Landlords and Property: Social Relations in the Private Rented Sector

Examining the types of landlords in the market, the scope of their activities, and the choices and constraints that guide their actions, this study provides an anatomy of private landlordism today, an important but misunderstood aspect of contemporary British society. The authors show how the pattern of change in the private rented sector has not been one of straightforward decline, but of structural unevenness shaped by a combination of three general processes--disinvestment, investment, and informalization. In their study of the changing structure of private renting in two local housing markets, they adopt a realist methodological approach to capture both the general character of landlordism and the processes that shape the private rented sector.