The private rented sector of the housing market, for all its overall decline, has remained an object of interest and fascination to researchers in a wide range of disciplines. Each, from their own perspective, have attempted to describe and explain the key attributes of this decline. What we hope we have done here is to provide a new perspective, a different way of looking at the changes that have taken place in this sector of the market since 1945. The arguments in this book cross established disciplinary boundaries. We draw upon evidence from many areas but if we are to be classified at all we fall into what may be termed the ‘new geography’ with its concern to link the particular to the general; that is to preserve both aspects of social change in one explanation. We attempt to explain the general decline of the private rented market in Britain, the wider processes of investment and disinvestment which lie behind the decline, without losing sight of particular form that the processes have taken in different local housing markets.

This book is the end product of an enjoyable research collaboration between the two authors over a six year period at the Open University.