The rental market in an industrialising city: Working paper

As the industrial park aims to double in size in the coming years, the key barrier for a future expansion of private rental housing seems to be the availability of credit. [...] Further, Figure 4 shows, the bulk of this increase has happened for rents in the bottom part of the distribution, consistent with an increased demand for low-cost housing on part of the workers of the industrial park. [...] 3.4 Barriers to further expansion of the rental market Our fourth finding is that the most important barrier to a further expansion of the housing stock allocated to the rental market is lack of finance. [...] The lack of finance reported by landlords is consistent with the the most common source of funding to build the existing rented units was the landlord?s own savings. [...] While there have been problems with the scheme (in particular, with the quality of the houses built), the take-up of the program was encouraging.