A sixth of the UK's population - some 10m people - now live in accommodation rented from private landlords. This proportion has roughly doubled since 2000.
This growth is predicted to continue rising, according to a report published today by property group Knight Frank.
Knight Frank's figures reflect the reversal in the trend of home ownership, which grew to a peak of 69pc of all UK households in 2001, but has since tumbled and is now below 65pc.
Knight Frank says 17pc of the UK's households rent in the private sector, up from around the 8pc level where it had previously stabilised through much of the 1990s.
By region the change is more diverse with the most expensive areas - such as major cities and the south east - seeing the proportion of private tenants leap far more.
In London the proportion of households renting privately has more than doubled from below 10pc in 2001 to over 20pc in 2011, the latest date for which data is presented. In the three years since the proportion will have grown further thanks to the capital's explosive price rises.
The increase in private renting appears to have accelerated since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008 (see graph, below). Knight Frank attributes this to "clampdown in mortgage lending" but also to "a mix of the scrapping of rent controls, the proliferation of buy-to-let mortgages and rising prices in relation to earnings."
Knight Frank added: "Those with high levels of equity or cash were much less affected by the credit crunch and as such were in a position to invest in rental property, underlining the role that equity has played in the expansion of the sector."
There is also evidence of a stark decline in renting from local authorities (green line) as housing stock controlled by councils continued to dwindle.
Elsewhere in the report, which focused on the major urban centres of Leeds, Bristol, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester and London, Knight Frank analysed total returns to landlords, which it put - in the first of what it says will become an ongoing index - at an average 11.3pc for the year ending December 2013.
This was based on flats within blocks, and comprised both rental returns and an increase in value.