A headline on the Mortgage Strategy website ‘PRS is ready for a fightback’ recently caught my eye. I noticed this just as I was about to have my lunch on a Friday afternoon and I have to say that it really gave me the impetus that I needed to finish my week on a high.

I’m sure that we’ve all suffered from a few more ups and downs in our working weeks than usual over the past six months. While I like to think of myself as a largely positive person, well-balanced articles around the BTL sector which help reflect how important this sector is to me, to the industry, to the overall housing market and to the UK population, always add a little more pep to my step. The piece highlighted that many of the challenges facing landlords brought on by coronavirus will ultimately accelerate the professionalisation of the sector. And this is an important message that we need to continue purveying.

We’re obviously still discovering the full extent of the lockdown period when it comes to landlords, although a study conducted by YouGov for the National Residential Landlords Association has offered some valuable insight. This outlined that 19 per cent of those questioned had lost up to half of their usual rental income, with three per cent losing over half.

An analysis of the results by the NRLA suggested that among those landlords surveyed reporting a loss of rent, the average median loss was between £751 and £1,000. Applied across the sector as a whole, this suggests that the total rental income lost by private landlords with properties in England as a result of Covid is somewhere between £328m and £437m. The same survey showed that nine per cent of landlords said that they planned to leave the market altogether with seven per cent saying they will sell some of their rental properties over the next 12 months.

Although it’s not only landlords who need additional support from a variety of sources. Tenants who have been impacted from a health, employment and income perspective are also facing increased pressure. As such, it was good to see the government take further strides to help via a raft of measures aimed at helping renters affected by the coronavirus over the winter months. These consist of three strands: emergency legislation to increase notice periods to six months until at least the end of March 2021; a Christmas truce on eviction bans in areas affected by local lockdowns; and £180m to local authorities to support renters who are vulnerable.

The landlord/tenant relationship is arguably closer and stronger than it’s ever been, and the same can be said when it comes to intermediaries/landlords, intermediaries/distributors and distributors/lenders.

These are all relationships which are key to the sustained growth of the BTL sector and the harder we work in solidifying these, the more robust the PRS will become and the more opportunities it will create.