Is there a specific issue? Yes, it’s the total blindness as to the known issues of using adaptive and infinite production theories of supply and demand to the finite properties of land with the consequence that as scarcity increases ( as Mark Twain rightly observed, ‘buy land they don’t make it any more’) so will its value and therefore attract even more money away from lower yielding investments of the far riskier stock market and low yield bond market.

“Now in 2020 with no controls over this behemoth we have to somehow put the genie back in the bottle”.

There were also assumptions that base rates and inflation would remain between 5-10% as did the endowment industry. At no point did they look to housing associations who to this day have a form of rent control based on 3% of market value as a maximum annual rent along with many leases stating that rent on shared ownership can rise no more than RPI inflation per annum.

But in this case all the eggs went in the one RPS basket.

So after this rant this brings me back to the original question; What is the point of private rental sector?

Is it to pay landlords mortgages via income from the productive labour of the tenant? Whilst the same mortgage lenders state that the productive labour of the tenant is insufficient to purchase the same house, even though the amount paid to the landlord as rent is often same as the mortgage?

And same applies to institutional landlords who claim to be offering a service whilst offering high returns for their investors who at that point are literally doing nothing, but gaining an income from others labour.