A think tank claims that the raft of studies by agents and professional bodies are all wrong – and the private rental sector is growing in size, not reducing.

The Joseph Rowntree Federation (JRF)  says its analysis of government data puts the private rented sector in England at its largest in decades. 

And it claims Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s (MHCLG) dwelling stock estimates show the sector passing five million homes for the first time in decades in 2025.

The JRF says that the total saw growth of around 45,000 homes a year on average since 2021.

The federation admits that’s just a quarter of the annual average increase between 2005 and 2015 (around 200,000 homes a year) but is “nonetheless continued growth, not contraction.”

It says the English Housing Survey estimates of the number of private-renting households a similar story, although those figures actually show 4.7m private rental households in 2024/25, up by around 55,000 a year on average since 2021/22.

The federation also looks at data cited by the likes of the National Residential Landlord Association, Knight Frank, Hamptons, property consultancy TwentyCi and Handelsbanken – but suggests “there are several reasons to be cautious about putting too much weight on these data.”

The JRF then concludes: “None of the available data support with any real weight the idea that the PRS is shrinking, and the most recent official data available in fact shows the sector continuing to grow, albeit at a slower rate than previously.”

There is at least acceptance that whatever the sector’s size, there is evidence that demand exceeds supply.

And the federation’s research ends with the assertion that most renters would welcome the building of more affordable homes so they could buy.

And interestingly, JRF cites NRLA research on this subject to apparently provide the point – and on this occasion it does not appear to doubt the data’s validity.

You can see the full research here: https://www.jrf.org.uk/housing/whats-really-happening-to-the-size-of-the-private-rented-sector