Buy-to-Let: A Market Reawakening?
Many commentators have already read the last rites to buy-to-let property investment, citing successive governments’ relentless persecution of the private landlord over the past decade. I prefer to think of the sector not as dead, but as a giant nonchalantly sleeping.
The assault began with landlord licensing and was swiftly followed by gas safety requirements, EICR certification, and minimum EPC ratings. Then came the 3% second-home stamp duty surcharge, the banning of tenant fees, and the removal of mortgage interest tax relief for buy-to-let investors. Just as battered and bruised landlords were reaching breaking point, along came the Renters Reform Bill to finish the job.
At the same time, buy-to-let lenders sought to recoup lost new-business revenue by increasing mortgage rates, arrangement fees, and switch costs making it ever more difficult for landlords to exit the sector gracefully.
So why has the Government taken such a hard line against landlords? Surely even the most disconnected politician cannot genuinely believe that driving landlords out of the market will enable key workers to get onto the housing ladder or that falling prices of one- and two-bedroom flats, pushing tens of thousands of homeowners into negative equity, is a desirable outcome.
The answer, in my opinion, is simple: Votes!!
Long-term fiscal strategy aimed at driving productivity, growth, and living standards has been abandoned in favour of short-term, headline-grabbing populism. A “Robin Hood” style tax the rich narrative is simply too tempting when an election looms, regardless of the real-world consequences.
The results of these punitive policies are now painfully clear. There has been a mass exodus of private landlords in recent years an estimated 93,000 exited the market in 2025 alone. When combined with the absence of new housebuilding over the same period, this has created a housing shortage of epidemic proportions.
Ironically, the outcome has been precisely the opposite of what policymakers claimed to want. Rents have risen by 20-30% over the past four years, hitting first-time buyers, low-income families, and key workers hardest, the very groups these policies were supposedly designed to protect.
Assuming the Government remains largely powerless to influence what housebuilders build, where they build, and when; migration continues to rise; and private landlords continue to exit the market, there will come a point where the state has no choice but to turn back to private investors to supply rental housing.
What is alarming beyond belief is that among all those Oxford, Eton, and Harrow-educated career politicians, so few appear able or willing to join the dots. The opportunity is glaring: create more affordable housing, stimulate employment, drive economic growth, and reduce future pension and welfare burdens, all with relatively modest policy changes.
If the Government were to reinstate full tax relief on rental income for buy-to-let investors and remove the 3% stamp duty surcharge, the response would be immediate. Supply of lower-cost rental properties in the private sector would rise rapidly.
In return for these incentives, investors could commit to:
Purchasing properties in targeted postcodes where rental demand is highest
Letting exclusively to key workers (such as teachers, nurses, and care staff)
Opting out of state pension entitlement as part of a structured long-term investment framework
In my view, the reawakening of buy-to-let investment is inevitable. The continued contraction of the private rental sector without any meaningful increase in housebuilding means it is only a matter of time before buy-to-let is not just “back in play,” but actively courted once again.
If Stamer doesn’t, Farage will!!
Julian Peak
6th January 2026