“I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it” wrote Shakespeare in As You Like It. And it may be that the British are now getting to like a new kind of place to live in, one already much better known in many other parts of Europe and North America.

The private rented sector (PRS), institutionally-owned and professionally-managed developments of rental homes (known as multifamily housing almost everywhere else, but what’s in a name), is now finally taking root in the United Kingdom.

A new product for the nation

Rental accommodation in the United Kingdom has traditionally been delivered by social housing providers and a fragmented army of individual and small-scale buy-to-let investors — more than 2 million of them. In 2013, for the first time, the latter provided more homes than the former as rates of social housing, as well as home ownership, continued to fall — a trend that has been dubbed “generation rent”.

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