Every industry has its easy targets.
Police officers know it’s easier to catch a speeding motorist on a dual carriageway than dismantle an organised criminal network. HMRC knows it’s easier to investigate someone who files a tax return than someone operating entirely in the cash economy. Parking wardens don’t spend their days hunting abandoned vehicles hidden in fields; they issue tickets to cars parked in plain sight.
It is simply the reality of enforcement. When resources are limited, organisations naturally gravitate towards what is easiest to find, easiest to evidence and easiest to prosecute.
It’s not hard to see the sense of it from a ‘targets’ point of view. But is a target-driven culture in keeping with the reasons the forces exist or a responsible use of the powers they are given?
Is the purpose of The Renters’ Rights Act to prosecute responsible landlords for procedural oversights or errors or to stop those irresponsible landlords that deliberately skip procedures altogether?
There are countless sayings that describe the same principle: low-hanging fruit, shooting fish in a barrel, taking the path of least resistance, picking the easy wins.
The concern is that the Renters’ Rights Act may result in undue focus on registered landlords with minor compliance issues rather than those who operate outside the law and don’t register their properties and allow over crowding in slum or dangerous properties. Especially when councils have been told to make greater use of their enforcement powers while also facing significant budget pressures. Some landlords are concerned that, over time, this could create an incentive to focus on breaches that are easiest to identify and evidence.
A landlord who has spent years providing decent homes may suddenly find themselves facing an investigation over a paperwork error, while the landlord operating outside the system altogether remains invisible if (when?) the genuinely rogue landlords who operate cash-in-hand and run overcrowded substandard property fail to register their properties on the PRS Database.
The Private Rented Sector (PRS) Database
The Private Rented Sector (PRS) Database is due to begin rolling out from late 2026, with landlords expected to register their properties, provide prescribed information and pay a registration fee, currently expected to be around £70 per property every three years.
By 2027, letting agents are expected to verify registration before marketing properties, with further requirements and enforcement measures continuing to be introduced over the following years.
Supporters believe the database will improve standards, transparency and accountability across the sector. However, some landlords are beginning to ask what unintended consequences might emerge once millions of properties, ownership records and compliance details are brought together in a single system, and what the changes could mean for them in practice.
- The Visibility Problem
The database makes compliant landlords visible but does nothing to expose unlicensed landlords who are unlikely to register.
2. The Incentive Problem
Councils are expected to enforce standards and they retain proceeds from enforcement activity to pay the additional costs.
Serious offences are difficult to prove whereas technical breaches are far more easy to prove. Will enforcement resources lean towards technical breaches because they’re measurable?
3. Reputational Damage by Association
Landlords are already fed up of being treated like criminals or parasites by the press.
Under the Renters’ Rights Act 2025, criminals who use accommodation as a means to commit serious criminal offences will be included in the PRS database with public facing information.
Does calling a human trafficker, fraudster, violent offender or sexual predator a “rogue landlord”, rather than identifying them first and foremost by the crimes they commit, then grouping them with honest, hard-working landlords trying to provide an essential service contribute to the negative reputation of the whole industry and in turn, ALL landlords?
Are these criminals really landlords in any meaningful sense? At what point should institutions differentiate between a landlord who has broken the rules and a criminal who uses property as part of their crimes?
The issue is highlighted by a recent case where Generation Rent are calling for tighter rent controls because a SCAMMER & A THIEF simply posed as a landlord. See ‘Tenant group blames soaring rents for rental scam boom‘
Will the PRS database damage the reputation of innocent, hard working landlords even further by association?
4.The Political Knock-On Effect
Negative perceptions of landlords are frequently cited in debates about further regulation and intervention in the sector. Many landlords also believe ‘landlord bashing’ is a vote winner because of it and organisations like Generation Rent are given more credence than they deserve because of it.
A growing number of landlords appear to be concluding that the rewards of remaining in the sector no longer justify the scrutiny, regulation and public criticism that comes with it.
Who Is All This Helping?
There is little doubt that thousands of smaller landlords are continuing to leave the private rented sector. Industry surveys show far more landlords plan to reduce or exit their portfolios than expand them, while research from Property118 found that 57% of landlords intend to reduce their holdings compared with just 6.8% planning to grow them. Other studies suggest tens of thousands of landlords have already left the sector in recent years, with many more considering their options.
What remains open to debate is what happens next. Are these homes being bought by owner-occupiers, or are larger corporate landlords quietly taking their place? A recent Property118 article questioned whether enough new landlords are entering the market to replace those leaving and concluded that the sector is not currently replacing the landlords it is losing.
Neither outcome appears to offer an obvious win for tenants.
If properties leave the rental sector altogether, the supply of homes available to rent falls. If ownership becomes increasingly concentrated among larger corporate operators, tenants may find themselves with fewer independent landlords and a less diverse rental market.
Either way, the very people these reforms are intended to help could find themselves facing fewer choices and greater competition for the homes that remain available.
Some might say, treat landlords like villains for long enough and eventually only the villains will remain.