> Doing this, he can jack up the rent and pocket the difference > Introducing: rent-to-rent, also known as rental arbitrage, the parasitic investment strategy

> Doing this, he can jack up the rent and pocket the difference > Introducing: rent-to-rent, also known as rental arbitrage, the parasitic investment strategy that is being touted across social media as a way for the growing number of people who can’t afford to buy their own home to invest in property. > With the landlord’s consent, they then convert these places into short-term lets or houses for multiple occupation (HMO), which means they can rent them out for more than they are paying and scalp the difference. > For one, you might wonder how responsible it is to encourage people to convert rental properties into short-term holiday lets right in the middle of a housing crisis. My pet peeve is when authors launder their opinion into an otherwise factual article using emotionally-resonant language like “scalp the difference” and “parasitic investment strategy”. You can just tell the facts, your readers are capable of making up their own minds on it. Worse is when it’s an opinion I disagree with. Consider the characterization of this as “scalping”. Sony seemed to put some effort into anti-scalping tech when they couldn’t meet PS5 demand. So isn’t it weird that these people are “scalping” with the landlord’s consent? Why wouldn’t the landlord just do what these people are doing and keep the money? The answer is that these people aren’t scalping at all. They’re renting an apartment for a year, and rerenting it for a few days. By doing that, they take on more risk and have to put in some effort to furnish the apartment, which they’re willing to do for that price and the landlord is not.