There is now a law that makes selling your portfolio one property at a time the most expensive route out. It came into force in May, and most landlords still have not done the arithmetic on it.

What changed

The Renters’ Rights Act came into force on 1 May 2026. Section 21 has been abolished. There is no longer a no-fault route to vacant possession in England, and existing tenancies converted automatically to the new periodic structure on that date.

If you want to sell with the property empty, you now need a specific statutory ground. The one covering a genuine intention to sell is Ground 1A.

Why your agent’s plan is a house plan

An agent will generally propose the plan he proposes to everybody. One property at a time, vacant, to the highest bidder.

That is not dishonesty. It is residential logic applied to something that is not a residential asset. Selling a house that way is correct. Selling eleven of them that way, under the current rules, is a very different exercise — and nobody in that conversation is usually doing the calculation, because the rules that make it expensive are only a few months old.

How Ground 1A actually works

Ground 1A does not merely cost you the notice period. It costs you the year that follows it.

The notice period is four months. The notice cannot expire within the first twelve months of the tenancy, so a recently started tenancy pushes the earliest possession date out further still.

The restriction is longer than most sellers assume. The re-letting ban runs from the expiry of the notice, not from the day it is served — so from the moment notice goes in, the property is out of the rental market for around sixteen months at a minimum, and longer if possession is contested. Re-letting or even re-marketing to let inside that window is an offence, with civil penalties that run into tens of thousands of pounds.

Then comes the part that catches people. From the date the notice is served, the landlord cannot market the property for letting and cannot let it to anybody, until twelve months after the relevant date in the notice. Including the four-month notice period, that is in the region of sixteen months during which the property cannot lawfully earn rent from a tenant — longer if a claim is issued later or the matter is contested.

Three details matter enormously and are routinely missed:

The restriction bites from the moment the notice is served, not from when possession is obtained.

It applies whether or not the sale ever completes. If your buyer withdraws, you are still locked out.

Marketing the property for letting during the restricted period is an offence. Local authorities can impose civil penalties running into tens of thousands of pounds, and a tenant or local authority can apply for a rent repayment order on top.

A machine for producing empty properties

Now repeat that across a portfolio.

Every unit you empty is a unit producing no rent while the mortgage continues to be paid. The agent sells the good ones first, because good ones sell, which means that partway through the process you are holding the units nobody wanted — with the income gone from all of them.

And if a sale collapses halfway through the restricted window, the obvious remedy is closed to you. You cannot put a tenant back in and wait for a better market. You wait it out empty.

The route that avoids all of it

The restriction is triggered by using the ground. It is not triggered by a property being empty.

A sale of the whole portfolio, with the tenants in place, to a buyer who wants the income, uses no possession ground at all. There is no notice, no four-month period, and no restricted period. Rent continues arriving throughout the transaction and through completion. One buyer, one completion date, one set of solicitors.

The honest trade is price. A tenanted portfolio sold in bulk transacts at a discount to the sum of its vacant units, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling you something.

So make the comparison properly rather than emotionally. Set that discount against sixteen months of lost rent on every unit you were planning to empty, plus the mortgage payments through that window, plus the risk of being left holding the residue that did not sell, plus the possibility of a collapsed sale locking you out with no ability to re-let.

For most portfolios of any size, that arithmetic does not come out where landlords assume it will.

The point

The discount for selling in bulk is not a loss. It is the price of certainty, and the law has just made certainty considerably more valuable than it was a year ago.

There is a second effect worth noticing. Because vacant possession has become expensive and slow, the buyers who want tenanted stock — portfolio buyers, funds, limited company investors building income — are competing for a supply that is shrinking. A clean, well-documented, tenanted portfolio is a more attractive asset today than it was before May, precisely because the alternative route has become so costly.

This is general education about how the rules work. It is not legal advice, and not advice on your situation. Possession grounds are technical and the consequences of getting one wrong are serious. Take advice from a solicitor before serving any notice.

Names, locations and identifying details in this story have been changed. This is education, not advice.

If you are weighing up a portfolio exit and want to know which route is actually feasible for you, book the Portfolio Exit Certainty Call:

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SPV Mortgages is a trading style of Venoa Financial Services Ltd. Regulated mortgage advice is provided via Connect IFA Ltd, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Your property may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgage. The FCA does not regulate some aspects of buy-to-let and commercial mortgages.