The private rental sector should be nurtured and encouraged to expand, according to one industry expert.

Buy-to-let investors, private landlords and lettings agents should be given more government assistance during the current economic downturn, according to founder of upad.co.uk James Davis.

He said that both landlords and tenants would benefit from the steady expansion of the buy-to-let property market.

"We need to attract landlords into the market place rather than push them away," he said.

He added that in Europe rental markets tend to be much larger than they are in the UK, with France''s private rental sector twice the size and Germany''s three times as big.

According to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors'' Residential Lettings Survey from November, there were 20 per cent more new tenants in the three months to the end of August.

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