Public intervention in the rental housing market: a review of international experience

David López-Rodríguez () and María Matea Rosa
Additional contact information
David López-Rodríguez: Banco de España

No 2002, Occasional Papers from Banco de España

Abstract: In recent years, residential rental prices have experienced remarkable growth in many of the major metropolitan areas of advanced economies. On occasions, these increases in rental prices have caused a significant increase in the cost of rental housing in the household consumption basket and difficulties in access to housing for certain groups. In this context, there has been a resurgence of the debate about the role of public policies in the rental housing market, designed to mitigate both the problems of access to housing and the potential negative effects of the growth of rental prices on workers’ mobility or on the macro-financial stability of the economy. In this paper we review the main instruments of public intervention in the residential rental market, in the light of international experience among the main advanced economies. Broadly speaking, the different policies can be classified into three main groups: rent controls; public provision of rental housing; and a wide range of heterogeneous measures aimed at both incentivising the supply of private rental housing and containing the increase in household spending caused by rising rents. The experience accumulated over decades in the development of these policies and the increasing availability of quantitative evaluations of their impact illustrate some of the implementation challenges presented by support policies for residential rentals, as well as the wanted and unwanted consequences associated with this type of intervention.

Keywords: rental market; rent control; public provision of housing; incentives for housing rental (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H20 H42 K12 K23 K25 O18 R21 R31 R38 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2020-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bde.es/f/webbde/SES/Secciones/Publicac ... 20/Files/do2002e.pdf First version, March 2020 (application/pdf)
https://www.bde.es/f/webbde/SES/Secciones/Publicac ... s/20/Fich/do2002.pdf Spanish version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bde:opaper:2002e

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Occasional Papers from Banco de España Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ángel Rodríguez. Electronic Dissemination of Information Unit. Research Department. Banco de España ().