In Denmark, the rental market consists of (a) people who move out of a property (due to marriage, job change, etc.) but do not wish to sell due to contemporary market conditions, (b) pension funds and similar institutional investors (who like rental property because it's a nice hedge against rising housing costs for their subscribers), (c) various forms of private and semi-private cooperatives and (d) public housing, which serves as a (price) buffer and provides capacity to re-house homeless quickly.

And then you have a variety of intermediate forms between full ownership and leases, such as andelsboliger where you have a group of owners who leverage their greater collective income security and bargaining power into cheaper loans.

- Jake

If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.