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Comment by cynicauliflower | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know, none of the houses I want to buy are in neighborhoods where any substantial portion of the stock is available to rent. Is there evidence of this kind of “profit-making”?

(Not disputing just no experience personally).

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In many first world capitals, it's actually a common investment to buy real estate and not rent it out at all. The running costs are lower, there's no maintenance costs and no one pesters you about miscellaneous issues. All these people do is sit on the homes and wait for them to go up in price while everyone else struggles to find a place to live. Them not renting out reduces supply which further drives up prices. You don't see them up for rent because that's not the business they're in, they're in the buy-hold-sell business instead. It's a good example of ridiculously perverse incentives, and why the regulation needs to be changed to make this a thing of the past.

I could also believe this, but it’s not the claim OP made, which was about rental hikes.

While I see what you mean, these two phenomena are really two sides of the same coin. If I'd wager a guess, I'd say OP is probably referring to cases such as [0]. Regardless of which mechanism is at play though, the end result is the same, either rising prices through collusion or rising prices through lowered supply. Both also benefit anyone else doing it the other way, so it results in highly lopsided markets.

[0] https://www.axios.com/2023/11/02/dc-housing-rent-antitrust-l...

Of course landlords want to make money. Some make a lot and some make a little. But only recently has "profit-making" become a dirty word.

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