tdgeek:
I could say that its one house per person, sorted, easy as. Spare houses everywhere. But where are the rentals? There are none now. We want people to buy extra houses as rentals, rentals are needed for a variety of reasons. But we have more people wanting houses than we have houses. Thats ok, I will pay want 15k more for this place because they are flocking to me to buy. But if we had a glut of houses, the prices drop because there are so many houses out there competing with mine. Interest rates dont help but in fact they allow more people to graduate to be FHB's, thats a good thing.
We need more houses built
Many people don't want to be bothered dealing with tenants, as there are a lot of potential problems when dealing with tenants. Also many of those houses that are rentals, tend to be poor quality or old and dated, and rundown. People don't want to rent out a new house to tenants, because they may trash the place. Or just not take care of it. People who are landlords will therefore pick and choose the best people. But I have noticed quite of lot of rentals appearing at the moment, guessing some are airBNBs
The problem at the moment, is that a house makes more money sitting empty, than many people make working. If the house is damaged when rented out, that could wipe away any profits. Plus the costs of renting out, including extra insurance, maintenance costs, property management etc can be high. Plus all the incoming compliance costs etc.