ABSTRACT
Housing surveys provide useful data on the tenants of private rental housing but far less information about landlords. Partly this is because most surveys collect characteristics of occupiers rather than owners. But also tracing landlords in order to interview is often difficult as, for example, various enquiries in Britain have discovered. Data for the social rented sector is only available for Denmark, the Netherlands, France and Britain. In France, Denmark and the Netherlands access appeared to be reasonable for younger households. In France and Britain there were older, controlled private rented units which new tenants were not normally eligible for. So the average age of households in this sub-sector was high. In France the post war rental stock housed many younger households. The growth of social rented housing had certainly not drained off a disproportionate number of the least well off from the private rented sector, leaving the latter to deal with the more solvent demand.
