By For years we’ve been hearing that landlords are leaving the private rented sector in droves, driven by higher taxes, increased regulation and, more recently, higher mortgage costs.
But new analysis of what’s really happening in the private rented sector from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) challenges that narrative, concluding that the evidence points to “consolidation, not contraction” of the private rented sector.
According to JRF, the latest official figures show “England’s private rented sector passed five million homes in 2025, having grown by around 45,000 homes a year on average since 2021″. That is substantially slower than the growth seen between 2005 and 2015, but it is still growth rather than decline.
The English Housing Survey tells a similar story, recording 4.7 million privately renting households in 2024/25 – the highest number on record. Deposit protection data also reached an all-time high by March 2025, with 4.7 million deposits protected across England and Wales.
So why does it feel as though landlords are leaving?
JRF doesn’t dispute that many individual landlords are selling. Indeed, the proportion of landlords saying they intend to sell has risen significantly, while HMRC figures show the number of individual, unincorporated landlords fell from 2.91 million in 2023/24 to 2.88 million in 2024/25.
Instead, it argues that focusing on landlords leaving only tells half the story.
Properties can move into the rental market in ways that aren’t always captured by traditional buy-to-let purchase figures. Homes previously occupied by their owners can become rentals, inherited properties can be let, landlords can buy through limited companies and new Build to Rent properties can be added to the market.
For example, 67,000 new letting companies were incorporated in 2025, compared with around 10,000 in 2015. Meanwhile, Build to Rent had delivered around 157,000 homes by Q2 2026, with another 154,000 in the development pipeline.
Interestingly, JRF also highlights Hamptons data showing that in June 2026 landlord purchases exceeded landlord sales for the first time since 2019.
Fewer small landlords, more professional landlords?
Perhaps the most important finding is that the structure of the rental market appears to be changing.
Rather than disappearing, rental property ownership is becoming more concentrated among larger and incorporated landlords.
DPS survey data cited by JRF shows the proportion of landlords owning one or two properties fell from 57% to 50% between October 2024 and October 2025. Over the same period, the proportion owning three to five properties increased from 27% to 31%, while those owning 11 or more rose from 5% to 8%.
So, while some smaller and mortgaged landlords may indeed be leaving, their properties aren’t necessarily leaving the private rented sector with them.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a supply problem
This is an important distinction. JRF argues that there is a serious shortage of homes, but that isn’t necessarily the same thing as the private rented sector shrinking.
There are around 1.6 million concealed households in England – typically adults living within another household who would prefer to have a home of their own but cannot afford one. Around 527,000 of these households would like to rent.
At the same time, tenants are staying in their properties for longer. Average tenancy lengths have risen from around 3.5 years in 2013/14 to 4.7 years today, meaning fewer properties naturally come back onto the rental market each year. This can make available rental supply appear to be falling even when the overall number of rented homes hasn’t.
What does this mean for landlords and tenants?
The JRF research suggests the rental market story is more complicated than simply saying landlords are either leaving or staying.
The number of privately rented homes has, according to the latest official evidence, continued to grow – but much more slowly than in the past. At the same time, smaller landlords appear to be reducing while larger, professional and incorporated landlords take a greater share of the market.
There is one important caveat: official statistics inevitably lag behind what’s happening today. The latest comprehensive figures run to 2024/25, so JRF acknowledges that if the sector started contracting during 2025 or 2026, that may not become visible in official stock data until future releases.
For now, though, JRF’s conclusion is clear: the evidence doesn’t support claims of an overall landlord exodus shrinking the private rented sector. What we’re seeing instead is a rental market undergoing a significant structural change.
Want to read more on this?
The topic of the so-called ‘landlord exodus’ is something we also analysed back in July for Landlord Investor Magazine, and we found that landlords were investing differently. Want to read more on this? Then read our full analysis at UK Property News here.
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