Becoming a landlord : strategies of property-based welfare in the private rental sector in Great Britain

This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust [grant number RP2011-IJ-024].Ongoing neoliberal policies have realigned the links between housing and welfare, positioning residential property investment––commonly through homeownership and exceptionally also through landlordism––at the core of households’ asset-building strategies. Nonetheless the private rented sector (PRS) has been commonly portrayed as a tenure option for tenants rather than a welfare strategy for landlords. Drawing on qualitative interviews with landlords across Great Britain, we explore landlords’ different motivations in engaging in landlordism; and the ways in which their property-based welfare strategies are shaped by the particular intersection of individual socioeconomic and life-course circumstances, and the broader socioeconomic and financial environment. By employing a constructionist grounded approach to research, our study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the different ways that asset-based welfare strategies operate within the PRS. We draw attention to an understudied nexus between homeownership and landlordism which we argue represents a promising route for future research.PostprintPeer reviewe