England scrapped Section 21. Landlords now need a court, and selling up costs 12 months.
From 1 May 2026 the Renters' Rights Act 2026 ended no-fault eviction in England. Every assured tenancy is now periodic-only. To recover possession a landlord must prove a Section 8 ground (one of the legal reasons listed in the Act) in court. Selling up uses new Ground 1A with four months notice, a 12-month protected period at the start of every tenancy, and a 12-month no-relet rule after possession. Councils can fine up to £7,000 for a single procedural breach. Savills counted about 254,000 ex-rental properties listed for sale in the year leading into commencement, roughly 700 a day.
01The pain
Section 21 is gone. From 1 May 2026 the no-fault eviction route, the two-month notice that ended an English tenancy without giving a reason, was scrapped by the Renters' Rights Act 2026. Every assured tenancy in England is now periodic-only. To recover possession a landlord must prove a Section 8 ground (a legal reason listed in the Act) in court.1
Selling up uses new Ground 1A: four months notice, a 12-month protected period at the start of every tenancy in which the landlord cannot serve notice, and a 12-month no-relet ban afterwards.2 Councils can fine £7,000 for a single procedural breach, including failure to give new tenants the mandatory Information Sheet. Tenants can refer rent rises to the First-tier Tribunal, the housing tribunal that sets disputed rents.1,3
The arithmetic gets ugly for a House in Multiple Occupation (an HMO, a shared rental with several unrelated tenants). If one tenant moves in in January and the landlord later needs to sell, every other tenant is locked into the same 12-month wait. OpenRent's primer confirms this worked example, and seven small landlords clustered on the same Information Sheet question in three days around commencement.4
The cheapest exit is to sell. Savills counted around 254,000 ex-rentals listed in the year into commencement, about 700 a day.2 For landlords who stay, every notice names a ground and every breach is a £7,000 risk.
Further reading
- 1 GOV.UK — "The Renters' Rights Act: Information Sheet 2026" (official publication) — the statutory mandatory Information Sheet that landlords must give every tenant, defining Section 21 abolition, the new Section 8 grounds, the 12-month protected period and 12-month no-relet rule, the £7,000 council fine ceiling, and the First-tier Tribunal rent-challenge route: gov.uk/government/publications/the-renters-rights-act-information-sheet-2026
- 2 Lawyer Monthly — "UK Renters' Rights Act: Section 21 abolition and landlords selling" — May 2026 legal-press write-up covering Ground 1A mechanics, the four-month notice plus 12-month protected period plus 12-month no-relet stack, and the Savills 254,000 ex-rentals listed-for-sale count: lawyer-monthly.com/2026/05/uk-renters-rights-act-section-21-abolition-landlords-selling
- 3 National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) — "Section 21 abolition" resource page — England's largest landlord trade body briefing members on the new Section 8 grounds, evidence requirements and procedural compliance steps: nrla.org.uk/resources/renters-rights/section-21-abolition
- 4 OpenRent — "The Renters' Rights Act: a landlord's guide" (blog primer) — operator-facing walkthrough of Information Sheet requirements, the periodic-tenancy default, Ground 1A mechanics, the HMO 12-month-lock worked example, and the OpenRent community questions clustering at commencement: blog.openrent.co.uk/renters-rights-act
Operators discussing this
These are real English landlords talking about the Renters' Rights Act in their own words on the OpenRent community board. They are the reason this page exists.
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«I am a Rent Now Landlord and tenancies were renewed almost 2 months ago. As a landlord what documents do I need to send to the tenants regarding Renters' Rights Act, 2026? Is it enough to email the documents to the tenants?»
(English original — no translation needed.)
Renters' Rights Act, 2026 — What documents should Landlord sent to Tenants? · OpenRent Community (Discourse) — 7 distinct landlords (george123, Karl11, Mahesh1, David240, Veronique, Mike12, plus the original poster Mahesh1) posting 29 April to 1 May 2026 on the same procedural question: what the new mandatory Information Sheet requires of small landlords, and whether email service is enough.
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«I have an HMO. Assume I have 4 long-term tenants, and one leaves and a new tenant starts in January. Shortly afterwards, I find that I need to sell the property for whatever reason. I'd need to wait until January the following year before giving notice to any of the tenants … if any of them were to serve me 2 months' notice as they wanted to leave for their own reasons – a common occurrence with HMOs - then I'd have to continue paying the mortgage for the remainder of the year with a reduced rental income not covering it.»
(English original — no translation needed.)
Guide to the Renters' Rights Act for Landlords 2025 · OpenRent Community (Discourse) — 8+ distinct posters (David122, Sophie43, Colin3, Sue27, mandy0204, Karl11, Chris35, philsnoop, Radina) over 18 July 2024 → 2025 → into 2026 commencement — multi-year operator arc on the same Bill that became the Act on 27 October 2025.
02Who solves this today
UK vendors whose own homepage names UK landlords, letting agents or the Renters' Rights Act on landlord-compliance, lettings-management or repairs-and-compliance surfaces. Each entry verified live on the date of writing. Inclusion is not endorsement.
Listed providers publicly market to UK landlords or letting agents on lettings compliance, repairs-and-compliance or property-management surfaces from their own homepages. Inclusion is not endorsement. Honest gap notes: the category of dedicated Section 8 ground-picker / Information Sheet generator / PRS Database filer is still thin one week into commencement; most established platforms address Renters' Rights Act compliance through hubs and content rather than a packaged compliance workflow. Hammock was excluded because its homepage frames the product around Making Tax Digital rather than Renters' Rights compliance; it is covered on the sister UK MTD ITSA page. Reapit and other letting-agent CRM incumbents were not listed because their UK front-page copy did not foreground Renters' Rights compliance at the time of writing. Re-Leased and other commercial-property platforms were excluded because their primary surface is commercial, not residential English lettings.
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