[dragonwriter]

> I don't know who you think ends up paying for maintenance and taxes in a rented property - it's the renter, through their rent.

Equally correctly, the landlord pays them, and landlords that can't at market rents on top of any purchase financing that they are still paying go out of the landlord business.

Most precisely, where, as is usually the case, neither supply nor demand are either haveperfectly elastic or inelastic, the costs are effectively split between renters and landlords in some ratio; the market rents are higher but the financial profits are lower than they would be if the costs involved were not a factor.