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The downside is they’ll just be bought up by corporations who will be even shittier landlords.
If the market is adequately regulated they wont be shittier landlords. There somehow is this romantic idea of smaller scale landlords to be like the good old guy that want to help a family find a good place and accept a modest profit. They exist, but the majority are just equally cutthroat like large corpos. Difference is that large corps have more means to be strategic about it and accept risks like 5% of tenants suing successfully while the rest just accepts the illegal treatment.
If the market is adequately regulated
Well there’s your first mistake lol
It is not an argument against regulation though. Regulation of markets like housing and healthcare, is reasonable and necessary. These cannot work as free markets because the one side has their life depending on it, wheras the other just can have another customer.
Let me tell you how it works in the real world right here right now in the UK. Large corpos set targets on how many rentals they want to acquire. For example, Lloyds announced a few years ago that they’re building a portfolio of 50k properties. Yes, fifty fucking thousand homes!
And so small landlords are forced to sell due to changes in the law. Corporate investors buy them in an instant at full asking price or even higher to ensure that property value doesn’t go down and so you, a mere mortal, can’t buy shit.
Next, they freeze the properties and don’t release anything on the market. That creates an insane housing shortage and rental prices go through the roof. A few years later they will start introducing their portfolio to the market slowly to avoid crashes at 2-5x price compared to just last year. People are desperate and pay through the nose.
Boom! Mega profits! What is your 3% yearly cap when they just jacked up the price five times? It will take many years to make a dent.
You know what would help against that? regulating how much property a company can acquire in an area. within a certain timeframe. Or regulating that the land tax and similiar things go up after having say more than a hundred or a thousand properties.
This is arguments for regulation not against it.
