Robot Landlords Are Buying Up Houses

vice.com

18 points·elorant··3 comments

The experience of being able to tour a rental and be able to rent it without talking to a (at best, bored; at worst, actively hostile in salesmanship) human sounds marvelous. It is much better than the status quo.

Yet the article tries to present this situation for shock value in the lede; it is bizarrely infuriated with a way to remove friction from the rental process. What is the point the article wants to make? Do they want to ban the rental of single family homes? Forcing people into an insanely leveraged bet on a single volatile property certainly does not help affordability.

The point seemed to be "soulless investment firms gobble up starter homes". One could make a case from just the evidence in the article that "firms with more capital than they know what to do with overpay for real estate they don't know enough about." Google "Zillow home-flipping business" for a sterling example.

Meanwhile, yes, technology has streamlined the renting experience in positive ways, but the article makes it a net negative. Who wants to deal with a leasing agent?

A single person living in a 3BR house with no roommates says “I find it difficult to believe normal people who live and work here would pay that amount,”

Is it not a social good to discourage households of one or two people from occupying large 3BR homes?

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