Three stories today share a single mechanism: when the cost of compliance rises faster than the value it unlocks, people don’t comply harder — they leave, or they do the least the law allows. Landlords are quitting the private rented sector at the fastest rate in a decade. Where they stay, energy-efficiency upgrades stop the moment the certificate is valid. And in six days, developers face a new per-square-metre tax on every home they build.
562 landlords a day are selling up, not upgrading
Data from property consultancy TwentyCi, reported by Letting Agent Today on 22 September, shows 562 rental properties a day left the private rented sector in the third quarter of 2026 — the highest daily rate since 2016, up from 495 a day at the same point last year and just 167 a day at the start of the decade. That is roughly 44,000 properties sold out of the sector since the start of July alone. TwentyCi’s chief executive Colin Bradshaw put it bluntly: landlords “continue to abandon the buy-to-let market in droves because regulatory and economic pressures mean business is no longer viable.” Overall rental stock is still edging up — 1.3 per cent higher year on year — but only because build-to-rent supply and re-listed properties (a side effect of the Renters’ Rights Act ending fixed terms) are outpacing the exodus of individual landlords.
The headline stock figure is doing a lot of work to disguise what is actually happening underneath it. Build-to-rent product is concentrated in city-centre blocks; the individual landlord leaving is disproportionately the owner of an ordinary terraced or semi in a town like mine, which is exactly the stock first-time buyers are competing for and tenants in smaller towns depend on. A rising national total says nothing about what is happening to supply in Hartfield, Uckfield or anywhere else outside a build-to-rent catchment.
Landlords weighing an exit should get a proper valuation and condition survey now, before autumn listings peak and before the next round of Renters’ Rights Act obligations lands. Tenants in smaller towns and villages should expect competition for decent rentals to keep tightening, whatever the national stock figures suggest.
MEES compliance stops exactly at the minimum
Analysis from ratings agency Morningstar DBRS, covered by Mortgage Solutions on 24 September, found landlords have “largely complied” with the current E-rating minimum — the share of rental properties rated F or G fell from 13.8 per cent to just 1.9 per cent — but the improvements cluster right at the pass mark. Of properties that moved out of F or G, 51.8 per cent stopped at band E, the bare legal minimum, against 28.2 per cent of owner-occupied homes that improved to the same modest level. Scoring data shows the pile-up is literal: properties bunch just inside band E’s lower threshold rather than spreading further up the scale, which is exactly what you’d expect when the incentive is a compliance deadline rather than a genuinely warmer home.
This is the predictable result of regulating to a fixed threshold without funding the difference. A landlord facing a legal minimum and a limited budget will spend precisely enough to clear it and not a penny more — that is rational behaviour, not bad faith. But it means the government’s own trajectory to EPC C by 2030 is starting from a stock that has already been patched to the previous target, not upgraded toward the next one. Every E-rated property clustered at the bottom of the band is a property whose landlord will face the C-band gap in full when the next deadline bites.
Landlords who did the minimum for the E standard should treat that work as a down payment, not a finish line, and get a retrofit assessment now that models the full route to C rather than the next incremental fix. Buyers of any recently “improved” rental property should ask exactly where in the band the EPC score actually sits, not just what letter is on the certificate.
The Building Safety Levy lands on developers in six days
From 1 October, every building control application for 10 or more dwellings (or 30 or more purpose-built student bedspaces) in England becomes liable for the new Building Safety Levy, as Propertymark and Shoosmiths’ briefing set out. The levy is charged per square metre of chargeable residential floorspace at a rate set for each local authority, based on local house prices, and halved for previously developed land — from £12.70/m² in County Durham up to £100.35/m² in Kensington and Chelsea. Developers pay; local authorities and Registered Building Control Approvers collect, and can withhold the completion certificate if the levy goes unpaid. Sites of fewer than 10 dwellings, social housing, and buildings such as hospitals, care homes and schools are exempt. Applications submitted before 1 October escape the charge entirely, which is why the Home Builders Federation has warned of a rush to get schemes in before the deadline, and why it estimates an average added cost of around £3,000 per plot once the levy is live.
The exemption threshold is the detail that matters most on my patch. A ten-unit cut-off means most of the small infill and barn-conversion schemes I see in the Sussex Weald sit outside the levy entirely, while it lands hardest on the larger estate-scale developments nearer the coast and around the growth corridors. Anyone assuming “it’s a London tax” because the headline rates come from Kensington and Chelsea is misreading a levy that applies, at a lower rate, everywhere in England from next Thursday.
Developers with live 10-plus-unit schemes should confirm with their local authority now whether a building control application can genuinely land before 1 October, because a stalled submission this week could cost tens of thousands of pounds it does not currently have budgeted. Anyone advising on land for a scheme just above the ten-dwelling threshold should model the levy cost into viability before exchange, not after.
What I’d actually do
- Thinking about selling a rental property this autumn? Get a valuation and condition survey done now, ahead of the seasonal listing peak and the next round of Renters’ Rights Act obligations.
- Landlord who upgraded to band E to comply with MEES? Get a retrofit assessment that models the full route to band C, not just the next small fix — the 2030 deadline will not care that you already hit the old target.
- Buying a rental property marketed as “recently improved”? Ask for the actual EPC score, not just the letter, to see how close to the bottom of the band it really sits.
- Developer with a 10-plus-unit scheme in the pipeline? Confirm with building control this week whether a pre-1-October submission is realistic, and model the levy into viability if it is not.
- Advising on land near the ten-dwelling threshold? Price the levy into the deal before exchange, not after completion.
Whether it’s a retrofit route to a genuine EPC C or a Building Safety Levy assessment ahead of a development scheme, the practice carries out independent Retrofit assessments and Building Surveys across the South East. 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 25 September 2026.