Rental prices are what the market will bear. These may or may not be strongly correlated to the landlord's ownership.

Two very relevant examples of when the "amortization" argument won't apply:

- a rising market in which the landlord bought a long time ago. Their purchase price was way below the area's current market value. So they can cover their expenses while you still pay less in rent than what a modern-day mortgage would be.

- a home buying market that's expecting continued pricing appreciation. Homeowners can (and will) rent out property at a loss with the expectation it'll be made up in a higher sale value years down the line. Whether or not this actually happens, of course, depends on their ability to accurately predict the future.

There's also the inverse case of declining markets, when landlords can end up over the heads financially and simply can't charge the rates they need to cover their mortgages, because the entire area has turned south.

There are very real financial risks to landlords. They can't just charge whatever they want. It really depends on the state and future of their market.

Correct. When rents get too far ahead of mortgages, people simply buy property instead.

In your first example, the landlord is amortizing expenses by charging rent above their ownership costs. It doesn't have to be at or higher than then current new mortgage rates.

The second example does happen. However, if the landlord's bet is wrong, and they have the runway to float the extra expenses for a while, they can simply wait for rents to rise and over decades make it back and begin amortizing then. Or they can sell and hope to make it back.

Property owners have many more financial options with their property than do renters.

Not necessarily. When the capital gains from simply sitting on a property are so great, I'm sure a lot of landlords are actually making a net loss on a renting operation, and don't care all that much.

Regardless, the point is that a lot of people see the mortgage repayments equalling the rent and don't think about the extra costs of ownership.

Landlords don't have infinite cash reserves. They still need to cover costs or minimize losses if they're betting on capital gains from property sale at some later date. Most renters pay for the maintenance and taxes of the property they live in, it's just not itemized for them and the costs are generally amortized and distributed among multiple tenants. Landlords are generally not charities, if you got lucky enough to find one who is, be very thankful.

You are correct that rent != mortgage and shouldn't be compared too close. Renting is a 100% loss, while mortgage is <100% depending on where you are in your repayment plan -- allowing the owner to recoup some of their housing costs after time.

After the mortgage is paid off, the renter still continues to loose 100% of their housing costs while the owner has only care and maintenance (and taxes) of the property to account for.

Not at all. Rental costs are most strongly influenced by supply-and-demand of housing, whereas sale costs are mostly influenced by supply-and-demand of credit.

Not true, rental costs will go as high as possible until buying becomes more attractive. Buying costs are based on supply and demand of housing and credit. That's why it's more expensive to buy a house in San Francisco than in Kansas City, Missouri even if the credit markets are effectively the same in both cases.

Under normal market conditions, borrowing money becomes expensive as monetary supply decreases. However, very active central banking systems the last couple decades has changed the story on this.