The Institute for Fiscal Studies has issued a stark warning to policymakers flirting with rent controls: cap what landlords can charge tenants, and you will simultaneously cap what a property is worth. The think tank's analysis, released as ministers weigh further intervention in the private rented sector beyond the Renters' Rights Bill, argues that rental income and capital value are two sides of the same coin. Suppress one and the other follows. For a market still recalibrating after the mortgage rate shocks of 2022–23, this is not an academic footnote — it is a direct signal to the millions of households with equity tied up in rental property, and to the institutional capital increasingly flowing into UK residential stock.