You would feel that, but you would be wrong.

Small businesses are often just as ruthless as large ones, just less competent. In any case, most rental properties are managed through agencies, who are soulless profit-optimisers.

It's the opposite in the UK. Most landlords are individuals, own one or maybe a couple of properties.

It's awful, rogue landlords who do everything they can to not do repairs or improvements and when they do it often comes after a long time. Often as they have underestimated all the expenses they're liable for and find that the profit is not very much.

Give me a company that owns a whole block every day, they've modelled the risk better, have economies of scale, and you have more recourse against them.

> I feel like there will be a difference between a handful of large corporations owning a majority of properties vs thousands of dentists and software engineers. Are you saying that all of these property owners are also soulless profit-optimizers?

Do we want to trade crazy high prices in the American real estate market for absolutely crazier high prices in the Australian real estate market?

That is a bit simplistic though, there could be other things going on in Australia, and all the other rich countries (e.g. Switzerland, England, China) where American prices look like a good value. I'm sure at the end of the day supply is the main factor, and not having a hot economy also helps, so I'm sure the USA will get there fairly quickly.