• GCostanzaStepOnMe@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    For the analogy to work there’d have to be some prior market of housing that landlords buy up the second the market opens, and then “resell” (nevermind that renting is more than “access to housing”). That’s not really how it works though.

    • ElmiHalt@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      And to add on the “the second the market opens” part - landlords can buy houses even before they are fully built and liveable which is not really an option for a person with no house because such an investment leaves you with no place to live and no money (mostly).

    • ElmiHalt@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I’m not saying all landlords do so but what you described happens quite often. Landlords buy a property when they already have a place to live in and then rent out said property to someone who has none. And now said someone can’t own a property because there’s none on the market as all are bought out so all what is left to do for those people is to rent. It’s an oversimplification of course and there’s a lot of nuance to it but the general message still stands - if a person with a house buys another house to rent it out then one less house remains to be bought for people with no house.

      • workerONE@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        And there are investment groups with billions of dollars buying tens of thousands of homes, competing with other investment groups.

      • GCostanzaStepOnMe@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        The housing market for rental properties doesn’t just exist. It is is explicitly financed by the profit motive of renting, e.g. as real estate securities for the well-off upper middle class, or more likely, huge real etate companies. Now maybe there are some parts of the world where building companies just throw up houses and landlords scalp them off (suburbs in Australia I think) but I don’t think that’s the case in general.