If the New Year is meant to usher in fresh thinking and new horizons, many landlords will feel that 2026 has begun much as 2025 ended, with familiar arguments resurfacing and the same old battles being re-fought under new banners.
Just before the year closed, landlords reacted strongly to news that a new activist group was pledging an anti-landlord campaign in 2026. For many commenters, it wasn’t the appearance of another pressure group that jarred so much as the implication that landlords remain a legitimate target in the housing debate.
“Why are LLs an acceptable target?” asked Tricia Urquhart — a question that echoed repeatedly throughout the discussion.
Several landlords warned that campaigns framed as protecting tenants often ignore how the private rented sector actually functions. Sarah Fox-Moore offered a blunt assessment of where this usually leads – fewer landlords, reduced supply, higher rents and tighter selection criteria.
“Only one thing will be achieved,” she wrote, “and it won’t help tenants.”
Michele observed: “Remove the punishing and costly regulations that scare off investment, provide real incentives for people to buy and rent out properties, and the increased supply will create competition among landlords, which will naturally bring rents down. It’s economics 101.
“But instead, the narrative wrongly blames landlords for pushing rents up, when in fact it’s the shrinking pool of rental properties and increasing demand that’s driving prices through the roof. More properties and more landlords equals lower rents. It’s that simple.”
Others pointed to international experience. Stephen McG noted that countries such as New Zealand and Portugal have already been forced to reverse strict rental reforms after landlords exited in large numbers, triggering acute shortages. The warning, he suggested, was already there for anyone willing to look.
Andrew Townshend returned again and again to the same point, distilling the mood in a single line: “These wars never end well for tenants.”
Free advice for tenants, not landlords
A few days later, as the New Year properly got underway, landlords were told they had won backing for quicker and easier eviction court hearings. On the surface, it sounded like long-overdue progress. But optimism was short-lived once the detail emerged, particularly around new funding for early legal advice for tenants.
“No free advice for landlords then?” asked mark787184. “Fail to see how free eviction advice for tenants helps speed anything up.”
Sam Howard questioned whether fixing the courts was really the priority at all.
“It’s cheaper for them to fund tenants than deal with the courts,” he argued. “This way there will be fewer evictions — which is clearly their aim.”
There were more nuanced voices too. Jo Westlake suggested early advice could, in some cases, prevent eviction altogether by resolving benefit issues or helping tenants reset priorities. Section 21, she argued, had often acted as a warning shot rather than an eviction trigger, allowing tenancies to survive.
But for many, that good-faith reading collided with years of experience. Saul Smart summed up the deeper mistrust running through the sector: that interventions are designed less to make systems work than to delay outcomes, with landlords absorbing the cost.
Against that backdrop, a late-December opinion piece praising landlord resilience struck a markedly different tone. Writing ahead of 2026, Louisa Sedgwick of Paragon Bank argued that private landlords had shown remarkable adaptability in recent years and deserved clarity and support, not further chaos.
The response, however, was muted — just three comments — and revealing in their own way.
Richard LeFrak welcomed the recognition, saying the sector “deserves to be recognised as a crucial service”. Henry S was less convinced, noting he didn’t recall hearing such praise when landlords’ rights were under threat during the passage of the Renters’ Rights legislation.
Thedeadgoldfish was blunter still, questioning whether the praise had arrived a year too late.
Taken together, these conversations reveal something deeper than anger. They point to a group caught between a justice system that struggles to function and a public narrative that increasingly casts landlords as the problem.
For landlords, 2026 has begun with new campaigns, new promises and very familiar anxieties. A New Year, perhaps, but the same old enemy.
And as Andrew Townshend keeps reminding us, it is rarely landlords who pay the final price.
Happy New Year!
Until next time,
N
Nat Daniels is chief executive of Angels Media, publishers of Landlord Today and the other ‘Today’ property trade titles.
