ABSTRACT
The above descriptions of the rental systems of a number of countries are, with the exception of Sweden, sketchy and preliminary. There is very little data on the workings of unitary rental markets. This is mainly because, as we have seen, the concept is new and so the empirical data that has been collected has not addressed the specific issues that such a system throws up. As a result, little or no research has been done on them. Most importantly, because housing researchers have used an anglosaxon paradigm they have in general failed to ask the right questions and so not collected the relevant data. In this sense, the comparative rental housing literature is a classic case of a conservative dominant paradigm that selects which facts are of interest and then produces findings which confirm the validity of the paradigm. A few general observations can be made, however.
