‘I want to get out’: two landlords on the ‘broken’ property rental market

From high rents to repossessions and public opprobrium, it’s not just tenants who say the system isn’t working

“It is not a housing market that is working or fair,” says Sajjad Ahmad, who has been in the world of private renting for more than 40 years. “Rents are far, far too high.” But Ahmad is not one of the 11 million private tenants in England and Wales. Instead, he is among a growing number of landlords who now agree with many of their tenants that the system is broken.

He had 30 flats and houses across England – in Grimsby, Kirkby and Crawley – until he sold 16 last year. “I want to get out of the sector,” he says. And he’s not alone. Hamptons recently said that by the end of the year landlords will have sold 294,300 more homes than they have bought since 2016 – equivalent to more than the total number of households in Manchester.