Memes

And therefore don't have to incur the burden of large expenses such as replacing a roof, a sewer line, etc.

If someone bought a house without doing an inspection, that's their own fault. If it's a natural disaster, that's why you have insurance. If it's expected wear and tear, you would have emergency savings to cover it.

At least as a homeowner, I know I can actually get it fixed before freezing to death. Can't say the same when waiting for profit-driven landlords to go through the script of checking it out themselves, finding some reason to claim its not broken, and then eventually pestering them for long enough that they do their damn job and hire someone to fix it in a couple weeks.

If you want to cherry pick an example of the most expensive areas of the country instead of the more reasonable examples of a $70k single family house. But then the person buying the property is responsible for all the repairs and maintenance.

The median price of houses in the country is $420k.

I'm sure I could build a nice doomsday-prepper shack in the woods somewhere for $70k, though.

The lack of housing development with increased demand creates a housing shortage. When there's a shortage, pricing goes up. The United States is at least a decade behind where they should be in housing development.

And you don't see how landlords—who are buying more real estate than they actually use—create increased demand?

A mortgage just pays the bank for the loan. A mortgage payment does NOT pay for repairs on the property. If the furnace goes out in the middle of winter, it's up to the homeowner to come up with the money -- typically thousands of dollars all at once.

I refer back to my first point.