56% of landlords now plan to sell - and Clapham's flats are first in line

Every few weeks another buy-to-let landlord walks into my office with the same opening line: "I think I'm done." Usually it's someone who bought a one or two-bed flat off Clapham Common or near Abbeville Village years ago, has had a decent run, and is now quietly worn down by the paperwork, the mortgage rates and the sense that the rules keep moving against them. This week the numbers caught up with the mood on my sofa.

The Deposit Protection Service's latest review found that 56% of landlords now plan to sell some or all of their portfolio, up from 53% last October. Pair that with Benham and Reeves reporting that just 3.9% of landlords intend to expand, and you have a private rented sector that is shrinking at one end and barely growing at the other. The English Private Landlord Survey adds the detail that matters locally: landlords with five or more properties account for 49% of all private tenancies, despite being only 17% of landlords. In other words, a small number of committed players hold up a big share of the market, and when they start heading for the door, the effect is outsized.

Down here that plays out flat by flat. Clapham, Balham and Stockwell are stuffed with the exact stock these landlords own - period conversions and purpose-built one and two-beds that were the classic first buy-to-let. When one of them sells, the flat often goes to an owner-occupier rather than another investor, so it leaves the rental pool for good. Multiply that across a few streets and you can see why renters near the Common tell me every viewing feels like a scrum. Void periods have actually fallen to around 21 days nationally, which is another way of saying good rental flats are being snapped up almost as fast as they appear.

Here's my honest take, and it cuts both ways. If you're a landlord who has genuinely had enough, selling into today's market is not the disaster some headlines suggest - owner-occupier demand for a well-presented Clapham flat is real, and you may do better selling with vacant possession to a homebuyer than to a nervous investor. But if your numbers still work, think hard before you join the stampede. Fewer rental flats plus steady tenant demand is, bluntly, a supportive backdrop for the landlords who stay. The ones selling in a panic may be handing a stronger position to the ones who hold their nerve.

Either way, the worst move is to drift. If you own a flat round here and you're on the fence, get a proper, current valuation and a straight read on your yield before you decide - not a guess based on what your neighbour got in 2021.

Are you a Clapham landlord weighing up whether to sell or sit tight this year? I talk this through with owners most weeks and I'm happy to give you a straight steer. Email me at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

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Nine renters for every flat: inside the SW London rent squeeze

Walk past any letting board near Clapham Common on a Saturday and you'll spot it - a small knot of people outside a flat, phones out, all there for the same 20-minute viewing slot. Down here that queue isn't a one-off, it's the market. And this week the national figures finally put a shape to what renters round here already feel in their gut.

The Office for National Statistics reports that average private rents rose 3.7% in the 12 months to July 2026, with the UK average private rent now sitting at 1,393 pounds a month. Separate reporting this week put annual rental growth as high as 4.3% and estimated that tenants are now spending roughly a third of their income on housing. The Institute for Fiscal Studies goes further still, finding renters spent about 28% of household income on housing in 2024-25. And the story behind the queues is supply: with reports of as many as nine renters chasing every available flat, there simply aren't enough homes to go round.

In Clapham, Balham, Brixton and Stockwell those national averages are a soft-focus version of the truth, because London rents start well above 1,393 pounds and the competition is fiercer. When a two-bed conversion off Abbeville Road comes up, it doesn't sit - it's gone in days, often to whoever can move fastest and offer cleanest. That's the bit the percentages don't capture: the couple who've been outbid three times since June, the sharers stretching to a postcode they can just about afford, the tenant who renews at a higher rent simply because moving feels riskier than staying. Rising rents and thin supply don't just cost money, they cost people their options.

My take, and renters won't always want to hear it: in a market this tight, preparation beats hope. If you're flat-hunting in SW London right now, be viewing-ready before you turn up - references lined up, proof of income to hand, a realistic budget that includes the deposit and first month, and a genuine sense of which streets you'll actually accept. The renters who lose out are rarely the ones offering the most; they're the ones who dither while someone more organised says yes. And if you're a good tenant already in a decent flat, think twice before walking away from it in this climate - a rent you can negotiate is often better than a search you can't win.

None of this is a lecture. The squeeze is real and it's structural, and it won't ease until more rental homes come back into the market rather than leaving it. But knowing the numbers - and knowing your patch - is how you stop being the ninth person in the queue and start being the one who gets the keys.

Renting in Clapham or the surrounding area and feeling the crunch? Tell me what you're up against - I know this local market inside out and I'm glad to point you in the right direction. Reach me at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

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Four Out of Five Homes That Sell Never Drop Their Price. What That Tells You About Selling in Clapham

There is a flat on a road off the Common that has been sitting on Rightmove since spring. Nice flat. Good road. Nothing wrong with it at all, except the number on the front of it. A vendor I met last week asked me why it still had not gone, and the honest answer is the one nobody wants to hear at a valuation: it launched at a price the market did not believe, and every week since has been spent slowly proving that.

Some numbers landed on LinkedIn this week that make the point better than I can. Data from Sprift, covering 710,729 homes that came onto the UK market since 1 January 2026: only 238,105 of them have had a sale agreed. That is a third. Two out of every three sellers who launched this year are still waiting.

Now the part that should change how you think about your asking price. Of the 238,105 that did sell, 80.08% sold without a single price reduction, and they did it in an average of 28 days. The 20% that needed a reduction took an average of 64 days to get a sale agreed. Same market, same month, same buyers. More than double the time, and a lower price at the end of it.

Down here the pattern is identical. Across SW4 in June there were 136 homes on the market and 40 of them found a buyer. The flats sitting on the market carried a median asking price of £525,000; the flats that actually got agreed did so at a median of £475,000. On average an SW4 home took 52 days to go under offer, which is quicker than the national 59 - our market is not slow, it is just unforgiving of a punchy number.

Here is what that means in practice if you are selling in Clapham, Balham, Stockwell or Abbeville Village this autumn. Your first two to three weeks are the whole ballgame. That is when every buyer already registered and hunting sees your flat for the first time, when the portal alerts fire, and when your viewing diary is at its fullest. Price it right and you are choosing between offers while the launch buzz is live. Price it 8% high to "test the market" and those same buyers scroll past, you get the trickle rather than the flood, and eight weeks later you reduce to the number you should have started at - only now every buyer can see how long it has been sitting and treats you accordingly. The reduction does not fix the problem. It advertises it.

My take, and I will say it to any vendor who asks: never let anyone value your home on what you want it to be worth, including me. Value it on the last three genuinely comparable sales on your street or the one next to it, then decide whether you want to sell or you want to advertise. Testing the market is not a free option. It costs you five weeks, your best buyers, and usually more money than the reduction you were trying to avoid.

Are you sitting on a home that has been out there too long, or thinking about launching this autumn and wondering where the number should be? Tell me the road and I will tell you straight what I think it will actually sell for. Drop me a line at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

Sources: Sprift listing data (1 January to August 2026), shared on LinkedIn; SW4 monthly market data, June 2026.

Record stock, falling prices: why this is the best autumn to buy in Clapham for years

 Walk past any of the estate agents around Clapham Old Town this month and the windows tell the story before I do. There are more boards up than I have seen in a long while, and a good few have quietly grown a "reduced" sticker. If you have been sitting on your hands waiting for the London market to blink, it just did.

Rightmove's latest figures, out this week, put some numbers on what we are all feeling on the ground. The average new asking price across the country fell 2% this month to £364,999, the biggest monthly drop they have recorded since 2018. The reason is simple: supply. There are more homes on the market now than at any point in 12 years, and when buyers have that much choice, sellers have to compete. Rightmove went further and called London the worst-performing part of Britain by almost every measure, with agents at Hamptons and Connells reporting that sellers are increasingly cutting asking prices to get a deal done.

Down here that plays out street by street. A two-bed flat off Abbeville Road or a terraced house near the Common is no longer the only show in town. Buyers who missed out on three places last spring are suddenly the ones with the whip hand, walking into second viewings knowing there is another perfectly good flat round the corner. For sellers it means the days of sticking an optimistic number on the listing and waiting are over. Price it to the market from day one, or watch it drift and pick up the "reduced" sticker that quietly tells every buyer you got it wrong.

Here is my honest take, and it will not suit everyone. If you are a buyer in a position to move, this is the strongest hand you will have held in Clapham for years. Not because prices are collapsing, they are not, but because choice plus nervous sellers plus softer mortgage rates is a genuine window. Lenders have been trimming again, with several buy-to-let and residential rates edged down over the past fortnight, and a motivated seller in a 12-year-high market has every reason to take a sensible offer rather than gamble on the autumn. That combination does not come around often.

For sellers, do not panic and do not believe anyone who tells you the market has fallen out of bed, because it has not. What has changed is that presentation and pricing now do all the heavy lifting. The homes moving well around Clapham and Balham are the ones that are sensibly priced, properly photographed and ready to view. Get those three right and you will still sell, and sell well. Get greedy on the asking price in a market this well stocked and you will simply hand the advantage to the flat down the road.

So the question I would leave you with: are you a buyer who has been waiting for exactly this, or a seller wondering whether to launch now or hold until spring? There is no single right answer, but there is a right answer for your situation, and it is worth talking through before you commit either way.

Thinking about a move in Clapham or the surrounding area this year, or just want a straight view on what your place would really fetch today? Drop me a line at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554. I am always happy to talk it through.

The Quiet Landlord Exodus: Why South London Renters Should Be the Ones Worrying

Drive around Clapham, Balham or Brixton at the moment and you start to notice something. Flats that were quietly let for years are appearing on the sales portals. A landlord I have known for a decade told me last week he is cashing in two of his three flats near the Common. He is not angry about it. He has just done the maths - and the maths has changed.

Here is what is actually happening, away from the headlines. Property118 reported this week that Capital Gains Tax changes are now the single biggest reason landlords are selling. At the same time, the landlords who are staying in are restructuring hard: company incorporations are up an extraordinary 1,700% as buy-to-let owners move their portfolios into limited companies to shelter what they can from the tax. Overall landlord sentiment, on every survey I read, is weak and getting weaker.

That might sound like a landlord's problem. It isn't. It is a renter's problem, and in South London it is becoming an acute one.

Follow the chain. Every flat a landlord sells to an owner-occupier is a flat that leaves the rental pool for good. Propertymark now counts roughly eight renters chasing every available property. Nationwide has rents up 3.3% over the year, even as house-price growth has cooled to 1.8% - a telling split, because it shows demand pouring into renting exactly as supply drains out of it. Fewer rental homes plus more tenants competing for them equals one thing: higher rents and less choice for the very people the tax changes were never meant to hurt.

This is the uncomfortable truth I keep coming back to. We have spent several years making it less attractive to be a private landlord - higher taxes, more regulation, less flexibility - in the name of helping renters. But you cannot help renters by shrinking the number of homes available to rent. If the goal was genuinely to improve life for tenants in Clapham and across SW London, the answer was always going to be more homes, not fewer landlords.

So what do I tell people? Landlords: don't make an emotional decision. If you own a good flat in a strong South London location, the case for holding - or incorporating and holding - is often stronger than the case for selling into a flat market. The demand for your property has arguably never been higher. Renters: understand that the squeeze is structural, not a blip. When a well-priced flat comes up in the area you want, be ready to move fast, have your references and paperwork in order, and treat a good landlord as someone worth keeping.

Are you a South London landlord weighing up whether to sell or restructure, or a renter feeling the squeeze first-hand? I would really like to hear from you - drop me a line at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call me on 07837 093554.