I did something last week that I haven’t done for about twenty-odd years. And because there’s so much doom and gloom in the world at the moment, I’m going to invite you to have a chuckle at my expense by guessing what it was. Fringe-combing perhaps? Toe-touching maybe? What about buying a round of drinks? Or did you immediately start thinking of something more ribald (you should be ashamed of yourself)?

Well, I hate to disappoint you, but the correct answer is ‘play Monopoly’. Now, I’ll admit it’s not the most startling of revelations, but I have to say it proved to be quite the trip down memory lane. And I suspect that many of you already know that the Monopoly game we used to play as kids has undergone something of a 21st-century makeover. However, at its core, I’m glad to say it’s still the same game I cheated at disgracefully as a young boy.

I slipped back into the old routines very quickly, insisting on the metal car as my counter of choice, refusing to leave the room at any point for fear of someone illegally raiding the bank and stropping loudly whenever I received a large tax bill. By the end of the game, with only two of us left playing, my daughter and I had each accrued a fairly impressive portfolio of cash and property. Before long, we’d reached the familiar two-player tightrope, where we each tried to avoid landing on each other’s hotels. And in a surprising and rather shrewd tactical move, my daughter elected to spend as much time as possible in jail. While she was trying hard not to get out, I was traipsing around the board, clocking up substantial rental fees as I landed on her various estates. I knew the game was up when my second visit to her hotel on Piccadilly left me mortgaged to the hilt with just £20 and an ironic get-out-of-jail-free card to my name. Needless to say, my next move took me via Oxford Street into bankruptcy as my daughter looked on gleefully from the comfort of her corner cell.

Now, you won’t need me to tell you that while the benefits of being a successful landlord in Monopoly have remained relatively consistent since 1935, the same can’t be said of being a real-world landlord in the UK. The last few years have seen an unprecedented exodus of landlords as successive governments have made it increasingly hard for them to turn a profit. According to analytics firm TwentyCi, the number of UK properties available to let decreased by nearly 20% in the year to March 2025 as landlords continued to sell off their unprofitable assets. This left a total of 284,000 available properties available to let, which is some 23% lower than before the pandemic.