Four stories today, and they sort into the same two piles: landlords who did the legal minimum and stopped, and landlords who have decided the minimum isn’t worth it any more. A new compliance study shows most rentals crept up to band E and no further. Separate data says over five hundred rental homes a day are now leaving the sector. And two licensing stories from opposite ends of the country show what a scheme looks like when it survives scrutiny — and what happens when it doesn’t.
Landlords stopped at the minimum grade, and the data proves it
A Morningstar DBRS analysis reported by Mortgage Solutions on 24 September found that F- and G-rated rentals have fallen from 13.8 per cent to just 1.9 per cent of stock — on the surface, strong compliance with the current MEES minimum. Look at where the improved properties actually landed and the picture changes: 51.8 per cent of rentals that improved went only as far as band E, the current legal floor, and just 31.3 per cent reached band D. Owner-occupied homes improved much further over the same period — most moved to band D or above, and F/G stock fell to 14 per cent with the majority of upgraders clearing band D comfortably.
That gap between landlord and owner-occupier behaviour is exactly what I see on inspections. A loft top-up and a cheap cylinder jacket will take a rental from F to E for a few hundred pounds and satisfy the letter of the current rule. Getting to band C — the 2030 target — usually means fabric work: solid wall or underfloor insulation, ventilation upgrades to handle a tighter building, sometimes glazing. Landlords who stopped at E have done the cheap 20 per cent of the job. They are precisely the group who will face the largest, most disruptive bill when 2030 arrives, because there is no cheap intermediate step left between where they are and where the law will require them to be.
If your rental sits at band E and you have treated that as job done, it isn’t. Book a proper retrofit assessment this year while there is still time to plan the fabric work in stages, rather than facing a single large contract in 2029.
Five hundred rental homes are leaving the market every single day
Property Industry Eye reported on 29 September that TwentyEA data puts the current rate of rental exits at 505 properties a day in 2026 — more than three times the 2020 rate. Since 2020, 834,800 properties have left the private rented sector, taking 18.6 per cent of national rental stock with them (14.2 per cent in London alone). A separate Allsop survey cited in the same piece found 42 per cent of landlords unlikely or very unlikely to keep letting, rising to 52 per cent among single-property landlords, with 30 per cent intending to sell their entire portfolio.
Read this next to the compliance story above and the shape of the problem is obvious. A landlord who only reached band E is now also facing the phased tax changes coming in April 2027, the end of Section 21, and a 2030 EPC deadline they haven’t started planning for. None of those pressures is individually fatal. Landing together, on a landlord who never had much margin — typically the single-property, accidental landlord the Allsop figures single out — they add up to a rational decision to sell rather than reinvest.
If you’re a landlord weighing up selling against reinvesting, get an honest condition survey and a retrofit cost estimate done before you decide, not after you list. The 2030 bill is a real number that a buyer’s surveyor will uncover anyway, and knowing it up front changes whether selling now or upgrading now is actually the better move. If you’re buying ex-rental stock coming onto the market as a result of this exodus, don’t take the seller’s EPC as the whole story on fabric condition — commission your own survey.
Medway prices a licence at £1,600 — and hints at where enforcement is heading
LandlordZone reported on 28 September that Medway Council’s new schemes, live from 4 January 2027, will charge £840 for selective licensing across seven wards and £1,600 for additional (HMO) licensing across six. The council estimates 1,018 HMOs across the borough, with 232 — 23 per cent — predicted to have serious hazards, more than double the 10 per cent national average it cites. The council’s own view is that the fee isn’t unaffordable against average local rent of £1,238 a month, and consultation support ran at 50 per cent for selective licensing and 56 per cent for additional licensing.
That 23 per cent hazard figure is doing a lot of work in this story, and it’s worth being precise about what it actually is: a council-modelled prediction used to justify the scheme in consultation, not a result of inspected properties. A chartered surveyor would caveat that figure hard before treating it as settled fact, even though it’s the number that got both schemes approved. Landlords in Kent and East Sussex should treat Medway less as an isolated local story and more as a template — boroughs without a scheme yet, including parts of Dom’s own patch in Wealden and Rother, are exactly the kind of areas that follow once a neighbouring authority demonstrates a scheme will survive consultation and pay for itself.
Any HMO landlord operating in or near an area likely to introduce licensing should get ahead of it: commission a condition survey now and fix what it finds before a council inspector does it for you under licence conditions, which is a far more expensive way to find the same defects.
When a council’s licence conditions don’t survive a challenge
Also via LandlordZone, published 25 September, Great Yarmouth Council has dropped almost all of its non-mandatory selective licensing conditions — inspection requirements, EPC specifications, occupancy caps, waste rules — after the Eastern Landlord Association pointed to an Upper Tribunal ruling against Portsmouth City Council. That ruling established that blanket licence conditions, applied identically to every property regardless of its actual condition, need property-specific justification to be enforceable. ELA vice chair James Crickmore said the outcome is that Great Yarmouth’s “revised licence conditions now consist almost entirely of the mandatory requirements set out in Schedule 4.” A council spokesperson was careful to note the ruling “has no effect on the council’s powers to inspect licensed properties and to assess them for hazards.”
Put this next to Medway above and the contrast is instructive. Medway built its scheme on a specific, documented hazard estimate before consultation. Great Yarmouth’s blanket conditions, by implication, weren’t tied closely enough to individual property risk to survive a challenge once one was made. The lesson for any landlord served with a licence condition isn’t that licensing itself is toothless — the council can still inspect and act on hazards it finds — it’s that a generic condition bolted onto every licence in a scheme, with no link to your specific property, may not be enforceable at all.
If you’ve been served licence conditions that read as boilerplate rather than something tied to your property’s own survey or inspection findings, don’t simply comply and pay without question — the Portsmouth precedent is worth raising with your council or a solicitor before you do.
What I’d actually do
- Rental sitting at EPC band E? Treat that as a staging post, not a destination — commission a fabric-first retrofit assessment this year, before the 2030 rush pushes prices and installer availability the wrong way.
- Weighing up selling a rental versus reinvesting? Get a condition survey and retrofit cost estimate done before you decide, not after listing.
- HMO landlord in or near Kent/East Sussex? Assume licensing is coming if it hasn’t already — get your own condition survey done ahead of any council inspection.
- Served licence conditions that look generic rather than property-specific? Check them against the Portsmouth Upper Tribunal precedent before paying or complying automatically.
- Buying ex-rental stock coming onto the market? Don’t rely on the outgoing landlord’s EPC alone for fabric condition — commission your own survey.
Whether it’s a retrofit assessment to move a rental past band E, an EPC ahead of a sale, or a Building Survey before you commit to buying, the practice covers the South East end to end. Retrofit assessments, EPCs and Building Surveys — or get in touch to talk through your situation.
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 29 September 2026.