The Department of the Environment's 1987 white paper Housing: the Government's Proposals set out goals of reversing the decline in rented housing and improving its quality; giving council tenants the right to transfer to other landlords if they so desired; targeting money more accurately on the most acute problems; and encouraging the growth of home ownership.

The latter is preferred by most private sector landlords, as it gives them the right to end the tenancy at any time after service of a section 21 notice.

[5] The Housing Act 1988 dramatically changed three main areas of English property law in particular, namely: rent regulation, succession and security of tenure.

[dubious – discuss][citation needed] What’s more, landlords now have the ability to increase rents without using the notice procedure, opting instead to do so via a ‘renewal’ tenancy agreement.

The amendments made as part of the Housing Act, and the rebalancing of power this caused, are one of the major reasons rental prices have grown so rapidly since the late 1980s.

With this type of tenancy, succession rights have become irrelevant precisely because the landlord now has the power to serve a section 21 notice to evict the tenant through the courts.