100 Shows. 13 Years.
100 Shows. 13 Years.
By Benjamin Hall, Founder, LOFT
On 8th July, the National Landlord Investment Show celebrates its 100th event at Old Billingsgate, London. Tracey and Steve Hanbury will once again bring together landlords, investors, developers, and suppliers in a room built on a simple idea: that this sector deserves proper professional infrastructure, not an afterthought.
LOFT has exhibited at this show since it launched in Croydon in May 2013. Thirteen years on, I want to mark that milestone properly.
A Sector That Never Stood Still
The private rented sector has been reshaped almost beyond recognition since 2013. Right to Rent landed in 2014. The stamp duty surcharge followed in 2016. Mortgage interest tax relief was phased out by 2020. The proposed EPC C-rating deadline for 2028 still looms over millions of homes. And running alongside all of it, Build to Rent went from a niche curiosity to a defining force, with an estimated 146,700 units now completed nationally and investment forecast to exceed £5.7 billion in 2026.
What BTR has done is professionalise renting as a product. Institutional operators compete on design quality and resident experience, and that has permanently raised what every tenant expects from a home, not just those in purpose-built schemes. It is one of the reasons LOFT's own work with operators and developers has evolved the way it has: interior quality is not a cost, it is a retention and occupancy driver.
Then came the Renters' Rights Act 2025, the biggest reform to private renting since the late 1980s. From 1st May 2026, Section 21 evictions were abolished and every tenancy converted to a rolling Assured Periodic Tenancy. Landlords must now navigate the revised Section 8 possession process and a 12-month protected period at the start of each tenancy. PBSA providers have their own narrow path via Ground 4A, available only where the correct written statement was served before 1st June 2026.
The direction is clear: transactional landlordism is over, and what replaces it demands more knowledge, more professional support, and a better-quality product. That has been the National Landlord Investment Show's conversation for a decade.
13 Years Of Partnership
I started LOFT in Manchester in 2003. In over twenty years, few relationships have felt like genuine partnership rather than transaction. This is one of them. Tracey and Steve have shown up consistently, through a pandemic and through every legislative upheaval the sector has thrown at them, treating exhibitors as stakeholders rather than customers.
The private rented sector gets an unfair press. The vast majority of landlords are ordinary people trying to do right by their tenants in an increasingly complex environment, not faceless corporations. As some exit the sector under new pressures, the answer isn't less regulation, it's better-informed landlords and agents, and a sector that takes professional standards seriously.
To Tracey and Steve: thank you for starting something when the space wasn't crowded, for never lowering the standard, and for keeping it free to attend because access to knowledge shouldn't be a luxury. Here's to the next hundred.
LOFT will be at Old Billingsgate on 8th July. Whether you're in BTR, PRS, PBSA, HMO, or private residential, come and find us, and join us in congratulating Tracey and Steve on a milestone thirteen years in the making.
