It is well known that over the last few years profound changes have taken hold in legislation to the rented housing market in Italy. In actual fact, this market has been progressively liberalized and new rules have been introduced to assist low-income families, either by way of direct benefits or through tax concessions for property-owners. The main area of change within this project may be briefly listed as follows. The housing phenomenon and the analysis of demand (public or private, deriving from university students and disadvantaged social groups);tthe structure of the rented housing market (its size, the impact of this sector on the total housing stock, the impact of the secondary rent-housing market periodically rented out to the business community and the student population on the total estate) and the levels of the free and controlled rent markets; the national social fund (demand, need and efficiency); the tenant's level of income and the impact of rent levels on that income; returns from investments in rented property. This paper proposes to present the results of research on rented housing, both with regards to demand (through data collected by sample surveys of tenant families resident in the Piedmont Region) and supply (through analysis of the attractiveness of rental investments for property-owners), while also considering the impact of the new legislation proposed.