The boss of one of the biggest institutional landlords has told its shareholders that it’s being boosted by the Renters Rights Act. 

Helen Gordon, chief executive at Grainger, announced strong half year results for her company and says: “Earlier this month the new Renters Rights Act took effect, which we have supported from the beginning. 

“The new legislation strikes a balance between tenant and landlord rights, albeit it is contributing to structural changes in the sector with smaller, private landlords exiting, and larger scale, professional landlords gaining market share.

“… Grainger’s rental income is underpinned by wage inflation, with a diversified, growing customer base and targeted asset clusters in the UK’s biggest cities. 

“We have limited energy cost exposure, insulating us and our customers from inflationary cost pressures over the coming months. 

“We remain focused on our financial discipline and have a clear capital allocation strategy designed to deliver shareholder value, with a focus on reducing net debt from our disposals programme in order to offset higher interest rates as our low-cost debt facilities mature. 

“And as we complete our committed pipeline of high quality Build To Rent schemes our earnings will grow as we leverage our sector-leading operational platform.”

Grainger is the UK’s only listed, scaled, BTR operation and Gordon says the firm “continues to benefit from a structurally undersupplied rental market and long‑duration, inflation‑linked income. The outlook for Grainger is excellent.”

The firm’s figures make happy reading for its shareholders.

In the six months ending March 31 this year the Newcastle-headquartered business generated net rental income of £66.1m.

That’s up from £61.3m in the prior year.

EPRA Earnings were up 4% to £31.4m.

Following an outward yield shift and subsequent modest valuation decline, an IFRS loss of £14.6m was recorded, down from a profit of £74m. 

Despite this, the company raised its dividend by 3% to 2.94p per share.