Neil France, 68, has decided to sell his property portfolio in the near future, in order to boost his pension pot, saying new rules and regulations in the sector mean being a landlord is no longer as profitable as it once was.
He rents out five semi-detached houses in the Wirral and three Houses of Multiple Occupancies (HMOs) in Chelmsford, Essex, near where he lives. His portfolio is worth around £2.2m with mortgages around £800,000.
Mr France, a freelance training consultant, has a private pension which, initially, he thought would pay an equivalent of £16,000 a year. He checked on this in 2007 and was told the amount had been reduced down to £4,000 to 6,000 a year.
He said: “This was a trigger as thought I can’t exist on that, so I decided to invest in property.”
A couple of years later, in 2009, he saw a chance to help a relative and start investing. “My wife’s auntie in the Wirral had to go into a care home and her cousin was offered a small amount for the property. This builder was trying to steal it. We said we would buy it for the market rate, and we went from there.”
Over the next four years, Mr France bought a property every year, remortgaging his residential home to raise the funds to put down 25 per cent deposits. “They are all – bar one – rented out to families with children in local schools. This means there is stability for us and them.”
Mr France, who manages the properties himself, used a similar model with the properties in the south. “We had a good mortgage rate originally but, when we came off the low fixes, our profit went down. You only need the boiler to go down and that’s your profit wiped out.”
Having never raised the rents before, Mr France told the tenants that he’d absorb 50 per cent of this increase but would have to pass on the rest in rent rises.
“I’m starting [putting the rents up] £75 to £100 a month and will have to add to this in the next couple of years at least. I’ve let them know six months in advance, so they have time to find somewhere else to live but they are all staying and they all understand.”
Mr France says the mortgage rates are “a complication” but what’s really worrying him is the EPC changes that will require landlords to have a minimum rating of C rather than the current E.
“I’ve double-glazed the properties and insulated them as best I can, but they are all D. We’ve got until 2030 [the proposed date of the new standard], but people might have to move after that. If they move out before then, we will sell up. I want to be fair to the tenants and I don’t want people with kids in school moving.”
Mr France still works and continues to pay into a pension, but October’s Budget has again changed his plans.
“I heard on 30 October that you can’t put your pension into inheritance tax. What I had been doing was paying into a pension so I could pass it along to my [four grown-up] children.”
His plan now is to start selling off the properties in the north with a view to paying off the buy-to-let mortgages on the HMOs in the south.
He said if he sells one a year, to maximise tax, he would clear around £1m. A rapid sale would incur both significant capital gains tax and income tax.
“If we have no buy-to-let mortgages on them, we can gift them to our children. You have these plans and then it’s all blown apart. There are tax changes and the Renters’ Rights Bill. My problem with that is how are landlords going to get possession of their properties.”
In terms of his own future, Mr France says he’s actively looking into buying a property in South Africa and living there for six months of the year, as “the UK government is against entrepreneurism”.
“There’s a lot of noise made about a small minority. It used to be estate agents, then it was bankers and now it’s landlords. There are bad landlords that need to be hounded out [but] no one in their forties is coming into the market now. Why would you take the risk for such a small profit?”
Mr France isn’t alone in reducing the size of their property portfolio.
In February 2025, a survey of almost 1,000 landlords by SpareRoom found 67 per cent plan to leave the rental sector, reduce the size of their portfolios or move into short-term holiday lets. Their top three concerns were the Renters’ Rights Bill (88 per cent), the end of Section 21 (75 per cent) and reduced profitability (70 per cent).
As a result, a record number of landlords (88 per cent) have no confidence in today’s rental sector, compared to 81 per cent in July 2024.
Patricia Ogunfeibo, 61, became a landlord 39 years ago when she decided to get two lodgers to help pay for her law degree.
Yet nearly four decades on she has decided to sell up 50 per cent of her portfolio as a result of changes by the Government that she says will “strip landlords of their rights”.
Her first property was in Tottenham and cost £38,250 when she bought it in 1986.
She said: “I made the sitting room into a bedroom and had two lodgers. I wasn’t doing it professionally. I sold it a long time ago, but I saw it sold 10 years ago for over £300,000.”
In the 1990s, after getting financial advice from her employer, she decided to scale up and buy more properties. “I do feel slightly guilty that I’ve had it so good. For the people coming up, it is difficult. I’ve made mistakes along the way, but it hasn’t mattered as the properties have increased anyway.”
Ms Ogunfeibo has over ten properties in London, a mix of one- and two-beds, plus some HMOs. Some are in her own name, while others are held in limited companies. Originally she used managing agents but said they all let her down. “The tenants would complain to the agent and then the managing agent wouldn’t tell me.”
In 2015, when she was 52, Ms Ogunfeibo decided to give up practising as a solicitor and self-manage the properties herself. Then, when she turned 55 in 2018, she cashed in her Sipp pension and used the money to buy more property.
“I’m a control freak so I decided to put the money into property. I thought ‘I love what I’m doing’. I was repurposing decrepit buildings and turning them into lovely homes for tenants.”
But, seven years on, with the Renters’ Rights Bill on the horizon, this has all changed and she’s planning to sell up 50 per cent of her portfolio.
Under the bill, the Government is looking to ban no-fault evictions (Section 21 notices), limit rent increases and ban rental bidding wars.
Ms Ogunfeibo said: “No one would disagree that reform needs to take place, but, with the bill, the Government is stripping landlords of their property rights. Yields will fall and it’s now too risky for a pension.” Ms Ogunfeibo has even written a book, Be Prepared: Renters’ Rights & Residential Landlords, on the subject.
“I’m worried about the things Jeremy Corbyn has talked about, like tenants being able to buy the property they rent out. I also think Labour will bring in rent caps because the reduced supply [of rental properties] will mean rents increase.”
Ms Ogunfeibo’s plan is to keep the HMOs and rent her single lets exclusively to a company for their employees. If this company doesn’t need them, she’ll sell, but she’s not planning on putting the money raised back into a pension – instead, she’ll buy, do up and flip properties.
“I’m currently in the process of flipping two properties, which would have gone back into the rental market had it not been for the RRB [bill].”
Ms Ogunfeibo has also changed the way she’s managing the properties she’s keeping. “For the HMOs, I’ve got an inventory person going round every three months as I can’t afford for mould to build up. My tenants don’t want a landlord coming round all the time, but it’s required if I am to protect myself. I use a platform to manage any issues. You need an audit trail now.”
She thinks the future of renting is with big, corporate landlords.
“I had a tenant contact me on Christmas Day saying that the Wi-Fi wasn’t working and could I deal with it. I messaged back saying we had the same thing, and it was probably because everyone was at home streaming TV shows. A big, corporate landlord isn’t going to reply on Christmas Day to anything that’s not urgent.”
Ms Ogunfeibo has no regrets about getting into property – “even in my wildest dreams, I didn’t expect them to go up the amount they have, so I don’t mind paying the capital gains tax when I sell them” – but she’s on the fence about whether she should have used it for a pension.
“If I had the time again to think about it and do it, maybe I wouldn’t use property as a pension. I put all my eggs in one basket, but I get a buzz from property. I love taking something ugly and making it beautiful.”
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