Housing Investment Trusts: A New Structure of Rental Housing Provision?

Recent governments in Britain have sought to attract financial institutions into private rental housing in order to increase the scale, professionalism and reputation of the sector and thereby to 'modernise' private landlordism. In 1996, in order to provide an attractive vehicle for the financial institutions to invest in the sector, the government introduced legislation permitting the establishment of housing investment trusts. These residential property companies have a reduced tax liability compared with normal property companies. However, no housing investment trusts have so far been established and none seem likely to be set up. This paper reports on qualitative interviews with financial institutions to examine why housing investment trusts have proved to be a policy failure. It is argued that the rules governing such trusts did not reflect the normal operations of a property company and that the existing structure of housing provision in the private rented sector was itself an obstacle to the modernisation of private landlordism.