10
FIBA
The death of the‘ passive’ landlord
Why complexity is the new yield hedge
Frazer Campbell CRO Brickflow
The UK rental market is no longer rewarding simplicity. For a long time, the plan for most property investors was straightforward: buy a house, find a tenant, and wait for the property value to go up. From our vantage point, talking to brokers and lenders every day, that“ passive” era is effectively over. We’ re seeing a clear move away from standard houses and toward much more complex, high-yield investments.
The data, backed by staggering numbers, reinforces that shift. Across the industry, searches for bridging finance specifically for residential, HMO, and mixed-use investment properties reached a record £ 12.7bn in 2025. That 34 % jump in searches compared to the previous year tells us that investors aren’ t just sitting on their hands waiting for interest rates to drop. They are using specialised tools to pivot their portfolios before new rules make their current setups even harder to manage.
The market is splitting in two
The biggest driver here is the Renters’ Rights Act. While it is meant to help tenants, it is making a lot of smaller,“ accidental” landlords nervous. Right now, about 57 % of landlords are planning to sell off parts of their portfolios, which is a huge shift from what we have seen over the last decade.
A clear divide is emerging across the market. On one side, you have landlords who are bowing out because the cost of compliance and the end of Section 21 are just too much. On the other side, there is a new breed of professional investor who sees this chaos as an opportunity. This is reflected in rising mixed-use refurbishment searches, which have nearly doubled. By putting a shop or an office in the same building as residential units, they are creating a buffer against residential-only laws while getting more out of the asset.