[marvin]

Norway is mostly the same these days. Maybe it's a Northern European phenomenon. Of course, there is an upside to this: By renting, you are not taking on the risk of a fall in real estate prices. But I'm not sure if the fewer rights make up for it. You can't be "evicted" for no reason over here, but to my understanding it is legal to have renting contracts with a 1-month notice to termination. So it's more or less the same situation.

[mpclark]

I get the feeling that the government in the UK is managing the economy solely to make sure house prices do not fall as that would cause a national crisis at this point. Under any other circumstances they would surely have collapsed by now.

The other problem is that the rental stock in the UK is managed almost exclusively by amateur landlords, which leads to petty restrictions (no pets, no smoking, no drilling, no decorating etc), attempts to sell houses out from under the occupier ("You don't mind if we show some people round every now and then, do you?" The hell I don't!) and hard-to-quantify risks (I know somebody with an older landlord who is now undergoing another round of treatment for cancer; putting the human tragedy aside, should they start looking for another place now, or can they wait a while?)