Housing cannot and will not be efficiently handled by the free market. It is a basic need. Noone will wait for a year before prices go down because landlord are now trying to outprice eachother. The response to overpriced housing is not "Eh, I'll guess I'll be homeless for a while", its "have no choice but to pay". Especially for something controlled by such a small portion of the population
I've moved from Australia (no rent control, laws heavily biased towards property owners) to Berlin (renter's paradise).
Renting property definitely should be treated as a business, done by companies, and heavily controlled by regulation to favour the tenants. This is how it's done in Berlin, and it works really well.
Treating property as an investment vehicle is actively harming society.
You're right. I'm just imagining a world where there is sufficient supply of houses, and property owners will need the income that renting it out provides. It should never be profitable for them to sit on empty houses. Too often it still is.
