A shady short-term property letting agency is urging Manchester landlords to issue profitable Section 21 notices ahead of the upcoming Renters’ Rights Act to evict people.
The letter, shared exclusively with the Canary by Greater Manchester Tenants’ Union (GMTU), labels ordinary renters “a potential liability”.
Chorlton-based residents received the letter from London-headquartered firm Aparthotel Manchester, which encouraged landlords to evict current tenants “before it’s too late”.
The notorious S21 repossession orders — dubbed ‘no-fault’ evictions — are deployed by landlords to turf out renters but will be outlawed from 1st May 2026.
That’s right: in the eyes of opportunistic property portfolio managers, renters are not humans deserving of homes, but rather little more than an impediment to profits.
What does the letter say?
The letter was intended to be read and acted upon by rattled, put-upon landlords, but was sent — presumably by mistake — to an owner-occupier allied with GMTU.
It read:
Act now and we can issue a section 21 notice (requiring 2 months’ notice) on your behalf, before it’s too late to remove that sitting tenant who could be costing you a fortune in unpaid rent, repair and legal fees, with no easy way to evict them.
It cites changes to legislation including “rent increases and pet requests [which] will apply to all private tenancies” when the Renters’ Rights Act comes into force soon.
The agency promises landlords “over 50%” expenses-free net returns on investment:
…with no agency fees whatsoever, no repair or maintenance bills and a premium monthly guaranteed rental.
It offers to “maximise your income from your property investment” by giving up on being a regular landlord and, instead, becoming an Airbnb-style short-term stay letter.
Thus the company aims to leverage landlords against a long-overdue and substantial — by Labour’s low standards — piece of relatively progressive legislation, while it openly acknowledges that “the clock is ticking” for unscrupulous property owners.
Make no mistake: this is the solicitation of for-profit evictions by a company happy to instrumentalise Manchester’s precarious housing market at a time of well-documented crisis — and to frame renters, essentially, as mere nuisances.
What do tenant organisers say?
This letter’s revelation comes less than a week after London saw the largest cross-organisation demonstration around housing justice for over a decade.
The National Housing Demonstration marched through central London to demand more council housing, rent controls and an end to exploitative landlordism squeezing the working class.
The demo saw thousands take to the streets representing dozens of groups like trade unions, GMTU and their London equivalent LRU, and the Greens and Your Party.
One GMTU spokesperson told the Canary:
This letter is a horrifying but blatant example of how landlords view tenants: as nothing more than a source of profits, and proves how overdue and critical the Renters Reform Act is.
Homelessness and housing precarity is worsening in Manchester because landlords and investors seek to squeeze out every possible penny from working people across the city.
There’s still a long way to go before UK law considers housing as a human right, rather than part of someone’s investment portfolio — the abolition of Section 21 is only the first step.
Renters’ Rights Act: What does it mean for renters?
In 2022, a leading report by academics and researchers at GMTU and Greater Manchester Housing Action documented the detrimental impacts of Airbnb and similar short-term lets (STLs) in the city.
Airbnb and STL properties quadrupled across Greater Manchester between 2016 and 2020, especially in the city centre, eating into the private sector rental housing stock.
The report stated:
By the end of the decade, the transfer of long-term rental properties into the short-term sector might shut out over 4,000 households or 9,400 residents. With more than 13,000 households on the social housing waiting list home sharing platforms such as Airbnb will massively exacerbate the housing crisis.
Alongside exacerbating remaining housing inaccessibility, they also recorded an uptick in social disruption caused by STLs which cause “problems of anti-social behaviour and disruption to neighbours exist in increasing numbers outside of the city centre and are leading to the loss of family homes”.
The report notes the increasing domination of Airbnb by professional landlords and agencies which manage properties on behalf of landlords, rather than ‘hosts’ renting out spare rooms. Twelve such ‘management services’ exist in the city.
Tenant organisers at GMTU emphasise that, while housing inaccessibility is repeatedly framed as a ‘crisis’, they view it as an inevitability of a system designed by developers and for profit.
Rather than exist solely to provide housing, the property market exists as an exchange of assets. Consequently, it functions as such — especially after decades of government-led structural deregulation, privatisation, and rampant rentierism.
This is the market that Aparthotel Manchester seeks to flippantly cast renters into.
The Canary contacted the Aparthotel Manchester for comment but haven’t yet received a response.
Featured image via the Canary
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