Like many things in society it's not entirely objective. It depends on the situations of the parties involved. Take two hypothetical tenants. One is a young so

Like many things in society it's not entirely objective. It depends on the situations of the parties involved. Take two hypothetical tenants. One is a young software developer earning $15k/mo, the other a retired widow on a fixed pension of $3k/mo. The social reaction to either party's rent being raised from $1k/mo to $2.5k/mo is going to be very different. > your choices are to maximize its net present value or to price the lease under the market in order to benefit someone else This leaves out the fact that in the majority of cases the lessor is benefiting either way. It's purely the extent to which they benefit that changes. > Greed is an easy label to assign until until you have to get concrete about it. All sorts of labels are difficult to assign objectively. What matters is personal opinion and societal consensus. Both of those are fluid and have changed throughout history.