so my understanding is that home prices go up because homes are investments that can earn money, and one reason homes are investments is that you can rent them out. how much does landlording contribute to rising home costs, and how much of that contribution is from smaller landlords as opposed to banks and wall street? is "small landlords drive up home costs" a defensible argument i can make?
Just the fact that a property could hypothetically be rented out has already been accounted for in our GDP- imputed rent
This possibility means that homes are going to get turned into rentals to realize that imputed rent as actual rent as long as capital is available to do so.
"small" landlords are a rhetorical shield that enables this.