Policy Drivers of the Retreat and Revival of Private Renting: Regulation, Finance, Taxes and Subsidies

Until the early of 20th Century the vast majority of Irish households in both urban and rural areas rented their homes from for profit, private landlords. Census data on housing tenure was first collected 1946 and these reveal that the private rented sector contracted steadily for most of the 20th Century. It accommodated 26.1 per cent of households in 1946 but just 8.1 per cent in 1991. In recent years this trend has reversed and the private rented sector has begun to grow. 11.4 per cent of households were private renters according to the 2002 census and this rose to 18.6 per cent by 2011. The research evidence identifies a number of social, economic and spatial factors which influence the size of the private rented sector. These include: the extent of urbanisation; the density of dwellings and the proportion of apartments in the housing stock; historic norms and the strong tendency for housing systems to adhere to a stable developmental trajectory and not to change course (‘path dependency’ in policy analysis parlance); the generosity or parsimoniousness of the welfare state and the attractiveness and affordability of the private rented sector as a place to live compared to other tenures and as an investment compared to other investment vehicles.