[SoftTalker]

Unless you have people willing to sit with unrented houses, no it won't. Some big rental owners might be able to afford that but the guy with one or two rentals he manages himself cannot afford to let them sit empty.

RealPage may maximize rents but the maximums will be lower if there is more supply.

[falcolas]

Over half of the for-profit rental stock in the US is owned by people or companies with over 25 units. And they are more than happy to let empty units stay empty if it will keep the value of their other units high.

It's not the "1-2 house landlords" driving prices up.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/08/02/as-nation...

"Individual investors owned nearly 14.3 million of those properties (71.6%), comprising almost 19.9 million units (41.2%). For-profit businesses of various sorts owned 3.7 million properties, or 18.8%, but their holdings totaled 21.7 million units, or 45% of the total. Entities such as housing cooperative organizations and nonprofits owned smaller shares of the total."

[SoftTalker]

If true I guess one way to address that is to tax vacant rental units so there's a penalty for leaving them vacant. That seems to me to be hard to administer though.

[janalsncm]

The YieldStar algorithm doesn’t try to minimize vacancy rate, it tries to maximize income for the landlord. So yes, it can be optimal to have a seemingly high vacancy rate if your tenants are paying more.