Rental housing is increasingly becoming the key shelter option for the poor living in and moving into cities, including those living in informal settlements. The paper revisits the production of rental housing in informal settlements within the new contours of a neo-liberalism with stronger social agendas in Latin America drawing on the case of landlords in Brazilian favelas. The contributions of the paper are twofold: first, it explores the different elements impacting the development of rental housing in informal settlements in Brazil, from the socio-economic to the political, from the state to the intra-settlement dynamics; and second, it assesses how these conditions determine the way landlords operate and produce rental housing. The analyses add to our understanding of the contemporary forms of housing informality reproduction in emerging economies and how individuals pervade the circuits of market and survival constructing their livelihoods on the basis of the economic and social resources from renting.