Landlord portfolio and investment survey 2025

7 January 2026 Campaigns News

In December 2025 SAL conducted a survey of its landlord members to find out about the size of their rental property portfolios and how this has changed/will change over time, along with the reasons behind their investment decisions. Many of the survey questions mirrored those asked in previous surveys we have run annually since 2022, allowing trends to be tracked over time.

Whilst SAL membership numbers are rising, members continue to report that they are reducing the size of their property portfolios and responses indicate that this trend will continue. There has been a slowing of rent increase activity from a historical high last year. Looking to the future, members report that they believe over a third of their properties will require improvement work to comply with minimum energy efficiency standards proposed by the Scottish Government.

We had responses to the survey from 645 landlord members who own 5,328 properties, an average of 8.3 properties per landlord. Based on an extrapolation of data from this survey and a similar survey we conducted in December 2025 of our letting agent members, we estimate that SAL members are involved in owning or managing approximately 204,580 properties in Scotland, 58% of the 349,817 properties in the Scottish private rented sector.

Survey findings were as follows:

There has been a very slight increase in the proportion of landlords planning to reduce their portfolio size in the next 5 years. 54% of respondents are now planning to reduce their portfolio size (this time last year it was 53%). 9% of respondents are now planning to increase their portfolio size (this time last year it was 10%). However, these figures are very different from those in February 2022 when we asked a similar question about plans for the next 10 years and these figures were 34% and 19% respectively.
Those responding to the survey reported having withdrawn 10% of their properties from the sector during 2024. Previous years’ surveys revealed that a further 8.5% of respondents’ properties were withdrawn from the sector during 2024 and 6.4% in 2023. These figures indicate that the size of the private rented sector is reducing rapidly. However, figures from the landlord registration database published monthly by the Scottish Government show a more complicated picture with a decrease of over 6,000 in the number of landlords operating in the private rented sector since January 2023 but an increase in the number of properties in the sector of nearly 10,000 in the same time period. This could indicate a growth in the number of larger scale institutional type investors in the sector and a reduction in smaller scale operators.
When asked about their reasons for withdrawing properties from the sector, the most common reasons given were:
Perceived hostility towards landlords from government/politicians – 79%
Increasing regulation in the sector – 69%
Tax changes – 68%
Landlords were asked how they will go about withdrawing their properties from the market. For 49% of properties the landlord will serve notice to evict their tenants. For 29% of properties the landlord will wait until the tenants choose to move out. 21% will be sold to another landlord with tenants in place.
48% of respondents have done rent increases on their tenanted properties during 2025, a decrease from 61% in 2024. A previous survey in 2022 revealed that prior to the government introducing temporary restrictions on the amount a landlord can increase rent by, just 8% of landlords increased their rent on an annual basis.
A surprisingly low proportion of tenants challenged the rent increases they received during 2025. 1% negotiated a lower increase directly with their landlord and only 0.5% appealed the rent increase through the rent officer. For those who did apply to the rent officer, in 50% of cases the rent officer set the rent at a figure lower than that the landlord had proposed in the rent increase notice, with the rent officer setting the rent in line with the figure in the rent increase notice in the other cases. These low rent increase challenge figures echo similar findings in our letting agent survey.
68% of tenants are paying rent below market value (in December 2024 this was reported to be 60%). 30% are paying more than 20% below market value (in December 2024 this was reported to be 15%). Whilst this survey showed an increase in the number of tenants paying rent below market value, our letting agent survey showed a reduction which indicates that letting agents are applying more frequent or higher rent increases to keep a larger proportion of rents in line with market value.
53% of respondents have a mortgage on at least one of their rental properties. 7% of properties have outgoings (including any mortgage repayments) which exceed the rental income.
When it comes to energy efficiency, 26% of respondents don’t know if their properties will require improvement works to comply with proposals to require a minimum energy efficiency “heat retention rating” of C. Those who do know estimate that 35% of their properties will require work to improve energy efficiency with the remaining properties believed to be compliant.
The survey revealed that landlords are a mature population with 87% aged 50 and above. Just 3% of respondents were aged below 40. This very low figure does raise concerns about the future of the private rented sector and whether there will be sufficient numbers of landlords to accommodate the demand for housing in the sector in decades to come.
38% or respondents have been a landlord for more than 20 years and most reported that they became a landlord as part of pension planning or to generate additional income.

The survey findings will assist with SAL’s policy work and we are hugely grateful to the many members who took time to complete the survey.

Any queries about the survey can be directed to:

Caroline Elgar
Policy Manager
Scottish Association of Landlords
0131 564 0100
info@scottishlandlords.com

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