Should I sell or keep my rental property?

A landlord asked us this week: "Everyone I know is selling up, should I be doing the same?" 93,000 landlords exited last year. Nearly 14,000 more registered to sell in the first five months of this year alone. The government built this exodus, law by law. Don't let it push you out too.

Every landlord who sells is one fewer rental property on the market. Demand hasn't moved. Fewer homes, higher rents, and it's tenants paying for a policy that was supposed to protect them.

A regulatory pile-on, one layer at a time

The Renters' Rights Act added a fresh layer of admin from May. EPC C by 2030 has almost a quarter of landlords planning to sell and a third still undecided, with over half of rental homes currently below standard. Making Tax Digital drags more landlords into quarterly reporting every year. None of it was sold as a way to remove homes from the market. Stacked together, that's exactly what it's doing. Agents up and down the country report the same thing: fewer available properties, seven applicants for every listing in some areas, rents climbing as a direct result.

The silver lining, if you stay

Every landlord that leaves shrinks supply further and pushes rents higher for whoever's left. That's tenants footing the bill for a shortage the regulation itself created, nothing to celebrate. But if you're weighing up whether to stay, it means the properties still in the market are earning more, not less. Landlords leaving are getting punished. Landlords staying are being rewarded by the very shortage the exits are creating.

The bottom line

Sell now, and you pay Capital Gains Tax on the way out, then hand your future income, and your share of rising rents, to whoever buys next. Every property that leaves makes the ones left standing worth more to hold. If it's the hassle putting you off, not the numbers, that's exactly what full management is for, we carry the day to day, you keep the asset.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/shorts/RNF9buwLkWQ

A personal note from me

Watch the pattern. Every regulation exists to fix the last one that went wrong. Rent controls are the perfect example. Overregulation pushed rents up, so the proposed fix is to control rents directly, which pushes more landlords out and shrinks supply further. Then the next regulation will arrive to fix that mess too. Einstein called doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result madness. Join the government's cuckoo house. Please, can we have some common sense!