I'm currently living in Australia, and the rent prices are fascinating. You see, to a certain extent, the housing bubble never "popped" (sudden massive drop) here. Instead of being bundled into investments or handled by real estate firms, a large portion of the market is privately owned (this was driven by "negative gearing" that gave tax breaks etc. for ownership). Sure, the market is depressed compared to pre-GFC, but property is still astronomically overpriced. The fascinating part: the rent is much more reasonable. It's like some odd market form of cognitive dissonance. The boomers refuse to believe that a crappy apartment isn't worth 5 million dollars in the sense that they won't sell any lower and list at that price, but at the same time they'll signal that the "real" value is the much more reasonable half million by charging in rent what would be the equivalent payment for a half million on a twenty year mortgage.

This leads to all kinds of odd pathological situations. As far as I can tell, purely paying agents in commission is much less common here. Combined with the unmovable listing prices this has led to what is basically welfare for real estate agents and the most lackadaisical salesmen I have ever witnessed, even adjusting for the generally easy-going culture. I'm used to having to ignore calls from agents once it's known that I'm looking. Here, it's the opposite you have to keep calling them. I only have my current place because my wife explicitly asked about it, to which the agent responded something along the lines of, "Oh yeah. That's been open for months." Since many of the property owners aren't professional (pooling the risk/cost of owning over many units) and cash-strapped, getting maintenance done is a nightmare. It's either all done by themselves (with the ensuing comedy that entails) or farmed out to agencies that still bill the owner mostly piecemeal (so that every issue is a situation akin to getting your insurance to pay your doctor).

I would like to think that when the boomers prove, despite their thinking to the contrary, quite mortal and start dying collectively in large numbers that this will correct the market. My worry is that instead what boomers die last will use the last of their block voting power to convince the government to ease restrictions on foreign investment and Australia will become much like Hawaii.