Comment by haiku2077
> In general, rent payments are less than mortgage payments for the same property (though this can vary in specific cases due to a number of factors).
This didn't seem true to me - Anecdotally, my friends pay more in rent for apartments than I do for my mortgage on a single-family home in my area.
Then I googled it, and turns out my city is one of the top five US cities with the highest ratio of renting vs owning cost, and indeed a place where it costs nearly twice as much to rent as it does to own.
> and indeed a place where it costs nearly twice as much to rent as it does to own.
Which is exactly where the supply and demand is out of whack. But fortunately, the more people buy places to rent out, the cheaper it becomes to rent.
The renters in your area would love if investors bought a ton of properties and rented them out, increasing supply and therefore bringing down rates! And if rents are really 2x mortgage payments, then there should be tons of people lining up to do so, since it's basically just free money lying around. The invisible hand and everything.