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Issues Associated With The Private Rented Sector ( Prs ) Essay

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3. Literature Review
3.1 INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this literature review is to explore the issues associated with the private rented sector (PRS), because as noted earlier, this is now becoming a very important tenure in the overall UK housing market. Approximately, 4.9 million households in the UK are in the PRS, which has more than doubled since 2001 (Paragon 2015).
3.2 ROLE OF THE PRIVATE RENTED SECTOR (PRS)
PRS can be defined as any property that is privately owned and being rented out as housing, usually by an individual landlord, but potentially by larger commercial property organizations. For the purpose of this dissertation, one of the biggest sectors of privately rented housing, owned by large companies, student housing will not be considered. The PRS is the fastest growing sector in the country and has surpassed the social housing sector (Wilson & Johnson 2013).
The PRS is one of the three main tenures in the UK housing market, next to Social Housing and Owner Occupation. The private sector declined in size over much of the 20th century from being the majority tenure prior to the First World War to the minority one about 8 decades later (David Rhodes 2006). The decline can be attributed to a number of factors over that period, an important one being rent controls, which served to reduce the returns from letting residential property thus making is an unattractive form of investment (David Rhodes 2006).
After its decline in the 20th century, the PRS is now

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