The Renters' Rights Act is tipping London landlords toward the exit – and the sales market is feeling it
London's buy-to-let market is under pressure from a growing landlord exodus, with the Renters' Rights Act accelerating the sell-off.
Josh Endacott (pictured top), an estate agent at 1st Avenue in North Greenwich, told Mortgage Introducer the pressure has been building for some time, but has now moved beyond new-build developments and into the broader resale market.
"It's been coming over the last couple of years, but I think it's really hit its peak now," Endacott said. "I think everyone's now starting to realise what a bad spot we're in."
A market built on investment – and struggling to sell
The scale of the problem is visible at street level. Endacott described a recently opened residential development in North Greenwich, pitched to buyers as both a residential and buy-to-let opportunity, where he had visited to collect management keys. The block had been open for nearly three months, had been selling off-plan for roughly a year, and was operating at 30% occupancy.
"That's awful, and it's not the only example," he said. Down the road, he added, a development by Greenwich Millennium Village Limited had been sold off to the council for social housing after failing to find enough investment buyers.
Another building nearby, visible on property listing platform Rightmove, has been on the market for over a year with plots still unsold. Endacott said the pattern undercut a widely held assumption among some vendors – that brand-new properties command a premium.
"No one wants the brand-new sparkly stuff anymore, they want the best deal," he said. "When you've got stuff on for £600,000, they could potentially go and grab something for £200,000 cheaper that's only a few years older. They're going to do that."
Endacott works across a diverse landlord base – some with large portfolios, others with one or two properties – and both groups are feeling the pressure.
How the Renters' Rights Act is reshaping landlord decisions
The Renters' Rights Act came into force on 1 May, abolishing assured shorthold tenancies, ending Section 21 "no-fault" evictions, and introducing a new periodic tenancy regime across England. For landlords already weighing up whether buy-to-let still makes sense, Endacott said the legislation has become the deciding factor.
"The Renters' Rights Act has had a very big say on it, because a lot of landlords are looking to sell up because of it," he said. "And then that again is saturating the market even more than it already is."
The concern is that a wave of motivated sellers, arriving at a market already characterised by oversupply and soft demand, creates a self-reinforcing problem. As brokers brace for the buy-to-let reckoning triggered by the Act, the on-the-ground reality for agents like Endacott is one of diminishing deal flow and buyers empowered to wait for better terms.
What the national picture shows
The scale of landlord exits nationally gives weight to what Endacott is seeing locally. Data from TwentyCi's Property & Homemover Report for Q2 found that almost 181,000 former rental properties exited the sector in 2025 alone – the highest annual figure on record – and that disposals accelerated as the Renters' Rights Act moved closer to implementation.
Research from specialist buy-to-let lender Pepper Money suggests around 220,000 households – roughly 5% of the private rented sector – could leave the market by the end of 2026, with more than 65,000 of those exits attributed directly to the Act.
London is bearing a disproportionate share of the pressure. According to research by property firm Elliot Leigh, 39% of landlords in the capital are considering leaving the market entirely within the next year. For a market where buy-to-let investment has long underpinned new-build viability, the consequences of that shift are now showing up in occupancy rates and sales volumes, exactly as Endacott describes.
A quarter of UK landlords are currently weighing an exit from the sector, according to a LegalforLandlords survey of more than 900 respondents, and in Endacott's corner of London, the pressure is already visible in empty buildings and properties that have sat unsold for over a year.
Further analysis of how the Renters' Rights Act is exposing gaps in buy-to-let lender guidance suggests the structural consequences of the legislation are still working their way through the market, and that the full impact for landlords, lenders, and agents alike may still be ahead.
"It's been coming over the last couple of years," Endacott said. "But I think it's really hit its peak now."
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