Official data suggests that evictions increased ahead of new legislation giving tenants greater rights.
Ministry of Justice statistics show a 16 per cent increase in landlord possession claims being made under the Section 21 eviction grounds between April and June, compared to the previous year.
Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions allowed landlords to ask tenants to leave without giving a valid reason.
After the Renters’ Rights Act was introduced on 1 May, such evictions were banned. Landlords must now prove a valid legal ground for eviction, such as rent arrears, anti-social behaviour, or needing to sell the property.
The 8,463 cases recorded between April and June represent a 31 per cent jump on the 6,472 cases recorded between January and March.
However, there were similar numbers recorded during one period in 2024 – 8,317 between April and June and 8,419 between July and September.
This could have been because mortgage rates were spiking at the time, meaning some landlords may have decided to sell, or evict tenants in order to put the rent up.
Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions were banned from 1 May, meaning landlords are no longer able to evict tenants without giving a valid reason
One campaigner says the number of evictions ahead of the Renters’ Rights Act was still lower than expected.
Clara Collingwood, director at the Renters’ Reform Coalition, said: ‘Any Section 21 eviction is one too many, and while these statistics suggest there were fewer last-minute evictions than many of us feared, it’s clear that many landlords did use Section 21 one last time to evict their tenants before 1 May.’
Many across the property industry warned the Renters’ Rights Act would spark a sell off from landlords and reduce the supply of rented homes.
In April, research by buy-to-let mortgage lender Pepper Money suggested there could be as many as 220,000 fewer homes to rent by the end of 2026.
In May, Savills estimated that 254,000 previously let buy‑to‑let homes were listed for sale in the 12 months to the end of March, which is the equivalent of 697 properties per day.
However, more homes to rent are being built, which could in theory lead to more evictions.
New rental supply during the year to date was 17.4 per cent higher than in 2025, according to the letting agent membership body, Propertymark, an increase of 108,300 properties and the highest level recorded for seven years.
Propertymark says the recent increase has been partly driven by Build to Rent schemes, typically owned by institutional investors or large landlords rather than individual buy-to-let investors.
The slow death of the small time landlord and rise of the corporate investor
Some experts have suggested that a sluggish property market could be responsible for evictions being lower than expected.
Certain types of flats are now selling at a loss, or struggling to sell at all. This means landlords may decide to keep their property for the moment and continue collecting rent.
In fact, fewer landlords are attempting to sell their properties, according to analysis by Hamptons, as evicting their tenants but failing to find a buyer could risk their property being empty for a year.
As of 1 May 2026, landlords who serve their tenant with a notice to sell face a mandatory 12-month ban on re-letting the property.
In terms of the bigger picture, the property industry tends to point to a slow disappearance of smaller landlords and the arrival of larger corporate investors to take their place.
More than 834,000 homes have left the UK private rented sector over the past decade, according to Propertymark’s analysis.
This chimes with recent figures from Savills, which said that over the past three years, the total value of the rental sector has fallen by £79billion and is now worth £1.47trillion.
Analysis last year by Savills also showed that homes are being sold out of the rental market at a much faster rate than they are being bought.
Using listings data from a property portal in combination with HM Land Registry sales data, it identified that in 2024, 5.4 homes were sold from landlords to owner occupiers for every one home bought by landlords from owner occupiers, a 5:1 ratio. This is a much faster rate than in 2021, where the ratio was around 1:1.
It estimated that between April 2021 to October 2024, 290,000 rental properties were sold out of the rental market by small individual landlords while the Build to Rent market delivered 130,000 new rental homes during that time.
Thomas George, director at Mansell McTaggart, an estate agency covering Sussex, thinks we are witnessing a seismic shift in the rental landscape.
‘The small landlord is leaving, the corporate giant is moving in and nobody’s talking about it,’ says George.
‘While 40 per cent of landlords shrink their portfolios and 27 per cent plan to exit entirely, a handful of well-capitalised companies are quietly hoovering up discounted stock at scale.’