It’s a story most people are brought up with, and one which becomes imprinted in people’s hopes and dreams as they tread towards homeownership; ‘you should put your money into bricks and mortar’ is a story often told, reinforced by the horror stories we’ve all heard, of ‘bad landlords’ serving good tenants.
However, recently, stories like those of Arif Khalfe’s have appeared in national press, turning the tables on the rhetoric and demonstrating extended value through things like helping tenants settle in, shop for food and even set up a bank account.
The story was published, almost at the same time as OSB Group’s annual *landlord leaders survey concluded, in which we heard from 1,000 professional and non-professional landlords who responded with growing year on year optimism for the private rented sector (PRS).
In that, 53% of professional landlords told us they were optimistic about the future of the PRS - a number that’s risen quite significantly from 46% in 2023.
And it’s not just professional landlords who reported positively about the future of the PRS, as 40% of non-professional landlords, those with four or fewer properties, referred to feeling optimistic, in comparison to 38% the year prior.
Putting the shoe on the other foot, in 2024 the Landlord Leaders Community heard from long-term tenant, Claudia Kennedy, who discussed her ‘excellent’ relationship with her landlord and talked positively about the autonomy she gained to redecorate and make semi-permanent alterations to her property.
Claudia also successfully made a request to her landlord to be able to keep a pet dog. The right to ask to be able to keep a pet is something that’s been proposed in the Renters’ Rights Bill which cleared its second reading in the House of Lords in February. You can read more about Claudia’s positive experience in the Bricks to Belonging playbook.
The positive outlook comes at a time when landlords could feel hard done by, owing to headwind challenges such as tenant affordability and rising bills which impact the bottom line.
Compounding that is the need for individual landlords to navigate complex tax challenges, and that’s led to buy-to-let firms becoming the biggest single type of business in the UK registered at Companies House according to new research by Hamptons.
It emphasises that, had the withdrawal of tax breaks for those filing tax returns as individuals not come into effect, most buy-to-let properties would have remained under personal ownership.
That ties in with the landlord leaders survey which reports that 65% of landlords are taking action to professionalise through becoming a limited company or incorporated company.
From this we can take that whilst negative stories will still appear in the national press, landlords continue to be motivated and more importantly are optimistically trying to change the national narrative, even with the harsh cards they’ve been dealt in recent times.
*Opinium research of 1,000 UK landlords (even split between professional and non-professional landlords).
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