A housing law specialist part of a PRS Group of companies has calculated that landlord property repossessions in England and Wales have ‘exploded’ with a 1,487 per cent rise over the last twelve months.

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The seismic surge is solely down to the scrapping of the eviction ban during the pandemic.

The long awaited Government assault on the PRS has been unveiled in June with its  White Paper – A Fairer Private Rented Sector….and of course the major ‘hot’ topic is the intention of abolishing Section 21 evictions.

Recent government figures shows that over 2021-2022  there were 12,965 landlord rental property repossessions. The eyewatering and headline catching 1,487 per increase is mainly down to the backlog caused by the government shielding financially vulnerable tenants during March 2021 – May 2022 with the eviction ban, and only 817 PRS landlord repossessions were granted during the time.

To put some real perspective on the 1,487 per cent figure, the 12,965 repossessions over the last year in real terms is actually 56 per cent lower than pre-Covid 2019 -20 of 29,347 evictions.

In fact there was a continual decrease in number of yearly repossessions down from 35,046 in 2017-18 to 33,113 in 2018-19.

Eddie Hooker, CEO of the Industry group, says: “At first glance, it would appear as though the floodgates have opened where the repossession of rental properties is concerned, but this isn’t quite the case.

Following a year where tenant evictions were banned except for in certain circumstances, there was always going to be a spike in repossessions as a backlog of cases finally started to be processed.

However, we’re yet to see the level of rental homes being repossessed return to pre-pandemic levels and there are also a lower proportion of initial claims making it to this final, last resort stage.