The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) published its quarterly survey of 195 private registered landlords for April to June 2026 on 3 September, and its own summary carries both halves of the argument1. Cash interest cover fell further, to 59%. The regulator attributes the fall mainly to annual costs falling due in that quarter, and says recovery in margins and interest cover "continues to be slower than previously forecast".
59% measures how much cash a landlord has left once it has paid the interest on its loans. These are the bodies that build and maintain affordable housing. The margin between what they earn and what they owe is thinner than it was, and a landlord with less headroom mends fewer roofs in a year, or borrows to mend them.
In the same three months the sector raised £4.3bn, including £2.2bn of bank lending, and lifted its twelve-month development forecast to £16.0bn, a 16% increase on the previous forecast and the highest in three years, of which £5.1bn is uncommitted. New-build investment in the quarter itself fell slightly, to £3.1bn. Capacity to service debt is falling while stated ambition to build reaches a three-year high, and neither this desk nor the regulator can say which of the two gives way first.
RSH's quarterly survey reaches this ledger for the first time. Last year the regulator declined to publish a sector-wide viability spread at all, citing an incomplete first year of data, so a topic that had no quarterly reading of landlord finances now has one. Hold on to the phrase "slower than previously forecast", because it marks one forecast against another, which is what most of the numbers in circulation this fortnight are doing.
