The Speaker’s Corner article in this issue by Richard Green of Venn Partners explains how consumer attitudes to renting residential housing in the United Kingdom are changing. The private rented sector (PRS) is gaining ground as a result of supply/demand pressures in the housing market and of difficulties for prospective homeowners in obtaining mortgage finance against a background of limited supply and high house prices.

In other principal real estate markets around the world, rented single- and multifamily residential housing in urban areas is an accepted asset class for investors, but that is only slowly becoming the case in the United Kingdom. Early issues for investors of a lack of scale and a dearth of quality units have been addressed, however, and the increasing incidence of the kind of build-to-rent (BTR) development projects that institutional investors can buy into, in both respects, means that a critical mass is now building up. Several recent BTR project announ