Private Landlords Research Articles

Everyday Experiences of In-Work Poverty and Policy Responses in the Assemblage of Situations of Precarity in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract: Lived experiences of in-work poverty remain under-researched in countries such as Aotearoa New Zealand NZ. Community-orientated psychologists often argue that people experiencing such complex issues develop considerable expertise that is invaluable in efforts to reimagine effective responses. The core aim of this article is to explore participant experiences of government efforts to alleviate the negative impacts of in-work poverty on socioeconomically marginalized groups, including the emergent Māori precariat class. From the perspective of assemblage theory, this article documents how government efforts to support low-income households become territorialized within a dynamic geography of relations as experienced by 10 precariat households (9 Māori, one Cook Island Māori). The analysis is based on four interviews per household, with a total of 40 interviews across the 10 households. These interviews encompassed photo-elicitation and mapping exercises and document householder experiences of policy initiatives, including annual minimum wage rises, the introduction of healthy homes standards, and related government support initiatives. What emerges from participant accounts is considerable disappointment regarding government efforts to render assistance that do not address dysfunctional and extractive relationships between precariat households and more affluent groups, such as private landlords. Evident from the analysis is how current policies do not adequately address the relational nature of poverty and how many policies combine in the everyday lives of the precariat to cancel out potentially positive impacts on poverty reduction. We offer a series of recommendations for how participant concerns might be addressed.

The potential of prefabricated technologies for rental housing

The aim of the paper is to highlight the benefits of lean prefabricated and modular construction for the construction of rental housing by considering financial and time savings. In the current turbulent development of prices of building materials as well as banking products and availability of housing, Slovakia is facing significant problems with housing shortage, which is also addressed by foreign countries in the form of rental housing. According to Eurostat data for 2021, the ratio of rental housing in Slovakia to the total number of dwellings is the second lowest in the European Union at 7.1%, while this is mainly rental housing in properties owned by private landlords. The Act on State Support for Rental Housing sets maximum rent levels for individual regions of Slovakia, which directly affect the costs associated with construction. The paper shows that there is great potential of volumetric modular construction to solve increasing demand for rental housing. This article analyses the current state of adoption of modular construction abroad and in Slovakia by the good practice review and literature research resources review.

주택임대차 시장 상생방안

In South Korea, the domestic housing supply rate has already exceeded 100% since 2008, but the home ownership rate in 2021 still remains at 57.3%. In response to large-scale Chonse fraud, the government has come up with various solutions, but there is criticism that it is insufficient for a fundamental solution. This paper aims to derive a win-win plan between landlords and tenants in the rental market through legal and institutional improvement.
 First, it is necessary to partially restrict private landlords from freely choosing whether to register as rental businesses. Through this, it is possible to prevent a rental business operator who meets the requirements for rejection of the registration application under Article 7 (7) of the Special Act on Private Rental Housing from entering the rental market. In addition, the tenant's right to claim the return of the deposit can be substantially secured by requiring additional asset requirements for rental businesses of a certain size or larger. Although the lease system has positive factors such as a role as a residential stepping stone and a reduction in housing costs, it basically grants the right to freely dispose of a large amount during the lease period, while the legal protection for its return is insufficient. There have been various legal and institutional efforts to compensate for this, but tenants are still not sufficiently protected. The old customary Chonse was incorporated into Article 303 et seq.(Right to registered lease on a deposit basis) of the Korean Civil Code, but Chonsegwon is rarely used in practice. In terms of the protection of tenants, it is reasonable not to allow Chonse Lease. In reality, it is also possible to consider forcing the registration of leaseholds that are paid a certain amount or more of rental deposits. It is necessary to correct the practice that rental deposits are received much more than collateral purposes. Article 551 (1) of the German Civil Code restricts rental deposits not to exceed three times the rent for one month. It may also be considered to force leaseholds that are paid a certain amount or more of rental deposits to be registered.

Discrimination against people with mental, physical or visual disabilities in the French rental housing market: field experiment

We implement correspondence testing to detect and assess the extent of discrimination against people with disabilities in the French rental housing market. By sending 1,750 emails in a matched-pair procedure, we provide evidence of significant and extensive discrimination against blind people with a guide dog, individuals with mental disabilities, and individuals with motor impairments in the process of rented housing allocation. However, the primary cause of discrimination against blind individuals appears to stem from the presence of the guide dog, rather than the disability itself. Our results are also consistent with the presence of statistical discrimination (particularly based on financial means). We find that absolute discrimination against disabled applicants increases in accordance with the level of rent, while real estate agents discriminate significantly less against disabled applicants than private landlords.

An income-distributional analysis of the rent control subsidy

AbstractRent control measures are typically in place to assist low-income households and decrease segregation. Yet, there is little empirical research on the social impact of such policies and specifically the role of how rent-controlled apartments are allocated. This study analyzes the income-distributional effects of rent control with a novel dataset that includes characteristics of those who received rent-controlled apartments between 2011 and 2016 in central Stockholm, Sweden. Specifically, this paper provides analysis of the impact of allocating apartments through a centrally managed queue with apartments from both public and private landlords. To quantify the rent subsidy, we estimate hypothetical market rents by taking the owner-occupied market as a point of deviation. We find a positive relationship between the rent subsidy and time in que. Apartments in the fourth quartile of subsidy require on average 21 years in que, while those in the first quartile require 10 years on average. There is considerably heterogeneity in the level of rent subsidy, and tenant income. Even as allocating through queuing should benefit high-income households less than allocation based on landlord preferences, we find several regressive effects. Controlling for time in queue, we find that tenants in the fourth quartile of annual income receive monthly rent subsidies that are substantially higher than renters in the first quartile of income. Similarly, rental apartments in the fourth quartile of the subsidy have older tenants with substantially higher incomes compared to less subsidized apartments. The regressive effect is driven by high earners renting larger apartments with larger absolute subsidies and being able to wait longer in queue.

Ethnic discrimination during wartime: Evidence from a field experiment in the Finnish housing market

This paper presents a field experiment studying possible discrimination against Russians in the rental housing market in Finland. We study the effect of discriminatory behaviour by the landlords during the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, an event that has shaped ideas, attitudes, and behaviour. We let three fictitious individuals, one Finnish, one Russian and one British, apply for vacant rental apartments advertised by landlords on the internet. We then investigated whether there were differences between the individuals in the number of callbacks received and positive invitations to further contact. Linear probability models revealed strong evidence of differential treatment of Russians by Finnish landlords. The discriminatory behaviour is mainly driven by male, private landlords. The present study extends the literature on discrimination in the rental housing market and provides insights into its mechanisms.

Investigating the Comparative Effectiveness of Place-Based and Scatter-Site Permanent Supportive Housing for People Experiencing Homelessness During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Protocols for a Mixed Methods, Prospective Longitudinal Study.

Permanent supportive housing (PSH) is an evidence-based practice to address homelessness that is implemented using 2 distinct approaches. The first approach is place-based PSH (PB-PSH), or single-site housing placement, in which an entire building with on-site services is designated for people experiencing homelessness. The second approach is scatter-site PSH (SS-PSH), which uses apartments rented from a private landlord while providing mobile case management services. This paper describes the protocols for a mixed methods comparative effectiveness study of 2 distinct approaches to implementing PSH and the patient-centered quality of life, health care use, and health behaviors that reduce COVID-19 risk. People experiencing homelessness who are placed in either PB-PSH or SS-PSH completed 6 monthly surveys after move-in using smartphones provided by the study team. A subsample of participants completed 3 qualitative interviews at baseline, 3 months, and 6 months that included photo elicitation interviewing. Two stakeholder advisory groups, including one featuring people with lived experience of homelessness, helped guide study decisions and interpretations of findings. Study recruitment was supposed to occur over 6 months starting in January 2021 but was extended due to delays in recruitment. These delays included COVID-19 delays (eg, recruitment sites shut down due to outbreaks and study team members testing positive) and delays that may have been indirectly related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including high staff turnover or recruitment sites having competing priorities. In end-July 2022, in total, 641 people experiencing homelessness had been referred from 26 partnering recruitment sites, and 563 people experiencing homelessness had enrolled in the study and completed a baseline demographic survey. Of the 563 participants in the study, 452 had recently moved into the housing when they enrolled, with 272 placed in PB-PSH and 180 placed in SS-PSH. Another 111 participants were approved but are still waiting for housing placement. To date, 49 participants have been lost to follow-up, and 12% of phones (70 of the initial 563 distributed) were reported lost by participants. Recruitment during the pandemic, while successful, was challenging given that in-person contact was not permitted at times either by program sites or the research institutions during COVID-19 surges and high community transmission, which particularly affected homelessness programs in Los Angeles County. To overcome recruitment challenges, flexible strategies were used, which included extending the recruitment period and the distribution of cell phones with paid data plans. Given current recruitment numbers and retention rates that are over 90%, the study will be able to address a gap in the literature by considering the comparative effectiveness of PB-PSH versus SS-PSH on patient-centered quality of life, health care use, and health behaviors that reduce COVID-19 risk, which can influence future public health approaches to homelessness and infectious diseases. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04769349; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04769349. DERR1-10.2196/46782.

Networked geographies of private landlordism: mapping flows of capital accumulation and rent extraction

Recent years have seen the resurgence of private-rental housing as both a place to live, and a site of capital investment. Individual landlordism is a key feature of this resurgence. This paper aims to understand the networked geographies of private landlordism. Drawing on Dutch register data, containing geocoded information on the full population and housing stock, this paper is able to uniquely link private-rental units to their (landlord) owners. By linking landlords’ places of residence and investment, flows of capital across space are visualized. Empirically, these findings show that, despite the liquidity of capital and the typical focus on transnational investments, most landlords invest locally or regionally, resulting in urban-regional networks of landlordism. These patterns pertain to landlord spatial strategies as well as the functioning of urban systems. Conceptually, findings demonstrate that property-based class relations between tenants and landlords are spatial relations as well, linking places of accumulation with places of extraction and reproducing spatial patterns of (dis)advantage.

The uncoupling of house prices and mortgage debt: towards wealth-driven housing market dynamics

Mortgage credit has been central in fuelling housing market dynamics in many countries. While mortgage debt and house price increases used to go hand in hand, we see an uncoupling post-global financial crisis, with relative mortgage debts decreasing while house prices are increasing at unprecedented rates. This article scrutinises this uncoupling, contributing in three ways. First, we argue it is representative of how debt-driven housing dynamics have been supplemented by wealth-driven ones: while mortgage debt remains crucial, it has stagnated, and increased wealth investments have fuelled a new round of price increases. Second, we explore key examples of wealth-driven housing dynamics: the increase in private landlordism (buy-to-let), older homeowners reinvesting accumulated housing wealth and intergenerational house purchases. Third, we demonstrate that these dynamics are associated with increasing fractures along the lines of class, age and place, particularly benefiting affluent and older insiders while advancing uneven development. We base our arguments on an empirical analysis of the Netherlands, a country with a highly financialised owner-occupied market boasting one of the highest mortgage-debt-to-GDP ratios in the world, but our arguments have wider relevance. We conclude that current dynamics point to a new era of house price rentierism.

Pro-social concerns characterise landlords’ energy efficiency retrofit behaviour: evidence and implications for energy efficiency policy in Victoria, Australia

Internationally, rental properties have fewer energy efficiency features than other homes, causing unnecessary carbon emissions and poor health outcomes for tenants. Landlords are the primary decision-makers for energy efficiency retrofitting of rental properties, yet their retrofit behaviour is not well understood. We surveyed 500 small-scale private landlords in Victoria, Australia, to examine how a range of variables impacted landlords’ energy-efficient retrofitting. Landlords who installed more retrofits were more likely to have greater concern for tenants’ comfort, a relationship with the tenant, or greater knowledge of property conditions. Despite the existing literature and in contrast to the research on owner-occupiers, financial variables, environmental concerns, and sociodemographic variables were not associated with landlords’ retrofitting. We propose that policies may be more effective if they are framed in pro-social (rather than pro-environmental or financial terms) and convey information about the impact of property conditions on tenants’ wellbeing.

Exploring Student Housing Demand, Supply Side and Planning Policy Responses in a Small University City: Studentification in Durham, UK

Growth in the number of university students has increased demand for accommodation beyond that which universities themselves can provide, provoking private investor supply-side responses such as houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) and purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA). Such developments can lead to high concentrations of students in areas proximate to university colleges and campuses. The movement of large numbers of transitory students into well-established residential areas in university cities, termed studentification, leads to socioeconomic and physical changes. We deploy a mixed-methods approach to analyze qualitative and quantitative data, exploring the role of market participants and revealing the extent and impact of studentification in Durham, a small historic university city in North East England with a high relative student population. The research confirms that studentification was driven by key actors across two distinct phases: conversion of terraced houses into HMOs by private landlords, subsequently restricted by planning regulations, followed by development of PBSA by institutional investors supported by and in collaboration with the local authority and university. Consequently, studentification in Durham has become more dispersed, resulting in increased house prices, rents and competition for investment opportunities farther afield, causing exclusionary displacement of local residents and reducing the supply of family and social housing. We present a detailed timeline of studentification in Durham and reveal a new geography of studentification that extends to peripheral areas of the city and offer some salutary lessons in respect of planning and housing management policy responses to high demand for student accommodation.

How to improve energy efficiency policies to address energy poverty? Literature and stakeholder insights for private rented housing in Europe

Households in the private rented sector (i.e., households renting properties at a market rate from a private landlord), and especially those of lower income, face far more energy poverty issues than the general population, meaning that they are often unable to afford socially and materially required levels of energy services. In this context, energy efficiency policies are of the outmost importance as they can improve households' living conditions and contribute to the alleviation of energy poverty. Nevertheless, when it comes to the private rented sector across Europe, implementing such policies is hindered by several barriers. Our article sheds light on structural factors that serve as barriers to, and solutions for, the implementation of energy efficiency policies in the private rented sector across Europe. Our approach is twofold: first, an in-depth desk research is performed to identify financial, social, political/regulatory, and technical barriers and solutions. Literature findings are then supplemented and validated by a European-wide survey, eliciting knowledge embedded in 64 relevant stakeholders and field experts. Our findings indicate that although financial barriers are always of the essence, a holistic assessment of barriers is required, as there is a lack of awareness about policies that could improve tenants' living conditions. They also provide possible solutions that governmental bodies at all levels and other organisations could implement to improve energy efficiency and tackle energy poverty. Overall, our work suggests key implications, which, if acted upon, could accelerate the deployment of energy efficiency policies in the private rented sector across Europe.

Neighbourhood rental market integration and private rent trajectories – evidence from the city of Vienna

ABSTRACT The urban housing regime in Vienna is often regarded as one of the last integrated rental markets once described by Kemeny. Thus, according to the theory, private landlords should be forced to charge lower rents due to direct competition from the social sector. This paper formally tests this hypothesis on a very local level by linking private rent trajectories across Viennese subdistricts to their housing market structure while controlling for possible effects of location, initial prices and socioeconomic variation. Indeed significant evidence for a price dampening effect is found, as higher shares of limited-profit housing within the local rental market substantially increase the probability of a subdistrict joining a lower rent development path. However, the magnitude of the effect increases considerably for more peripheral locations associated to less demand pressure. A similar relationship is found for municipal housing, but with much lower impact, most likely due to comparatively stronger entry barriers. Thus this paper concludes a price dampening neighbourhood effect which varies with the openness of the social housing supply and the centrality of the location.

The changing image of the UK private landlord with the buy to let revolution

There has been a long-standing negative image associated with private landlords. Private rented housing in the UK expanded dramatically after the millennium with the wide availability of buy-to-let mortgages. New types of people were attracted to private landlordism. It was arguably an opportunity to turn the page on historic negativity. However, these landlords were often seen as ‘get-rich-quick’ speculators. Our study combines historical analysis of media items, a review of legislation and an interview survey of landlords. It addresses to what extent the image of landlords has changed, discusses the response of government regulation to the BTL revolution and how it has been conditioned by perceptions about landlords. The study finds that the buy-to-let revolution has not fundamentally changed public perceptions of landlords, and the media still portray landlords with the ‘rogue’ epithet, a seemingly inevitable part of the headline. It has coloured public and political perspectives. Interviews with landlords reveal a resignation and sanguinity about their public image, which they see as belying their contribution to society. The negative perceptions have contributed to public policy bringing a string of consumer rights for tenants and attacking speculation by increasing taxation on landlords. In addition, there is a continuing narrative of ‘rogue landlords’ that has obliged the government to take specific measures to address this perceived problem. However, the landlords’ responses suggest that perceptions alone are unlikely to deter current or future landlords. Despite the recent policy changes private landlordism is a profitable activity.

Socio-spatial stratification of housing tenure trajectories in Sweden - A longitudinal cohort study.

Individuals tend to be most mobile when they are between 20 and 40 years of age. This pattern is relatively stable across regions and over time. For geographical mobility, less is known about their transitions between different types of housing and tenure forms. In Sweden, households may select between, principally, three different types of tenure forms, each often coupled with a specific housing type. Households may rent from either public companies (municipality owned) or private landlords in multifamily dwellings, households may own their single-family house privately, or they can cooperatively own a multifamily house as a tenant-owner in an apartment. Yet we lack knowledge of which tenure trajectories individuals tend to follow during their most mobile years, and we also lack knowledge about which factors determine tenure trajectories. Our sample consist of individuals who in 1995 were aged 18-25 and who left their parental house between 1994 and 1995. This study tracks their tenure trajectories for 21 consecutive years starting in 1995 until 2015. The cohorts in our sample were the first who encountered the conditions on the deregulated housing market that are still in place in Sweden today. We followed these cohorts until they were between 39 and 46 years old and used sequence analysis to classify tenure trajectories. One result that stands out is the outstanding and increasing emphasis on home ownership in our sample, quite unlike the traditional picture of the Swedish housing market. Additionally, we found that resources in a broad sense and spatial context have a great impact on the type of trajectory individuals follow.

Changing places: the generative effects of community embeddedness in place

ABSTRACT How social structures and relations influence entrepreneurship is an enduring puzzle. The history of land ownership in Scotland is marked by tensions between the institutional legacy of private landlordism and community embeddedness in place. In this paper, I examine the development of a community venture that was established to buy and commit land that was formerly privately owned into community ownership, and then manage the land in perpetuity for community benefit. The methodology employs archival, interview and observation data to investigate how institutional legacy social structures and relations motivated and shaped community entrepreneurship. The Scottish historical context elaborates the influence of institutional legacy on the embeddedness in place perspective, and the effects of transcending institutional legacy on entrepreneurial flourishing and institutional change.

Landlord Elites on the Dutch Housing Market: Private Landlordism, Class, and Social Inequality

The past decade has seen a revival of private renting across a wide range of countries and housing regimes. Economic and housing restructuring has enhanced rental housing’s appeal as an investment class. Apart from an increase in investment from firms, institutions, and trusts, this has triggered a revival of private landlordism among individuals and households. Yet, few detailed studies on the social, demographic, and economic profiles of landlords exist. To fill this gap and understand landlords’ class position, this article draws on Dutch register data with information on the entire Dutch population and housing stock. Analyses of their socioeconomic characteristics reveal the highly privileged class position of many landlords, with a substantial portion found in top income, wealth, and neighborhood positions. One-third of the top wealth percentile—the Dutch top 1 percent—consists of landlords, underscoring their vast economic power. Although landlords with larger housing portfolios are notably more affluent, small-scale landlords are also highly overrepresented in the upper economic strata. Fundamentally, this article’s findings urge us to consider landlordism specifically, and housing more broadly, in terms of class formation and delineation, with a class of landlord elites mobilizing multiple properties for the purpose of wealth accumulation and class reproduction.

Resource geography III: Rentier natures and the renewal of class struggle

There is renewed attention to the importance of rent to understanding capitalist resource geographies. In this report, I ground these discussions in Marx’s theory of “ground rent” and specifically the role of the landlord class as owners of natural forces demanding a “share” of the social surplus (as distinct from the capitalist and working classes). I review emergent literature about three key kinds of rentiers—private landowners, landlord states, and capitalist resource rentiers. I suggest the category of capitalist resource rentier confounds a Marxist class analysis centered on capitalists as the owners of the means of production.

Energy efficiency in the private rental sector in Victoria, Australia: When and why do small-scale private landlords retrofit?

Energy efficiency in private rental properties is lower than that of owner-occupied homes. As landlords are the primary decision-makers for improving rental properties, understanding their energy efficiency behaviour is critical to improving the uptake of energy efficiency retrofits in the private rental sector. However, little is known about how landlords make decisions about energy efficiency retrofits. The study aims to understand when and why landlords decide to retrofit and identify policy implications, using the private rental sector in Victoria as a case study. The results show that proactive retrofitting by landlords is rare and that the retrofits undertaken were generally low-cost, incremental energy efficiency improvements. Most retrofit activity was prompted by government subsidies, tenant requests, or appliance breakdown. Despite its significance for energy efficiency, retrofitting behaviour was not related to environmental values. Instead, landlords considered financial implications and tenants' needs. However, landlords who used property managers had little understanding of tenants' needs. Policymakers can use this understanding of landlords' behaviour by creating new retrofit prompts and highlighting the impacts of energy inefficiency on tenants' wellbeing. Transitioning the private rental sector to low-energy housing requires integrated policy to change the behaviour of landlords, tenants, and property managers.

The role of private landlords in making a rented house a home

The growth of the private rented sector (PRS) since the 2000s in countries with lightly regulated markets has led to significant questions over its ability to provide a homely environment for tenants. Much of the research in this area argues that legal frameworks, lack of regulation and financial motives of landlords are not conducive to the provision of homes which are secure, affordable, good quality and which offer tenants an opportunity to meet their health and wellbeing needs. This is despite legislative changes that seek to raise standards in the sector and promote greater professionalisation. This paper presents findings from an evidence review of research concerning home within the PRS across OECD countries. Rather than focusing on the experiences of tenants, it considers the impacts of landlord and letting agent behaviours on tenants’ ability to make their rented house a home. We argue that landlords and letting agents can play a positive role in helping their tenants create a home, and that this offers benefits for both landlords and renters.