The lettings industry is so focused on the exodus that it is missing the opportunity metaphorically walking in through the other door.
Every conversation in lettings right now seems to be about the same thing. Landlords leaving. The Renters’ Rights Act. What happens to portfolios when Section 21 goes. How agencies survive the supply squeeze.
These are real and important conversations. But there is one conversation that is barely happening at all, and it is the one that could define which lettings businesses thrive over the next decade.
Who is actively going after the new wave of landlords entering the market?
The golden age landlord is leaving. We know this.
The boomer landlord who bought cheaply thirty years ago, built significant equity and is making their exit. Tax changes, rising compliance costs and a regulatory environment that feels increasingly hostile have tipped the balance. For many, the arithmetic simply no longer works. They are going and they are not coming back.
But here is what the industry seems to be forgetting. Property as an investment does not stop being attractive just because one generation of investors has decided to move on.
It changes hands.
A new generation is already moving in
While letting agents are busy lamenting the departure of established landlords, a different kind of investor is quietly entering the market. Younger, more financially literate, more research-driven, and often approaching property investment in a fundamentally different way to the generation before them. My son is one of them. At 21 years of age he is saving the deposit for a buy to let that he will do though a limited company. This is how I know first hand at the lack of informed and education advice is currently out there targeted at young adults.
Under-35s are increasingly choosing to invest their earnings or their inheritance into buy-to-let rather than, or sometimes alongside, buying their own home. For some, property investment is a deliberate wealth-building strategy from early adulthood. They are not buying in the area they live. They are buying where the yields make sense, researching high-demand rental markets, and thinking about returns rather than proximity.
63% of landlords planning to increase their portfolios say they will use a limited company structure for their next purchase. Buy-to-let limited companies became the single biggest business type registered in 2025, with over 400,000 firms starting out.
Then there is the corporate investor. Businesses are increasingly using property as a tax-efficient vehicle for reinvesting profits. Investing through a limited company means paying Corporation Tax of 19% to 25% rather than personal income tax rates of up to 45%. For a higher-rate taxpayer with profits to deploy, a property-holding company is genuinely compelling. These are not accidental landlords. They are deliberate, structured and looking for professional management from day one. But Lettings Agents are unlikely to find them whilst canvassing in their area!
So where are the letting agents targeting these people?
This is the question I keep asking, and I am genuinely not getting satisfying answers. I dont see it on my LinkedIn feed, or Facebook or Insta… I am simply not seeing Lettings agents talk educationally around Corporate Investment or to assist young people learn about property investment. Its a largely absent space.
A young professional researching their first investment property is spending hours on Google and YouTube. They are asking ChatGPT how to invest in property. They are watching videos, reading guides and looking for someone they can trust to help them navigate the process. They are actively looking for an expert.
And yet the letting agencies best positioned to be that expert, the ones with the local knowledge, the managed portfolio experience and the compliance expertise, are largely absent from that conversation. The investor seminars and educational events that agencies used to run have quietly disappeared. The content aimed at first-time investors has dried up. The outreach to businesses and accountants who might be advising clients on property investment structures is almost non-existent.
When did letting agents stop teaching landlords how to invest and start only talking to landlords who already had?
When did business development become purely reactive, waiting for landlords to call rather than going out to find them?
And are letting agency teams actually trained and coached in how to identify and approach this new demographic?
The opportunity hiding in plain sight right in front of you – right now!
LinkedIn alone is a largely untapped resource for lettings business development. A search for company directors, accountants and financial advisers within a given geography takes minutes. These are exactly the professionals advising clients on tax-efficient profit reinvestment, some of whom will have clients actively considering property. A well-timed, genuinely helpful message costs nothing and could open a conversation that leads directly to a managed instruction.
Free seminars, short video content, simple guides aimed at first-time investors, a presence in the spaces where this new demographic is already looking for answers. None of this is complicated. Most of it is free. And almost nobody in lettings is doing it consistently.
Is this because no one is coaching and mentoring staff to have the initiative and know how to sell B2B? I fear so.
The recruitment dimension
From where I sit, there is also a people question underneath all of this. Finding new landlords requires a different skill set to managing existing ones. It requires confident business development, the ability to have an educating and advisory conversation with someone who does not yet know what they need, and the commercial awareness to spot an opportunity and pursue it proactively.
Skills I only see in the Self Employed / Business Owners agents who are natural hunters of new business and have the autonomy to have these conversations.
I dont see it in the average branch lister or manager.
Are lettings teams being hired and trained for this? In most cases, based on the conversations I have daily with letting agencies across the UK, the honest answer is no. Teams are being stretched by compliance workload and operational pressure, and new business development has become an afterthought rather than a strategy.
The golden age of the established landlord base is ending. The next age belongs to a different kind of landlord entirely. The letting agencies that start building relationships with that demographic now, through content, through outreach, through the right people asking the right questions, will own the next chapter of this market.
The ones still looking in the rear view mirror will wonder where their portfolio went.
If this raised a question about your lettings team and whether they are set up for what is coming, I am happy to have that conversation.
Sally Asling Founder, ProFind Property Recruitment
📞 0204 583 4941 · 📱 07760 787026 · 📧 sally@profindrecruitment.co.uk
🌐 www.profindpropertyrecruitment.co.uk
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