Editor's note: This brief was summarised by The Property AI Team from a report by Property118. Read the original article for full details.
Renters' Rights Act Repeal Divides Landlords, Survey Finds
A Q3 2026 Landlord Sentiment Survey has found that repealing the Renters' Rights Act is the top incentive to buy again for 39.9% of landlords planning to leave the sector completely, but for only 14.0% of those already planning to buy. The survey, run by Property118 from 1 to 8 October 2026, gathered responses from 1,654 landlords, with 1,472 completing every page.
Leavers want it gone; investors rank it last
Among landlords who expect to exit the sector completely over the next three years, 39.9% rank repeal as the most important incentive to buy, and only 24.9% rank it last (base 361). Among landlords who plan to sell some properties, the figures are 29.7% and 36.4% (base 596); among those planning to stay the same, 25.5% and 41.5% (base 400).
Landlords who are still buying see it very differently. Only 14.0% rank repeal first and 49.5% rank it last (base 107). For this group, repeal is the lowest-scoring of the four incentives; falling interest rates and lower SDLT matter more to them.
In Q2, when the same questions were asked, 39.6% of would-be leavers (base 568) and 15.1% of would-be buyers (base 199) ranked repeal first.
The most divisive incentive on the list
Repeal is ranked first by 29.9% of landlords, level with reversal of Section 24 (29.6%). But it is also ranked last by 36.0%, more than any other factor (lower SDLT is next at 27.6%). Section 24 reversal, by contrast, is ranked last by only 13.7% (all bases 1,468).
That combination explains why repeal comes third of four on SurveyMonkey's weighted score, where a higher score means more important (4 is the maximum): Section 24 2.82, interest rates falling 2.58, repeal 2.40, lower SDLT 2.21. The four options have been identical in all three surveys this year, so the trend is like-for-like.
The pattern has been the same every quarter: repeal is ranked first by about three in ten landlords and last by a third or more. The share ranking it first has been broadly unchanged (31.1% in Q1, base 2,190; 30.8% in Q2, base 2,096; 29.9% in Q3), while the share ranking it last has edged up from 32.1% to 34.7% to 36.0%, and its weighted score has slipped from 2.48 to 2.44 to 2.40.
What this means for letting agents and inventory clerks
The survey highlights a sharp divide among landlords on the Renters' Rights Act. Those most wanting repeal are largely those already heading for the door, while those still investing have largely factored the Act in and are focused on the cost of borrowing and buying. The gap between leavers and those staying put held across every portfolio size, among landlords who own only in England, and when age and ownership structure were taken into account.
Source: Property118