Because the down payment you put into your purchased home could've been put into the stock market and grown faster than property values (this is historically true).
Because you don't want the headache of home maintenance.
Because in the 21st century, job stability doesn't exist so it's a big risk to buy a home fifteen minutes from your current job that might be an hour from your new job after you get fired so a CEO can get more golden parachutes.
Because you might have to change cities a year from now.
My wife and I rented for a long time because it was better than owning for us.
Many landlords seem to expect to pay their mortgage and property taxes and maintenance with the rental income, and still net a profit, if r/landlord is to be believed.
If there was no profit there would be no landlords. Some might say that's great. But it would be a world with less flexibility, with fewer choices. Don't like your job and want to move? Split up with your partner and need someplace to live? Moved to a new city and don't know where you want to put down roots yet? At college for 4 years? Don't want to deal with house maintenance? "F** you, buy a house anyway". That's what we'd have if there was no rental housing.
that doesn't sound plausible. May be for a select few properties that are in some unique circumstance (e.g., the seller of the property would sell underpriced because they needed quick sale).
And often, in arguments like these, the rent is the rent, but the mortgage is purely the interest on the loan, and doesn't count the maintenance cost, and doesn't count the deposit required (which has a cost, ala the cost of capital). If you added up all these costs, it exceeds rent.
This only holds until the percentage owned by the investors becomes a monopolistic chunk. At that point the investors would rather leave some apartments empty rather than see rents go down.
See: all the current RealPage lawsuits
