On 21 May 2025, G2M Group convened a roundtable at UKREiiF, bringing together 14 leaders from housing, investment, and local government to explore a critical question:
‘The Preservation and Improvement of Low Cost, Existing Rental Homes: True Place-Based Investment?’
This roundtable went beyond the typical debate on supply and demand to examine the structural challenges facing the UK’s housing system, particularly the urgent need to preserve and improve existing rental homes.
A key theme emerged: the housing crisis is not solely driven by a lack of new supply, but by the steady decline of viable homes within the Private Rented Sector. The discussion repositioned ageing private rental stock not as a liability, but as investable social infrastructure – enabled by institutional funding to support long-term community resilience and inclusion.
The Other Side of the Housing Crisis
The UK’s housing crisis is often framed as a numbers game – and in many ways, it is. We do need more homes, and new development has a vital role to play. The challenge, however, is no longer just about how many homes we build, but how well we preserve and enhance the ones already in the system. With over 80% of the homes that will exist by 2050 already built (UK Green Building Council, 2014), the future of housing stability depends just as much on upgrading existing stock as it does on new supply.
As Paul Morton, Chief Executive of G2M Group, put it:
“The stock exists – we just need to invest in it properly.”
Adding to this urgency, more than 120,000 landlords exited the market last year (Savills), contributing to a steady contraction of the PRS and further eroding available rental housing. For investors, this shift represents both a challenge and an opportunity – to contribute to a more inclusive and resilient housing market by stewarding existing assets for long-term community benefit.
The roundtable moved beyond supply-side constraints to address the deeper structural imbalances within the housing system – including market fragmentation, ageing stock, and the withdrawal of private landlords. These trends are influencing the Private Rented Sector as institutional funding takes on an increasingly meaningful and strategic role. This underscores that tackling the housing crisis means not only increasing supply but also investing in the maintenance and improvement of existing homes.
“We’ve seen families placed in homes that are simply unsafe. That is not a long-term solution.” should be assessed by how people live, not just what they earn.”
— Naushabah Khan MP, Member of Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee
This reality is compounded by the PRS’s deep fragmentation and gradual contraction. With thousands of small-scale, “mom-and-pop” landlords each managing just a handful of homes, the system lacks unity – leaving gaps in professional support and long-term planning that disproportionately affect the most vulnerable. 700,000 households receiving housing benefits now live in the PRS due to the ongoing erosion of social housing (G2M Group, Understanding the Housing Crisis, 2024), while Buy-to-Let purchases dropped by 25% between 2022-2024 (Lubbock Fine, analysis of HMRC and stamp duty data, 2024), remaining below pre-COVID levels and leaving critical needs unmet across many communities.
“When we squeeze the rental sector, we force people into crisis systems that are more expensive and deliver demonstrably lower outcomes.”
— James Lancaster, Executive Director, G2M Group
This fragmentation isn’t just inefficient – it presents a structural barrier to delivering equitable, long-term housing outcomes. Whilst Local authorities like Leeds City Council are already stepping in with targeted interventions, purchasing homes and seeking partnerships to bring underused stock back into circulation, they face escalating pressures – growing housing needs, limited funding, and shrinking access to affordable PRS units.
Addressing this requires a shift, with institutional funding positioned to drive transformative change by shifting the sector from scattered ownership to place-based, future-proofed community infrastructure, treating homes as valuable assets, not disposable ones.
Redefining Place-Based Investment for Long-Term Value
The conversation highlighted that retrofitting and renewing private rental homes is not simply a maintenance task; for the right, institutionally backed landlord, it represents a strategic and time-sensitive opportunity to increase asset value.
Participants further explored how upgrading these homes can generate wide-ranging benefits – including lowering carbon emissions, improving affordability for residents, raising health and safety standards, and driving local economic growth through job creation in retrofit and construction supply chains. With privately rented homes underperforming those in the social sector across almost every meaningful metric, this has never been more urgent (e.g. 61% of PRS homes in England are rated below EPC C, compared to 40% in the social housing sector). This gap underscores the urgent need for targeted intervention to improve the quality of these homes.
G2M further expanded on this theme through our recent Partner Impact Survey, which revealed that these upgrades are delivering tangible local benefits:
These impacts are enhanced by the ability of large-scale, professional landlords to fund and plan partner workloads and expenditure over time, something that 83% of our partners cited as their biggest barrier to offering more local jobs and upskilling within their workforce (G2M Partner Impact Survey, 2025).
“Investing in existing stock isn’t a compromise, it’s an essential part of the toolkit in ensuring we have the homes we need.”
— Gemma Bourne, Better Society Capital
Rethinking Affordability
A key point of reflection during the roundtable centred on the definition of affordability, with participants questioning the continued reliance on outdated rent-to-income ratios and affordability benchmarks, noting that these frameworks often fail to account for the lived experiences of renters. The impact of what remains a largely unsophisticated methodology is felt most acutely at the lower end of the sector, with just 2.5% of new PRS listings across England being affordable to housing benefit recipients (Crisis & Zoopla, 2024).
The conversation pointed to the need for more human-centred approaches to tenancy assessment, moving beyond rigid financial metrics to models that better reflect tenant stability, resilience, and long-term outcomes.
“Affordability should be assessed by how people live, not just what they earn.”
— Paul Morton, G2M Group
There was broad consensus that socially responsible, long-term institutional landlords are well positioned to lead this shift. By prioritising sustainable tenancies over short-term returns, they can play a critical role in addressing affordability while maintaining asset performance and community stability.
Whilst there was discussion around the imposition of upper and lower affordability limits, it was clear: affordability isn’t just a number, it’s a human story – one that demands fresh thinking.
From Measurement to Meaning
A recurring theme was the need for broader metrics to define success. If the goal is to build thriving communities, the sector must measure more than units delivered or rents collected. Energy performance, resident wellbeing, fuel poverty alleviation, and supply chain engagement were all named as vital indicators of long-term value.
“We need to stop judging success solely by units built and start looking at outcomes – on health, emissions, and employment.”
— Ian Morrison, Historic England
Scaling Institutional Readiness: Skills, Delivery, and Execution
Delivering regeneration across the UK’s ageing rental stock will not happen organically. The group highlighted the need to expand access to appropriate finance, growing the skilled workforce within communities and creating a regulatory environment that supports, rather than penalises, the professionalisation of the landlord sector.
The urgency is particularly clear in regions such as Yorkshire and the North West, where more than 30% of PRS homes fall below the Decent Homes Standard – highlighting the need for regionally focused strategies (English Housing Survey 2022–2023).
Institutional ownership currently accounts for just 3% of the UK’s PRS, compared to 13% in France and 40% in Germany (Savills Spotlight report, 2023). This represents a significant missed opportunity to scale professionally managed, impact-led housing, particularly in underserved parts of the market where long-term capital could deliver both social value and sustainable returns.
Resetting the Narrative on Renting
A cultural shift is also overdue. Renting is often still framed as transitional or second-best. But with over a third of private renters in England now aged 35 or over, including nearly one in five aged 45 or older (EHS 2021/2022; SMF), it’s clear that renting is no longer just a temporary phase. As more people rent into midlife and beyond, the sector needs to be seen and treated as a legitimate, long-term housing option.
“In the UK, renting is still seen as what you do until you buy. That has to change.”
— Brendan Geraghty, The Association for Rental Living
A Call for Collaboration
The roundtable ended with a powerful consensus: place-based investment must include the people and places that already exist. Supporting and upgrading the UK’s existing rental homes is not only socially responsible – it’s smart investment.
“Collaboration is the only way forward – no one sector can fix this on its own.”
— Liz Laurence, Royal Foundation
Next Steps
G2M Group is committed to advancing this agenda – through capital, collaboration, and community-centred thinking. We’ll be publishing further insights from this roundtable over the coming months and welcome dialogue with partners who share our vision for resilient, inclusive and low-carbon housing.
If you’d like to discuss partnership opportunities or learn more about our institutional investment model for existing rental housing, please get in touch.
Prefer to read offline? Download the full summary as a PDF
The Other Side of the Housing Crisis Insights from G2M’s UKREiiF 2025 Roundtable
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