‘War on landlords’ latest – 46,000 rental properties to disappear this year

An estate agency has claimed that the government’s ‘war on landlords’ will cost the private rented market some 46,000 this year, or some 3,800 every month.

Hamptons, which has branches all over the UK, says its research confirms that, as LandlordZONE has reported on numerous occasions, at the moment there are more landlords selling properties than there are those buying new ones.

Its figures, shared with us by the company’s head of research Aneisha Beveridge, are based on projections taken from the 1.25 million property transactions due to take place this year.

She says the ‘net loss’ of rental properties could be lower as Hamptons data doesn’t include all the newly-built properties bought by landlords in the UK each year.

But the report includes some other interesting figures on how landlords as a whole are behaving at the moment.

Falling

This includes that the number of landlords selling up had been falling until this year, when the government’s rhetoric on ‘rogue landlords’ ramped up, and that the number of landlords using limited companies to own their properties, a route which reduces their tax burden, is expected to hit at least 27,000 this year, up from 3,710 in 2012.

Also, the number of properties being bought by landlords has been rising during the pandemic, from 123,145 in 2019 to 171,000 last year, but so has the number being sold.

In response to Hamptons’ research, a spokesperson from Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, says: “Good landlords have nothing to fear from our rental reforms, which will give tenants greater security to challenge unreasonable rent rises and poor practice.”