an agent may now find it worth paying management fees to ensure their documentation is correct, their notices are valid, and they are protected from the increased penalties under the Act. 

Conclusion

The Renters' Rights Act 2025 was designed primarily to strengthen the interests of tenants. There is a debate about whether it will achieve that aim and LandlordZONE has covered those arguments extensively. 

What is not in debate is that it has substantially increased the complexity of running a compliant letting operation, and particularly challenging for small-scale landlords managing property without professional support.

The landlord exodus is real, as is the effect on supply and rent levels – tenants are suffering. But for letting agents, those willing to engage seriously with landlords and help them navigate the new minefield of rental administration, there’s a genuine commercial opportunity.