The supply of council housing over recent years has become increasingly dependent on re-lets of the existing stock, due to sharp reductions in new building by local authorities. This paper sets out a hypothesis for the determinants of re-let supply in terms of the characteristics of council tenants and local market factors. This hypothesis is tested for English local authorities between 1980 and 1987 using correlation and regression analyses. The behavioural model thus developed can explain 60 per cent of the variation in re-let rates between districts outside London. The most important factors are shown to be the household structure of existing council tenants and the level of house prices in the local private housing market.
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