[not_wyoming]

> Small businesses somehow are more inventivized to do this than institutional investors? Because the margins are not sufficient to attract the large businesses?

Yes. When Joe is buying a couple homes, he doesn't have to pay for HR, business dev, legal, compliance, etc etc. And -

> That needs evidence.

Fair enough! I care about this topic, but not enough about this thread to make a carefully cited case here (no offense to you, friend). I'm sharing from anecdotes and personal (albeit unscientific) research.

> Someone buys a two flat, lives in one and rents the other to help pay for the mortgage. That has classically been ok. You're only objecting to the short term ones?

Yep, and I've come around on this. I used to think landlord = bad (in college, we're all young and naive at some point), but I've come around to the real economic need for an LTR market. I'm thinking of cases where an individual buys up a handful of properties to use as STRs, removing them from the LTR market (which reduces supply which increases rates of the remaining units). I have seen this happen in my area in real time but I recognize that it is scientifically unsound to extrapolate that to other areas.