Comment by BeetleB
> Imagine all of them dying tomorrow, what happens?
The majority of landlords in the US (at least in the small scale - not sure about big complexes) do not own the property outright. They have a loan (e.g. mortgage) just like anyone else.
So what will happen? The banks will become the new owners. And they'll sell it at a discount to someone else (with a loan, of course).
I know it's easy to complain about landlords, but if you suddenly kill all landlords and ban landlording, you'll get a lot more homeless people.
I guess in this hypothetical, imagine all ownership of the rental units suddenly transferred to the tenant. Would the net effect to the economy be positive or negative?