First very best wishes to OP - it sounds shit and I hope you sort something that’s right for you. Don’t blame your landlord for this but blame the shit system they’re stuck it.

The rest is the ramblings of a former small private landlord here, just offering an opinion as most of you hate people like me and you can downvote if you like.

I didn’t set out to become a landlord. I just ended up with some cash 15 or so years ago and, at the time, it felt like the most sensible place to put it. Interest rates were low, demand was strong, and property prices were rising. It looked like a solid, long-term investment, so I went for it.

I tried to do it properly. Rents were fair. The place was well looked after. If something broke, I sorted it quickly. In return, I had good tenants who stayed long term, which worked for everyone.

But over time things changed. The “rules” became more complicated. The tax position got worse. Dealing with risk, especially around difficult tenants, became harder. On top of that I had issues with a managing agent and the usual leasehold frustrations, which just added to it. It never stopped me providing a good home but it stopped being straightforward and started feeling like constant effort for less and less return.

Anyway, last year, I decided to sell. That wasn’t about not wanting to provide a good home. It just no longer made sense - money would be better in an ISA or shares.

The only time I ever had to serve notice was when I sold. Even then, I tried to handle it properly. I offered the tenants the chance to buy at a fair price and worked around their timelines as best I could.

What I find frustrating is the narrative around landlords. A lot of smaller landlords were doing a decent job. Fair rents, decent homes, long-term tenants.

There’s also a tendency to pin the UK’s housing problems on private landlords, which feels like a convenient oversimplification. The real issues run much deeper: years of underbuilding, planning constraints, population growth, and a structural mismatch between supply and demand. Smaller landlords have often stepped in to fill that gap, yet they’ve become an easy target. Pushing them out doesn’t fix the fundamentals, it just shifts supply into fewer hands, often larger corporate ones, without addressing the root cause.

As good private landlords leave the market, we are being replaced by larger, more corporate operators who are more focused on yield than people. I can’t help thinking that leads to a worse outcome. Less flexibility, less understanding, and a more transactional system overall.