Is Renting Broken? The limitations holding the lettings sector back, and what needs to change for it to break free from those limits

In his opening remarks at the Goodlord Leaders Forum 2026, Goodlord CEO William Reeve asked the audience a simple question: “Is renting broken?”

It wasn’t simply a rhetorical question. In our latest report, “Is Renting Broken?”, 2,650 letting agents, tenants, and landlords from across the Private Rented Sector (PRS) shared the challenges they’re facing and the opportunities they can see to improve the industry. With their input, we found that there are four structural limits holding back the PRS, and that is having a significant impact on agents, landlords and tenants alike.

With the implementation day of the Renters’ Rights Act (RRA) only weeks away, understanding these limits has never been more urgent. The industry has been braced for the RRA for what seems like forever, but it shouldn’t lull itself into a false sense of security. In the new legislative landscape, agencies must shift to ensure growth. The most striking finding from our research is the disconnect running through the entire sector.

The PRS finds itself in a difficult position where all agents, landlords, and tenants operate within the same market, but don’t experience it the same way. Agents perceive themselves as more prepared and better communicators than their landlords and tenants experience them to be. Landlords are retreating from the market at the very moment they need agents the most. And tenants are systematically underserved, under-informed, and increasingly distrustful of a system that feels opaque. Until this changes, the sector will remain fragmented.

With expert input from the speakers at the Goodlord Leaders Forum and the findings from our new report, we are going to take a deep dive into the data to explain exactly where those fault lines are and what the industry can do to fix them. The four key challenges we uncovered are:

• The Admin Avalanche
• The Value Void
• The Regulatory Reset
• The Tech Trap
• Conclusion: What we can do

WANT TO FIND OUT MORE? READ ON OR DOWNLOAD OUR FULL REPORT NOW.

The Admin Avalanche

Our research clearly shows a growing pressure point at the heart of the lettings industry. It’s not demand, regulation, or even competition. It’s admin.

When we look at the numbers, we can clearly see that admin is the dominant constraint on agencies' ability to grow and improve productivity. 76% of agents say administrative workload is limiting their day-to-day effectiveness, with 20% identifying it as their single biggest operational bottleneck.

By breaking the data down further, we can see how admin is slowing agents to what feels like a crawl. Managing maintenance (16%) and compliance (11%) are the biggest time drains. The trouble is that these tasks aren’t optional. In a post-RRA world, maintenance and compliance are two parts of the service that agents will offer. They’re also highly manual, process-heavy, and difficult to scale.

When 20% of agents say admin is their biggest operational headache, it suggests something deeper than a stacked in-tray. It suggests an outdated, layered system that adds to workloads rather than relieving agents. In a later section of the report, our data found that just over a quarter of agents believed that the technology they used added complexity to their processes.

As Donna Ingram, Head of Lettings Operations at Campions, pointed out during the ‘Navigating the Renters’ Rights Act’ panel discussion at Goodlord Leaders Forum, even well-equipped teams are feeling the strain. The sheer volume of admin is debilitating to teams across the PRS. There are simply more processes, more compliance requirements, and more moving parts than ever before. As she put it, “there’s just more things that we need to do.”

The Value Void

A clear majority (68%) of surveyed landlords use agencies for full property management services. Yet, when we dig a little deeper into the data, we can see that this traditional agent-landlord relationship isn’t as healthy as it might look.

59% of landlords cite high fees and poor value as their biggest frustration, and just 6% are very satisfied with value for money. This is a clear warning sign that there is a Value Void in the PRS: Landlords feel they’re not getting value from their agents’ services, which means many professional relationships are hanging in the balance.

Goodlord’s own Oli Sherlock captured this tension clearly in his panel on navigating the Renters’ Rights Act. Agents, he argued, are preparing to price from a position of assumed value, confident in the work they’re doing and the complexity they’re managing. But landlords are approaching that same conversation from a very different place: one of eroded trust, where the value of that work isn’t always visible or understood.

This gap is about more than price. Tenant referencing ranks as landlords' number one priority when selecting an agent, yet it's also one of their most common frustrations with what agents actually deliver. Communication tells the same story: agents may well be performing, but the value of that performance isn't landing. And value that isn't visible isn't value landlords will pay more for.

The disconnect runs through to tenants too, with 37% reporting high frustration with communication and only 18% feeling fully confident in their rights, a problem that compounds every other frustration in the system.

This is where the RRA turns a simmering issue into a pressing one. Many agents plan to recoup compliance costs through higher fees. But as Orla Shields of Kamma argued at the Leaders Forum, the conversation agents need to have first is about demonstrating value, not increasing price. With only 6% of landlords very satisfied with value for money, a fee rise without that groundwork risks being the final push for some landlords to self-manage, switch, or exit altogether.

WANT TO READ THE FULL REPORT? DOWNLOAD IT HERE.

The Regulatory Reset

The Renters' Rights Act is not just another regulatory change. It marks the biggest reset the Private Rented Sector has seen in a generation, and the data shows the market is feeling it. 82% of landlords are concerned about its impact, 49% are planning to sell or reduce their portfolios within 12 months, and only 2% plan to grow.

At the Goodlord Leaders Forum, NRLA's Chris Norris didn't sugarcoat what's coming: "There will be chaos over the next year." The abolition of Section 21 was one of the most debated topics on the day, with the panel broadly agreeing that what matters now is understanding the new grounds for possession and being able to evidence them properly when needed.

That operational readiness is exactly where our research finds the biggest gap. While 89% of agents say they feel ready for the Act, only 61% feel confident handling eviction processes. 13% have no confidence in this area at all. Perceived readiness and actual capability are not the same thing, and the difference is about to be tested in practice.

Tenants are similarly underprepared. Only 18% feel fully confident in their rights, and 38% say better information would significantly improve their experience. Rights that exist on paper but aren't understood don't improve outcomes for anyone.

As Nye Jones of Generation Rent put it, what good agents can do right now is provide clear guidance on the new rights and how tenants can enforce them. Rights that aren't understood aren't rights in practice.

The Tech Trap

In the report, the data revealed that the PRS has a complicated relationship with integrating new technologies into agency processes. Only 46% of agents say their current IT systems reduce their workload, while 27% say technology actively adds complexity. More than half are not seeing clear value from the systems they're already paying for.

The investment priorities make this worse. 63% of agents rate compliance as limiting, yet only 14% plan to invest in streamlining it. 47% say managing tenants is limiting their business, yet only 5% prioritise better tools to do it. Agents know where the pressure is. The investment just isn't following it.

At the Leaders Forum, Tyler Christiansen of Funnel offered a glimpse of what more committed AI adoption looks like, while Alex Depledge of Resi urged caution about moving fast without a clear strategy. The consensus across the day was neatly summarised by David Cox: "Agents are people-people. Let's focus on that, and leave the systems to do the paperwork."

Tenants broadly agree that technology isn't the destination but rather a means to an end. Their priorities remain practical: faster repairs, fair deposit handling, and a clearer understanding of their rights. The agencies that escape the Tech Trap won't be those who adopt AI for its own sake, but those who target it precisely at the operational pressure points that are holding their business back.

Conclusion: What we can do

So, is renting broken? In some important respects, yes. Agents are working harder than ever but constrained by operational pressure. Landlords are relying more heavily on agents while questioning the value they receive. Tenants are navigating a system that feels slow, unclear and increasingly difficult to trust.

What makes this moment different is that these aren't separate problems with separate solutions. They are symptoms of the same underlying misalignment, a sector where effort is increasing, but outcomes and satisfaction are not improving in step. The Admin Avalanche consumes capacity at the point where service should be delivered. The Value Void weakens confidence between agents, landlords and tenants. The Regulatory Reset raises the stakes and exposes existing gaps. And the Tech Trap prevents the tools designed to solve these issues from actually doing so.

The good news is that none of these limits is a fixed feature of the market. They can be removed.

Broadcaster Amol Rajan, who closed the day's main sessions with a keynote on limitless leadership, framed the challenge in terms that felt particularly apt for a sector navigating this much change. Great leaders, he argued, have to think like player Wayne Gretzky: skating to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. Alex Chesterman OBE, founder of Zoopla and Cazoo, reinforced the point: leadership is a series of decisions, and the worst decision you can make is no decision at all.

The report identifies four actions that would meaningfully move things forward:

• Reducing operational friction, because the sector is short of capacity, not demand.
• Making value more visible, because landlords and tenants are making decisions based on what they experience rather than what's happening behind the scenes.
• Investing where the pressure is, targeting technology at admin, compliance and tenant management.
• Turning regulation into a core capability, so compliance becomes a proof point of value rather than a cost to be passed on.

The agencies that will thrive won’t be the ones that simply keep pace with change. They’ll be the ones who, as William Reeve put it at the Leaders Forum, remove the limits altogether. “The diagnosis is done. What comes next is a choice.”

If you’d like to read a full rundown of the Goodlord Leaders Forum, you can check out our LIVE blog here. The Goodlord “Is Renting Broken?” report is  available for download here.