They provide a place to live that you can move into almost immediately with little upfront money, and with no worry about any maintenance costs that are associated with owning a property.
It’s very useful for social mobility as it allows people to move around for work relatively easy if they plan on relocating, especially when they’re young.
Buying a property not only takes a sizeable upfront amount of capital but it’s also a very slow process. I think it took 6 or 7 months for us to go from putting an offer in to getting the keys.
That’s the service and that’s why a rental market is important. I’m not defending scrupulous landlords here, they’re 100% an issue and there definitely needs to be changes to address that.