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.