In the 1970s, private landlordism in the UK was a fringe part of the market – and a dying one. With council housing plentiful and house prices within the range of those with decent, working-class jobs, we did not need private landlords. In the mid-1970s, the Conservative Policy Council had written that their decline was “quite irreversible” and that within a generation they would be “as extinct as the dinosaur”.
This prediction has proved to be among the worst ever made about the UK housing market. Since then, our reliance on private landlords has exploded. They are now the first port of call for everyone in the market who cannot afford to buy: students, graduates, families, pensioners, refugees and more. There are 2.8 million private landlords in Britain – almost twice as many people as work for NHS England and almost four times the UK’s entire workforce of teachers.
