Walk past the lettings boards on Abbeville Road this week and nothing looks any different. But something big has just shifted under all of them. As of the 31st of July, Section 21 - the "no-fault" eviction that has underpinned the private rented sector for the best part of forty years - is history. Every assured tenancy in England is now periodic, rolling month to month, and no landlord can any longer ask a tenant to leave simply because the fixed term has run out.
If you rent in Clapham, Balham or Brixton, that is genuinely good news: your home is no longer on a two-month countdown. If you are one of the many local landlords I speak to, it is the biggest change to how you operate since the tenant fee ban. So let me cut through the noise.
The headline is simple. Fixed terms and no-fault notices are gone. To regain possession now, a landlord has to use one of the specific grounds under the new Schedule 2 - selling the property, moving back in, serious rent arrears, or a breach of the tenancy - and evidence it. Tessa Shepperson's Landlord Law bulletin has been walking through these grounds in detail, and the short version is this: possession is still possible, but it is now a reasoned process, not a rubber stamp.
Here is the bit the national headlines miss. The worry isn't the rule itself - most good landlords in SW London were never chasing people out for no reason. The worry is what it does to supply. Propertymark reported this week that there are now roughly eight renters chasing every available property. Eight. At the same time, Property118 is reporting landlords selling up in numbers, driven by Capital Gains Tax changes, with company incorporations up an eye-watering 1,700% as the ones who stay restructure. Nationwide has rents rising 3.3% over the year even as house-price growth cools to 1.8%.
Join those dots and you get the real South London story. If more landlords take the end of Section 21 as their cue to sell into a flat sales market, the pool of rental flats around the Common shrinks further - and with eight tenants per property already, it is the renter, not the landlord, who feels that most sharply. Fewer homes, more competition, higher rents. That is the opposite of what the reform set out to achieve.
My honest take? This is a good reform wrapped around a supply problem nobody has fixed. Landlords: don't panic-sell. A well-run, well-priced Clapham flat with a good long-term tenant is still one of the most resilient assets you can hold, and the new rules reward exactly that kind of landlord. Renters: the security is real, but the market is tighter than ever, so when the right place comes up, be ready to move quickly and present yourself well.
Are you a South London landlord weighing up whether to stay in or sell, or a tenant trying to make sense of your rights under the new rules? I'd genuinely love to hear where you've landed on it - drop me a line at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call me on 07837 093554.
