Eventually we might consider that rent is just outright theft, we're not actually paying for value, landlords are parasites who suck surplus value from the economy, etc.
Okay, you got the occasional clashes with other clans for land but hey, you could always move somewhere else. That's impossible now, given the massive numbers of humans on this planet.
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/exhibits/aztec/aztec_property....
I doubt there's ever been an urban culture that didn't have some concept of property ownership, whether by individuals, "nobles", or the state.
That said, it was never as simple as "everyone holds land in common and can do whatever they want with it individually."
There were full-scale cities in the Midwest and South, of course, but I don't think we know enough about those cultures to say what their property rights were like. I'd bet money they were a lot closer to the Aztecs than to a typical hunter-gatherer band, though.
The Tlingit of the Northwest also had a complicated system of property rights, including something akin to what we call "intellectual property" (though there were significant differences to our system). They also kept large numbers of slaves.
The landlords are therefore parasitizing the economy.
Although this article is about commercial space, residential space is just as outrageously priced. I think there should be three things that should never be allowed to be artificially restricted just for the greed of a few: food, water and housing.
Here's a good Economist article on this: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21647622-land-centre-...
The value you are receiving is location.
If you do not care for location, then rent office space in Tennessee where you can pay less than 1/4 of SF prices.
They only get to be parasitic when the real estate market is dysfunctional and supply is constrained, possibly artificially. In some sense they are acting as gatekeepers to a limited resource and providing liquidity by setting prices high enough that only those with need are willing to pay.