One Month After the Renters' Rights Act: What the Data Actually Shows
A month ago today the rules changed. Section 21 went. Fixed-term assured shorthold tenancies went with it. Phase 1 of the Renters' Rights Act came into force on 1 May, and a lot of people I speak to have been asking me the same thing since: has it killed the rental market?
It hasn't. But it has done something more interesting, which is reshape who owns it.
The Q1 2026 buyer data is now in and it's telling a clean story. Between January and April this year, landlords made up 13.3% of all property buyers across Great Britain. That's the highest figure since 2016, the year the second-home stamp duty surcharge first hit. The sharpest increase is in Northern England, where landlords were 23.9% of buyers, up from 14.5% in the same period last year.
So while one set of landlords is selling up (and they are, in big numbers, with 93,000 having left in 2025 and another 220,000 households forecast to leave the sector by the end of 2026) another set is buying. The market isn't shrinking. It's consolidating.
This is what I've been telling investors for the last eighteen months. The Renters' Rights Act doesn't end buy-to-let. It ends casual buy-to-let. The accidental landlord with one flat and a mortgage they don't fully understand is the one selling. The portfolio investor with proper systems, decent compliance and a long-term view is the one buying.
Where it's actually happening
The regional breakdown is the part most people miss. The biggest concentration of landlord buying right now isn't London. It's the North East, North West and Yorkshire, where investors made up nearly a quarter of all buyers in early 2026. The yields back this up. Properties changing hands landlord-to-landlord are averaging a 6.7% gross yield, up from 5.7% in 2022.
You don't see that in the South. You see it in places like Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Hull, where rental demand is strong, prices haven't run away, and the basic maths still works. We've been buying in these markets since 2020 at Advantage Investment. The case for them now is sharper than it's been since we started.
One detail that hasn't had enough attention paid to it: 60% of previously-let homes that stayed in the rental sector in 2026 were houses. Five years ago that figure was 40%. That's the shift from one-flat amateur landlords to multi-property professional ones. From "I'll rent out my old place" to "I run this as a business."
What this means if you're thinking of buying
The market right now is doing something it hasn't done in a long time, which is offer tenanted properties at sensible prices to buyers willing to manage them properly. The seller is often a small landlord who doesn't want the new compliance load. The buyer can step in, take on the existing tenancy, and have rent flowing from day one.
There are things to get right. The new Section 8 grounds for possession. The Section 13 process for rent reviews. The Information Sheet that has to be served on every existing tenant by 31 May, with a £7,000 civil penalty if it isn't. The EPC C proposals continuing to move forward in the background.
None of it's difficult. It's just work. And work has always been the dividing line between the people who do well in property and the people who don't.
The bigger picture
2026 will be the year people look back on as the start of the proper professionalisation of UK rental. The regulation happened, the people who didn't want to deal with it left, and what's left is a smaller, more serious, better-run private rental sector. With higher yields for the people inside it.
If you're sitting on the sidelines waiting for the market to "settle", the settle is happening right now. The properties changing hands this quarter are the deals that will look obvious in retrospect.