Renters rights bill - 1 May 2026 good or disaster?

I'm not sure how the changes are going to impact student rentals. The fixed term contract works for them, although I know many complain about paying rent over the summer when not necessarily living there. Under the new system I think they will be able to give notice so they can end the contract for the summer. But no student will want to move in over the summer so landlords will have no income for 3 months of the year, so presumably will stop renting to students?

Only good until the tenant devalues your property. Tenanted properties kitchens last 5 yrs, bathrooms same, carpets and other flooring trashed after 3 years. Pets cause horrible smells that n sink into walls, floors and doors. Gardens are not maintained & deteriorate. So on average it costs a landlord approx 10 - 15k to put a property right after a 5 year tenancy or leave the place rough and rent

Being a landlord is of course about making money first - creating wealth - sorry to break it you OP - no one decides to run a business for little or no return - be it a small landlord or a landlord with 100 properties - they are all in it to create wealth - that's how the world works. If the plan was to change the incentives of being a landlord I'm afraid that's not going to work - unless the landlord is a not for profit housing association - profit is the main driver.

This will change the rental sector - it's likely to reduce rental properties available and increase costs. It'll probably be fine for those who already have a rental - they'll have increased housing security, which is great from their perspective. Those wanting to get a rental property will face a more challenging problem with reduced supply.

It will interesting to see what the fallout is and whether it will be an overall positive affect - the benefit if there is one will not be evenly spread amongst renters.

Its typical Labour, trying to do the right thing and making things worse.
These changes will hit the people who already struggle to get a rental the worst.

Why didn’t the government factor this in? I just find it baffling that they can’t see it is going to make an existing housing crisis so much worse :(

I recently received an email notifying me of new investment properties. New homes reserved for investors only. No opportunity for first time buyers.

I suppose it’s part of government plan to reduce state provision of homes and pass it on to the private sector.

In some ways I think having large corporations plugging the gap may be a good thing - it’s more or less how it’s done in other countries. They will have the money to maintain the properties to a certain standard presumably and rent prices may stabilise over time.

However it’s a huge shame to exclude private/first time buyers making home ownership so much more difficult.

It’s also the case that there is a need for more flexible arrangements - people like a PP wanting to rent their property whilst working abroad and feel safe that they have a home to return to and lots of other reasons for so called “accidental” landlords. Equally private renters have reasons for wanting to rent for a relatively short time 6-12 months say, when relocating jobs or in order to sell their home and be chain free when buying their next home for instance.
These sorts of scenarios won’t really be catered for by the corporate land lords. It will be much more difficult for people in these situations.

I’m sure all the tenants would love to be evicted.

There is a huge rise in big corporate Landlords. I rented 3 houses when young and dealt directly with the landlords who were delighted they had a good tenant. The last rental when DH and I bought our house let us off the last 2 weeks rent as on inspection when vacating he didn’t need to pay for a professional clean as we did such a good job. There will be no negotiation or flexibility with large corporates.

@ShamedBySiri They do just become someone else’s problem.

Yes but you are not an accidental landlord are you? You made a business decision to rent out a property, albeit one you would rather not make.

Oh come on, you know it’s a coined term for someone who didn’t buy their property with the intention to ever let it.

In my case, I bought a flat, lived in it for 5 years, wanted/needed a bigger house closer to the city where I was now working 2 hours away, tried to market the flat and it was valued at £0 for mortgage purposes as it didn’t have the right paperwork for the cladding post Grenfell. Now it’s worth 50% less than we bought it for because of stagnating sales of flats in the intervening period and I can’t sell it as I don’t have the lump sum to pay off the negative equity if I do.

So yes I rent it out in an attempt to recoup my costs, I make a loss and pay tax on this money. I only use the term accidental landlord on here as it is a term with a meaning, but in reality I rent it out to stop being bankrupted and would sell it tomorrow if someone offered me the outstanding mortgage amount which is about half of what I bought it for 15 years ago. So yes I chose to let it, but out of necessity if I had wanted to get the promotion I got and increase my earnings to pay more tax and manage a cost of living crisis.

That’s not true for rental income. We make no profit and still pay tax on our rental income because of the restriction on interest deductibility.

Thanks for the financial advice

It’s bad if you’re a decent, smallish landlord. The good ones don’t randomly evict tenants for no reason, they don’t overinflate rents. With all the rules, regs and costs of being a landlord, there’s not enough in it to lose control of their own property, and the financial risk of that. A lot of these landlords will just sell up.

At the end of the day we have a well-document housing shortage already, plus a lot of people coming in who wouldn’t get in with a pickier private landlord - ultimately I think this bill is being brought in to push individual private landlords out and help the government (or big companies who will work with them) to take control of housing stock.

Loving all these "accidental" landllords,.there is no such thing. No one wakes up one day and siddently finds a tenant in their property. Own your decisions.

Ending non-fault eviction is no bad thing, but why did they also have to make it harder to evict bad tenants? Now the tenant has to be in 4 months of rent arrears before you can evict them, it used to be 2. How on earth is that fair? Already we have tenants who carefully stay a few pence under 2 months of arrears so that there aren't mandatory grounds to evict. What's the rationale behind handing them another couple of free months?
Also rental prices will go up. Now rental bidding is ending, landlords will list properties at the absolute top of market rate.

Yes that makes sense.

Likely o/s corporations building too for private renters who can pay more.

It looks like it, there is no reason NOT to go to Tribunal and the system for reviews has not yet been set up properly, the fear is that there will be a long wait for the review, possibly up to 6 months.
And as for people saying Landlords will sell up and there will not be enough Rentals that is happening already.
There has been a proliferation of "Build to Rent" buildings as well, especially in The Cities. They are mostly flats and not really family friendly plus the rents are higher. This is the area the large corporates are interested in not families.

I don’t really understand the management of antisocial behaviour within the state/housing association section. When these people are evicted where do they go? Presumably the local authority then has to rehouse them somewhere else(especially if there are children which there likely will be, it’s often children who are a big part of the problem) ?
Then they carry on as before and become someone else’s problem.

I realise it’s difficult, there are limited sanctions that can be imposed and these types of people don’t really care about any new rules eg they would likely ignore a curfew or whatever. But there needs to be some sort of system, multi agency involving social workers and school to try to manage antisocial behaviour.

I think that smaller landlords will sell up. They will take financial advice on what to do with their money from the sale. The obvious thing is a life insurance bond off shore to allow income to be accumulated off shore and only taxed when brought in on shore/ or more than 5% brought in. So the little landlord won’t have to do any tax refurns whilst the money is not brought in and it can accumulate compound growth nicely. They can ensure to keep any money bought in at the 5% value.

The properties will get snapped up by large investment companies who will borrow huge amounts from off shore parents companies to diminish any returns. The upshot is that the small landlord will not pay any tax as their money is accumulating growth tax free. The corporate landlord will not pay tax due to a huge off shore loan. So imagine the little landlord had been paying £6000 to 8000 tax on their rental income that is now gone.

I’d love to sell. I own one flat which was a huge error of judgment and I wish I’d stuck the inheritance into my own mortgage but stupidly (on advice) bought a small flat with a large mortgage. I had it on the market and kept reducing the price. In the end no offers even though I was happy to take a hit and would have accepted offers. I’ve now had to remortgage as dh was made redundant. I’m disabled and unable to work. We are screwed now as I can’t afford to sell now with remortgage penalties and I won’t be able to sell in the future as it has to remain empty and I can’t afford that. I’m awake again worrying about this and money. Not all landlords are rich. Some of us me are Just stupid.

I am a private landlord and I have more than one property. I have never evicted anyone although I came close with someone who was behind on rent for several months. This new law makes me a bit nervous about getting stuck with a bad tenant. I would have to sell up to get rid of them. I also think this law makes me inclined to increase the rent quite significantly because I now have fewer options and rights, but I can increase the rent to a reasonable level.

Landlords are selling, it's made the rental market more difficult which will mean prices will rise.

So a tenant can delay even a reasonable rent rise by going the tribunal route and staving it off for however many months it takes to get heard?