kontextmaschine:

argumate:

One thing I’m curious about is whether we’re going to see a shift away from small private landlords to large corporate landlords with greater economies of scale.

This has absolutely been happening in American cities, investors assembled some decent portfolios of single-family houses out of the ruins of the 2000s housing bubble. That was one of the things on my mind when I was struck by mid-century neighborhoods characterized as having “residents” rather than “homeowners” the other day.

And to answer @fluffshy’s question here as to what the efficiencies of scale would be, anecdotally, they’re better able to extract from renters - that with professional market-watching capability they’re quicker to raise rents when the market, even neighborhood-specific, heats up, that with more office infrastructure than a 9PM kitchen table they more closely track rent coming in and issue late fees; with more legal capacity they press harder for eviction and with more cash reserves they’re less dissuaded by the (opportunity) costs of finding a new tenant, etc.