Private Rented Sector

The private rental sector covers anyone who rents from a private landlord. In some cases, such as for some housing associations that manage mix-tenure developments, this means that social landlord can be someone’s private landlord.In the U.K., the PRS is largely unregulated, with very few protections in place for private renters.

The Private Rented Sector (PRS) is a growing tenure type: over the next four years, the number of properties in the PRS is set to increase by 24%. Significantly, 40.2% of properties bought through Right to Buy are now rented on the private market.

While council housing faces the highest rates of damp and mould within London, households in the PRS consistently have the highest rate of damp problems as a national average. These statistics come from the English Housing Survey, which as others have noted have markedly lower figures most other estimates of household dampness. For instance, the UK Centre for Moisture in Buildings underscore that the figure reported by surveyors is much lower.