Four stories today, and three of them are really the same story told from different desks: nobody in this market is waiting for reform to land before they change how they work. A software firm and a conveyancer have both started selling the survey before the offer rather than after it. Landlords are heading for the exit at the fastest rate in a decade, but the sector isn’t shrinking — it’s consolidating into fewer, bigger hands. A guarantor firm is booming precisely because the Act closed off the old workaround and opened a new one. And MHCLG’s quiet September progress report on Grenfell is a useful corrective to anyone who assumes that story is finished.
Two firms just moved the survey ahead of the offer — reform or no reform
Landmark Information Group has launched what it calls Sales Pack Ready Surveys: RICS-standard property assessments carried out at the point a seller instructs an agent, flagging visible defects and maintenance issues for the eventual conveyancing pack, as Today’s Conveyancer reports. On the same day, Eden Conveyancing introduced Sale Ready, letting sellers instruct legal preparation before an offer exists, backed by free reports to estate agents flagging issues buyers are likely to raise. Landmark’s Nick Dyoss put the logic plainly: “The property industry can’t afford to wait for reform to take effect before it starts changing how transactions work.” Eden’s Katrina Lamont made the same point from the legal side, noting the traditional process “is designed around waiting.”
This is, essentially, an industry backing into the position I’ve argued for a while: commission the survey when you instruct the agent, not after a buyer’s own report knocks the offer down. Government’s Home Buying and Selling Reform consultation response pointed the same direction back in June, and these two launches are the market moving before the legislation forces it to. My one flag is independence. A survey or legal pack commissioned by the seller’s agent, however RICS-standard the methodology, is still working for the seller’s side of the table. Useful for cutting fall-throughs; not a substitute for a buyer’s own survey.
Sellers instructing an agent this autumn should ask whether a pre-marketing condition survey is available and get one done rather than waiting for a buyer to commission theirs first — it is cheaper to fix a damp patch before it’s in someone else’s report. Buyers should welcome a seller-side pack as a head start, not a substitute, and still commission their own independent survey before exchange.
Landlords are leaving at the fastest rate since 2016 — the sector isn’t shrinking, it’s consolidating
TwentyCi data reported by LandlordZone puts the rate of rental properties leaving the market at 562 a day in the third quarter of 2026, against 495 a year ago and just 167 a decade back — roughly 44,000 rental homes sold since July alone. The twist is that overall rental stock is still rising, up 13.6 per cent (118,100 properties) year-to-date, the highest increase in seven years, driven chiefly by build-to-rent completions. Paragon’s analysis, cited in the same piece, shows landlords with five or more properties are 17 per cent of the landlord population but hold 49 per cent of all tenancies, and active buy-to-let limited companies have grown from 91,278 in 2016 to 443,272 by the end of 2025, with 66,587 new incorporations last year alone.
Read past the “landlords fleeing” headline and this is a structural shift, not a shortage. Individual, unincorporated landlords with one or two properties are the ones selling; build-to-rent operators and incorporated portfolio landlords are the ones replacing the stock, often at greater scale. For tenants that probably means more standardised, professionally-managed lettings and less of the flexibility a single-property landlord sometimes offers. For my own pipeline it means the “buy to let survey” instruction increasingly comes from a portfolio landlord or limited company refinancing a block, not a first-time landlord buying one flat.
Landlords weighing whether to sell or incorporate should get a proper condition survey either way — a sale needs one for marketing and buyer negotiation, and moving a property into a limited company structure typically triggers a fresh valuation for the refinance. Don’t assume the mortgage lender’s valuation is a substitute for your own independent report on condition.
No more than one month’s rent upfront, so meet the guarantor
The Renters’ Rights Act’s ban on landlords taking more than one month’s rent in advance has driven a “phenomenal” surge in demand for professional rent guarantors, Landlord Today reports, with guarantor firm Housing Hand recording a 50 per cent rise in applications in the Act’s first three months. Housing Hand’s Graham Hayward called the growth “phenomenal,” adding that landlords working proactively with guarantor services “have largely taken the changes in their stride.” Notably, actual payout claims haven’t moved — Housing Hand’s payouts have averaged around £1.5 million a year for five years, unchanged since May.
This is the system working as intended rather than a loophole. The Act restricts what a landlord can take directly from a tenant in cash; it doesn’t restrict a landlord asking a third party to underwrite the risk instead, and guarantor firms are increasingly bundling in the sanctions and Know Your Customer checks that landlords now have to do anyway. Stable claims data alongside a surge in applications suggests landlords are using this sensibly rather than as cover for turning away tenants who can’t provide one.
Landlords nervous about affordability risk post-Act should look at a professional guarantor scheme rather than informal workarounds that risk falling foul of the advance-rent cap. Tenants without a natural guarantor should budget for the guarantor fee as a real cost of renting now, and check the fee doesn’t itself breach the one-month cap in substance.
Grenfell, nine years on: what MHCLG’s September progress report actually says
MHCLG’s September progress report, published on 10 September, tracks all 61 Grenfell Inquiry Phase 2 recommendations: 30 complete, 31 still in progress, with full implementation not expected until the end of 2029. Of the 4,697 residential buildings over 11 metres being monitored for unsafe cladding, remediation has started on 54 per cent but is only complete on 39 per cent. The Building Safety Regulator finished its transition to a fully independent arm’s-length body in June, and a companion section on the construction industry confirms the consultation on mandatory accreditation for fire risk assessors closed in June, with a government response due in the final quarter of this year.
It’s nearly two weeks old and I’m still flagging it because it rarely gets covered outside trade press, and the headline number deserves wider circulation: under 40 per cent of monitored buildings over 11 metres are fully remediated, nine years after the fire. For a domestic surveyor the 18-metre-plus tower block cases matter less day to day than the accreditation pipeline building underneath them — mandatory fire risk assessor accreditation, once it lands, will filter through the wider competence framework surveyors and assessors already operate inside.
Anyone with a leasehold interest or managing a block above 11 metres should ask the managing agent directly for the building’s current position in the remediation programme rather than assuming “it’s being dealt with” — on these figures, more than four in ten monitored buildings haven’t even started.
What I’d actually do
- Selling this autumn? Ask your agent about a pre-marketing condition survey rather than waiting for a buyer’s report to surface problems first.
- Buying? Treat any seller-side survey or legal pack as a head start, not a substitute — still commission your own independent survey.
- Selling or incorporating a rental property? Get an independent condition survey either way; don’t rely on a lender’s valuation as a proxy.
- Letting without a natural guarantor available? Budget for a professional guarantor scheme now rather than improvising around the advance-rent cap.
- Living in or managing a block over 11 metres? Ask the managing agent for the building’s actual place in the remediation programme, in writing.
Whether it’s a seller-side survey landing before an offer or a buyer insisting on their own, the practice carries out independent Building Surveys and EPCs across the South East for exactly this stage of a transaction. 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 22 September 2026.