I think there's a difference between having real estate as an investment, and buying a home to live in. There's a LOT of people buying up multiple properties a

I think there's a difference between having real estate as an investment, and buying a home to live in. There's a LOT of people buying up multiple properties and then renting them out. Often these days they're renting them out on the short-term holiday market like AirBNB and Stayz. Ultimately these rentals are often a net-negative on the neighbourhood community they're in. In small amounts that's fine, but in large concentrations it's an unsustainable burden, and the majority of the benefit goes to those not living in that neighbourhood. Those that don't do short-term rentals are often putting the least amount of effort/investment into the property. Minimal maintenance, often deferring or only doing the minimum required upgrades in terms of energy/water efficiency makes them unpleasant to live in. That's aside from the often onerous and arbitrary requirements forced on tenants. Examples include being forced/"strongly encouraged" into payment methods that add costs to your rent. Being required to hand over all sorts of PII to a huge range of platforms. Then there's third party rent management platforms/companies like RealPage that coordinate rent increases to maximise revenue; not because of any underlying cost increase, but because they can force market prices up.