Green Party proposes three-year rent rise cap as landlord income figures complicate ‘super earners’ claim

Green Party leader Zack Polanski is expected to propose a three-year cap on private rent increases at the party’s conference in Brighton on Friday, 2 October. Inside Housing reports that increases would be limited to the lowest of consumer price inflation, wage growth or 2%. The proposal would affect private renters and landlords if adopted; it is not a change to the law.

A BBC News video published the same day is titled ‘Greens take aim at landlord super earners’. Its available page text does not provide a transcript identifying who used that description or what evidence they offered. Government figures show substantial variation in landlords’ rental income, but do not establish whether most landlords are high earners once costs and other income are taken into account.

How the Greens’ three-year rent cap would work

According to Inside Housing, Polanski is expected to set out the measure as an emergency brake on rises in the private rented sector while the Greens develop a longer-term ‘fair rents guarantee’. The three benchmarks in the reported proposal are alternatives: the lowest of CPI inflation, wage growth and 2% would set the ceiling. The report describes a limit on increases, rather than a cut to existing rents.

Inside Housing quoted Polanski as saying landlords had been able to raise prices beyond wages, leaving renters to cut back elsewhere to pay for housing. He said the temporary limit would give tenants ‘vital breathing space’. Green MP Carla Denyer told the outlet that the measure would provide a reset while the party worked out a longer-term system of rent controls.

What HMRC figures say about landlord income

HM Revenue & Customs recorded 2.88 million unincorporated landlords declaring UK property income through Self Assessment in 2024–25. Together they declared £58.99 billion, and the average declared property income per landlord was £20,500. HMRC says that average was the highest in its five-year series. These are figures for income from property, not landlords’ net profit or their total personal income.

The distribution matters more than the average when assessing a claim about landlords generally. HMRC found that 1.3 million landlords, or 45% of those declaring UK property income, reported £10,000 or less from property in 2024–25. That figure does not show whether those landlords also had wages, pensions or other income; equally, a high rental receipt does not by itself show how much a landlord kept after expenses.

HMRC recorded £34.75 billion in allowable expenses declared by unincorporated landlords in the same tax year. Nearly 88% declared some expenses, with residential finance costs the largest category at £12.82 billion. The figures demonstrate why gross rental income cannot simply be described as earnings available to spend. They do not, on their own, give a net-profit figure for every landlord or show how costs are distributed across the income bands.

The tax data also have limits. They exclude incorporated property businesses and individuals whose property income falls below the Self Assessment reporting threshold. HMRC’s numbers cover UK property income declared by the taxpayers in its dataset, rather than every person or company that lets a home. Its regional figures are based on landlords’ registered addresses, which need not be the locations of their properties.

What the English landlord survey adds

A Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government survey published in 2024 found that 45% of surveyed landlords owned one rental property, while 17% owned at least five. That smaller group accounted for 49% of tenancies in the survey. The contrast points to an uneven market: the number of landlords in a group is different from the number of homes they let.

The survey put median gross rental income at £19,200 over the previous 12 months, before mortgage, letting and other operating costs. It found 51% of landlords reporting rental income below £20,000 and 17% reporting at least £50,000. Its median for total gross annual income, combining rental and other income, was £52,000; one in five landlords reported at least £100,000. Those figures show a high-income segment, but also a much broader spread than a single label conveys.

Landlords’ costs and plans also vary. In the survey, 41% said they had no borrowing on any property; 30% had borrowing on one, and another 30% on more than one. Looking ahead two years, 31% planned to reduce their portfolios, including 16% who planned to sell all their properties, while 7% planned to expand. Those responses describe intentions at the time of the survey, not the effect of the Greens’ new proposal.

The survey applies to England and covers landlords who registered tenancy deposits directly. Its authors caution that the results may not represent landlords whose agents registered deposits for them. It cannot be combined directly with HMRC’s UK-wide Self Assessment figures: the two sources cover different groups and use different income measures.

What remains to be established

Inside Housing reported that the Labour government had ruled out rent controls while pursuing the Renters’ Rights Act, including a ban on no-fault evictions. The Greens’ reported limit is therefore a party proposal, not an existing protection for tenants. Its precise longer-term replacement has yet to be set out in the reporting available here.

The available BBC video page establishes the ‘super earners’ wording in its headline, but supplies no transcript or definition. HMRC and the English survey show that some landlords receive high gross income and many receive much less. Neither dataset establishes that a majority are ‘super earners’, because neither supplies a common threshold for that phrase or a complete measure of each landlord’s net income and wealth.