Your typical landlord is someone who bought a unit or two as a personal investment, or who was lucky enough having ancestors who did so (in this case it might h

Your typical landlord is someone who bought a unit or two as a personal investment, or who was lucky enough having ancestors who did so (in this case it might have grown into a full time commercial operation through decades of reinvestment). New developments, even quite large ones, tend to target this kind of investor because a big institutional one would be much more capable of telling a good investment from a bad one. This does not even matter so much to the small, private investor, because he mostly uses it to hedge against a collapse of the financial system, something that indirect investment in real estate cannot provide. An exception are (formerly) communal companies, companies that have been spun out of "company town" arrangements and of course those that operate formerly "people's owned" buildings in the east. But all those are not really into expanding. Edit: and one thing I forgot: some units are actually owned by renters. Liking the solidity of a real estate investment and liking the flexibility of living in a rented property that you can easily swap for a different one are not mutually exclusive. For example it ie not terribly uncommon for occupant owners who need to move or scale up or down to keep their property and rent both ways (e.g. when they know that their new demand is not permanent or when their new demand does not match their investment volume).