Sounds like exactly what's happening basically everywhere in the USA. Here in New England, I see a lot more short term rentals (AirBnB, mostly, but in places l

Sounds like exactly what's happening basically everywhere in the USA. Here in New England, I see a lot more short term rentals (AirBnB, mostly, but in places like Burlington, they're switching to "furnished rentals for travelling nurses" to dodge regulation). But the effect is the same: it's nearly impossible to find a livable starter home beneath 400k. Property taxes, let alone interest rates, let alone deposits, make that out of reach of all but the highest earning renters. I frequently see claims that we "just need to build more," but when I see hundreds of AirBnBs available in every small town, no rentals, and only the most expensive houses for sale, I start to wonder if we need to address some systemic issue first. This article says that 1 out of every 3 houses sold between July 2021 and July 2022 were purchased by corporations. Obviously that's going to skew the market (particularly when those corporations have access to cheaper rates and more tax loopholes than individuals). But it's interesting to think that that's just corporate purchases. Around here, it's common to see individuals who own 2-5 "investment properties" personally, rented out on AirBnB for $200+ a night. I suspect not all of those investors show up as corporate purchases, even if some of them use LLCs and such for tax avoidance. This really pisses me off. I want to buy a home. There are millions of people in the USA living on the street, with cities and states spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year to provide crappy shelters and clean trash of sidewalks. And when I walk around my town at night, I see so many houses with no lights on, that only occasionally host a single car with out-of-state or rental plates. This behaviour cannot be allowed to continue, it's pulling the rug out from under anyone who isn't making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and rotting out our communities. But what can we do? Our government seems completely powerless to stop it. Even when cities try to clamp down on investment properties and short term rentals, it takes so long -- and so much NIMBY combat -- to put laws in place, the bad actors just find a loophole to keep things going. To quote 1990s infomercials, there has to be a better way.