Today’s stories split into two camps: the market itself, which Nationwide’s latest index shows barely moving, and the compliance environment sitting on top of it, which keeps tightening regardless. Rent tribunals are now finding for tenants at nearly four times last year’s rate, a landlord who sat on a collapsing staircase has been handed a five-figure repayment order, and a new industry guide finally treats damp and mould as a building fault rather than a tenant complaint. A flat market buys nobody a pass on any of it.
Tenants are taking the tribunal route, and winning it on evidence
Property tribunals made 166 market rent decisions in July 2026, against just 44 in July 2025 — nearly four times as many, according to Property118. The monthly average ran at 42 decisions in the year to late April, then jumped to 109 in May and 129 in June, with tenants now bringing around 60 per cent of referrals. Paul Rooke, a partner at Mayo Wynne Baxter, called it “a clear indication that the Renters’ Rights Act has shifted the balance of power towards tenants,” and urged landlords to treat “evidence gathering and procedural compliance as essential risk management tools.”
The detail that matters for anyone facing a referral is what the tribunal is actually weighing. Kristine Ng of Morr & Co makes the point precisely: the tribunal is concerned with market rent, not with whatever cost pressures the landlord has been carrying. A mortgage rate rise, a service charge increase, a buildings insurance hike — none of that is admissible reasoning for an increase on its own. What counts is comparable local lettings, and with Section 21 gone, a tenant who might once have simply moved on now has every incentive to test a rent rise instead.
If you serve a Section 13 increase on any tenancy, build the comparables file before you serve notice: three or four genuinely similar local lettings, not a generic area report pulled from a portal. A landlord who turns up to a hearing with cost justifications and nothing else is going to lose, and with case volumes trebling, the tribunal has less patience than ever for a weak submission.
A £17,244 lesson in what ‘wait and see’ costs a landlord
A metal external staircase at a five-bedroom HMO in Sydenham, south London, gave way under a tenant descending it; a tread cracked and the tenant only avoided a fall by grabbing the handrail, as LandlordZone reports. Tenants had also raised window leaks with mould, inadequate smoke alarms and non-compliant fire doors, and the property should have held an additional licence under Lewisham’s scheme but didn’t. The First-tier Property Tribunal ordered landlord Khaula Zahid to repay 75 per cent of rent taken via a Rent Repayment Order — £17,244 — with the judge describing her conduct as “very poor,” particularly around fire safety.
The line in the judgment that should worry every landlord with an ageing structure on a property is about timing, not the collapse itself: once the freeholder had advised that a full staircase replacement had been recommended, the tribunal found Zahid should have found out about the safety implications herself or commissioned her own report, rather than waiting to see what the freeholder did. Deferring to someone else’s timetable on a known structural risk isn’t a defence — in this case it was the finding against her.
If a freeholder, managing agent or previous survey has flagged a structural element as needing attention — a staircase, a balcony, a parapet — get your own written opinion on the urgency rather than waiting on someone else’s schedule. And if the property should be licensed and isn’t, fix that first: it was the detail that turned a disrepair complaint into a five-figure order here.
New guidance finally treats damp as a building problem, not a tenant one
The Chartered Institute of Housing and the Chartered Institute of Building have jointly published “Tackling damp and mould: Professional practice, cultural change and regulation in social housing,” as Construction Management reports. It updates CIH’s 2022 guidance for Awaab’s Law and the Hazards in Social Housing (Prescribed Requirements) (England) Regulations 2025, and adds a new section specifically on the construction causes of damp and mould, aimed at building professionals rather than housing officers. CIH policy lead Eve Blezard said damp and mould “are often symptoms of wider problems,” while CIOB’s David Barnes stressed the need for “a strong focus on every individual property’s building pathology rather than rolling out one-size-fits-all measures.”
That framing — building pathology over generic remedial works — is the correct one, and it has taken a long time to become the official line. Ventilation upgrades, mastic and a mould wash bolted onto a property with a genuine fabric defect — a failed damp-proof course, a cold bridge, inadequate cavity insulation — treat the symptom and leave the cause to recur, usually within a heating season. Awaab’s Law puts a clock on response times; it does nothing to guarantee the diagnosis behind the response is right.
Landlords managing a recurring damp complaint should commission a proper condition survey that identifies the building cause before authorising remedial works, not after a second or third complaint. A ventilation fix that doesn’t address a fabric defect is money spent buying time rather than a resolution — and under Awaab’s Law timescales, you may not get a second chance to get the diagnosis right before enforcement follows.
Nationwide’s 1.6% growth is a market that isn’t going anywhere fast
Nationwide’s latest House Price Index, covering August 2026 and published 1 September, put annual UK house price growth at 1.6 per cent, up 0.2 per cent on the month — broadly the same reading as July. Nationwide’s chief economist Robert Gardner said underlying affordability is improving “as house price growth remains well below earnings growth,” while, as Today’s Conveyancer reports, RBC Capital Markets’ Anthony Coddling described the market as “plodding rather than powering ahead” and “stuck in a slow lane.”
Stock is reportedly running around 5 per cent higher year on year, which does more to explain flat pricing than any collapse in demand — buyers simply have more choice, and sellers are having to price to it. For a surveyor, that shows up as more instructions on properties that have sat on the market longer, and more buyers who have already looked at three or four alternatives before commissioning a survey and expect the valuation to be justified against what they’ve seen.
If you’re selling into this market, price against genuinely comparable recent completions, not last year’s asking prices — a flat national index masks real variation at the local level, and an overpriced instruction now sits rather than sells. If you’re buying, the improving affordability picture Gardner points to is real but slow-moving; don’t expect it to hand you a discount on its own.
HMO landlords are already spending like MEES 2030 is real
A Paragon Bank survey of HMO landlords found 28 per cent are planning upgrades exceeding £10,000 over the next 12 months, with a further 15 per cent budgeting £5,001 to £10,000, and 62 per cent having already completed improvements in the past six months, as Property118 reports. The work spans decorating and kitchen or bathroom upgrades through to fire alarms, fire doors and energy efficiency measures. Paragon’s managing director of mortgages, Louisa Sedgwick, said “what stands out is that landlords are continuing to invest as standards, costs and regulation evolve.”
HMOs sit at the sharp end of the compliance calendar: existing fire safety obligations under HMO licensing conditions, the same 2030 EPC C trajectory as any other rented property, and licensing regimes that can shift start dates with little notice on top. Landlords spending now, ahead of the 2030 deadline rather than in the final rush, are the ones who’ll keep the widest choice of contractors and the least pressure to accept the first quote going.
If you hold an HMO below EPC C, get a proper retrofit assessment now rather than waiting for the deadline to concentrate demand on installers and assessors alike. A fabric-first approach — insulation, ventilation, airtightness — costs less and performs better than a heat pump bolted onto a leaky building, and it’s the sequence PAS 2035 requires in any case.
What I’d actually do
- Serving a Section 13 rent increase? Build a genuine comparables file before you serve notice — the tribunal wants market evidence, not your cost pressures.
- Freeholder or agent flagged a structural risk? Get your own written opinion on urgency rather than waiting on their timetable — “wait and see” was the finding against Zahid.
- Recurring damp or mould complaint? Commission a condition survey to find the building cause before authorising remedial works, not after the second complaint.
- Selling in the current market? Price against genuinely comparable recent completions, not last year’s asking prices.
- HMO below EPC C? Get a retrofit assessment now, ahead of the 2030 deadline rush.
Today’s notes touch rent-tribunal evidence, structural disrepair and damp diagnosis — the practice covers full building surveys and PAS 2035 retrofit assessments across the South East, including condition surveys ahead of HMO licensing or MEES compliance work. Get in touch.
Small print. General commentary, not advice for your specific circumstances — regulations, schemes and deadlines change, and your property is not the average property. Sources linked were accurate when read on 3 September 2026.