Not only that, some of the people who prefer to buy rather than rent and can afford the higher prices may buy other properties that would otherwise have been rented out, reducing the supply of available rental properties and thereby raising rents. Rents are essentially always proportional to real estate prices, otherwise there would be an arbitrage opportunity one way or the other.

Meanwhile the way a normal market responds to high rents is by building more rental properties, because when rents are high doing so is profitable. But that requires buying existing land and constructing new housing on it. If the existing land is owned by people who are neither developing it further nor selling it, that can't happen.

Which is particularly problematic in places with restrictive zoning, because they could be sitting on the specific properties that are zoned for higher density than what they're currently built to -- and those are exactly the properties you would want to buy if you were an oligarch speculating on real estate.

That's true and also they don't always rent out the houses/apartments that they buy; if someone wants to launder a lot of ill-gotten money and buy many apartments/houses, it may be too much hassle (and draw too much attention) to deal with tenants and real estate agents so they just leave them empty, wait for prices to go up and then sell for a low-tax capital gain.

They don't necessarily need to receive rent payments to 'clean' the money. It's possible that what is regarded as money laundering in their country of origin is not regarded as such in the country where they are buying the property.

> Rents are essentially always proportional to real estate prices, otherwise there would be an arbitrage opportunity one way or the other.

This is empirically false. There is an incredible range in the price-rent ratio across different real estate markets - from 50 in Hong Kong to 5 in Detroit.

The proportion is different, because different areas have different borrowing costs, risks, regulatory environments, etc. The proportionality is always there -- if you make it more expensive to buy property than it used to be in the same place, rents will go up. Because the landlord has to pay the mortgage on the building. If you double the mortgage payment, what happens to the rent?

>The proportion is different, because different areas have different borrowing costs, risks, regulatory environments, etc. The proportionality is always there

That holds for everything. Only if they necessarily also move in the same way does this have any meaning, else it's like saying two points connect to a line.

There is an anthill in Brazil. If you pour honey near it, the ants will make more ants. The number of ants in the anthill is proportional to the amount of honey. If you pour pesticide near it, some of the ants will die. The number of ants in the anthill is inversely proportional to the amount of pesticide. If you pour honey and pesticide near the anthill, and the number of ants stays the same, you haven't disproven either of these things, they're both still true, you're just adding the lines together.

If you kill all the bears in Montana, or add a thousand more, the number of ants in Brazil doesn't change. They are not proportional, they're completely unrelated.

You keep using this word, proportional. I don't think it means what you think it means.

"having a constant ratio to another quantity"

Inversely proportional too is a mathematic relationship with specific meaning (for one the product must be a constant). It doesn't just mean "more pesticide, less ants" (that's a more general statement than inversely proportional).

Perhaps you merely meant correlated with respect to the rent. But even so, in this thread there were so many provisos added, that the relationship is nebulous at least.

The relationship we're actually talking about is proportional using your definition. Rent is proportional to housing prices, all else equal.

If all else isn't equal, i.e. you change interest rates or tax rates, then you're changing the constant. But they're still proportional with the new constant. You're only changing the ratio, not the nature of the relationship.

Any 2 numbers are always in proportion, but if the proportion isn't consistent (i.e. changes with location, time, etc) then your argument is just wrong.

https://data.oecd.org/price/housing-prices.htm

Check e.g. historical data (untick "Compare variables") for "Price to rent ratio" for "United Kingdom" from 1990 to 2018.

There are dozens of variables. The argument is that the proportion is constant with respect to a small fluctuation in one of the numbers over time. The fact that the proportion is not constant over the dozens - 1 other variables isn't particularly surprising or pertinent.

No the argument was

> Rents are essentially always proportional to real estate prices.

which is demonstrably not true in any way shape or form.

See e.g. [0] pages 13 and 15 (pages 15 and 17 of pdf) for "median house prices by London borough" and "median monthly private rents by London borough". Westminster has higher rents but lower prices than Kensington. So, yeah, sure, if you include "desirability" in your variables, then you can probably get a regression fit but then the argument "rents are proportional to prices" no longer really makes sense (i.e. you're taking the proportion to be a proxy for desirability and then adding it back to the regression).

[0] https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/house-prices-i...

Not always. If interest rates go up, house prices go down but rents go up. The opposite is also true if interest rates go down.

That's kind of cheating though, because you're still de facto raising real estate costs (higher interest rate -> higher mortgage payment on the same loan principal).

Changing other components of real estate costs doesn't destroy the proportionality with prices, it only changes the ratio. The same is true of property tax -- raise the tax rate and sale prices decline while rents increase, because rents are also proportional to every other component of overall housing costs, not just the initial principal amount.

It's like saying retail prices aren't proportional to wholesale prices because if you raise commercial rents then the ratio changes. They're still proportional. If you raise rents then retail prices may increase because the retailer has higher costs. If you then raise wholesale prices, the retail prices don't stay the same just because they've already increased, they increase even more.

>more people can no longer afford to buy but still need somewhere to live, causing the rent market to become more competitive

It seems like you are double counting here. If high prices result in units becoming investor-owned and rented out instead of owner-occcupied, that means the rental supply is larger, so the foiled-owner-occupiers shouldn’t be crowding out more renters.

To put it simply, we are fitting the same number of humans in the same number of buildings here, and just changing whether the person who lives there is the owner.

> and the rents go up because owners charge what the market can bare

Landlords always charge what the market can bear, how does the sale price of the unit move that number (other than the double counting argument above)?

At least in London, I have heard it claimed [1] that foreign investors buy properties and leave them vacant, as London's rising house prices represent a sufficient return on investment and remove the inconvenience and risk of dealing with tenants.

Of course, it's hard to measure this stuff precisely, because given the current attitudes, if you were doing that the last thing you'd do is report yourself to the government.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/aug/01/names-of-wea...

I thought it was a way of moving your cash (whether it is legit or not) outside your country.

To stop your home government expropriating your money and also as a bolt hole if the peasants revolt and start hanging people from lampposts.

> At least in London, I have heard it claimed [1] that foreign investors buy properties and leave them vacant,

Maybe it's just hearsay, but a friend of a close friend of mine works as a project-manager (not sure what the exact term is) on several construction sites in and around London. According to him the vast majority of the real owners behind said projects is unknown, as in he doesn't really know for whom he builds said projects.

Why on earth would somebody who's interested in profit leave a property empty, rather than cash in on rent from tenants? In other words, why would investors choose loosing money over getting income? It's not like its hard to get tenants. It's not like it's hard to manage tenants, and it's even easy to get rid of them if you need to in the UK (unlike in some other countries). There's a whole support industry for finding and managing tenants. It's almost effortless.

I'm afraid I don't believe stories like that quoted above. As an edge case it may occasionally happen (especially at the high-end, e.g. flats that cost > £2 mil), but the normal case is that buyers cash in on rental income. Moreover, I posit that the number of properties left vacant is so marginal that it doesn't affect London's housing market.

For example there has been lots of building activity in Aldgate, near Old Street, around Stratford (former Olympic area), and in the Docklands. They are mostly studio flats, 1-, or 2-bedrooms, all tiny, and all quickly snapped up. London public transport (e.g. Central Line) is insanely busy now in parts because so many new people have moved to e.g. Stratford.

Source: Anecdotal, I speak with a lot of builders, property developers, and architects in London.

> Why on earth would somebody who's interested in profit leave a property empty, rather than cash in on rent from tenants?

IANAL, but I did read once (apologies, can't find the citation), that depending on the ownership model, you can write down the cost of "no rent" on your tax bill. So if you have revenue from other sources other than property, it's not much of a hit to leave it empty and make the gains elsewhere in your portfolio.

I've worked with letting agents as a tenant, and it gave me the impression they're all borderline scam artists whose business model revolves around charging BS fees and penny-pinching with shoddy workmanship.

Do you suppose, when you're a foreign landlord with a poor command of English and no ability to visit the property in person, that the letting industry somehow becomes honest and straightforward?

Yes, there are a borderline scammers, I've been working with such people myself, as a tenant and a property owner.

   foreign landlord 

Why on earth would you buy in London in these circumstances, why not put you money in an ETF?

Let's quantify: what fraction of the London property market does that apply to? My hypothesis: < 0.2%

  Why on earth would you buy in London in these
  circumstances, why not put you money in an ETF?

Because you're a money-laundering oligarch (or a upper class person in an oppressive regime, worried the state will appropriate your assets) and if you're spending £10 million or so on a property, you can afford to conceal your identity with an intermediary in Jersey, Guernsey, BVI, Panama...

    conceal your identity 

You can also conceal your identity when buying an ETF. An EFT almost certainly has a higher ROI than empty property.

And if you are investing via intermediaries, then they can handles the letting process so as to maximise the ROI.

> Why on earth would you buy in London in these circumstances, why not put you money in an ETF?

Historically London property prices have risen much faster and fallen more rarely than ETFs, before even beginning to think about the possibility of rental incomes

Besides all that, TFA explicitly says that the rent is the clean money that was laundered.

How does buying a building with dirty money and later selling the same building clean the money anyway?

> Why on earth would somebody who's interested in profit leave a property empty, rather than cash in on rent from tenants? It's not like its hard to get tenants. There's a whole support industry for finding and managing tenants. It's almost effortless.

Wear and tear.

Cost of wear-and-tear is marginal in comparison with lost rental income.

Moreover, there is (some) wear-and-tear even if unoccupied, especially if not heated properly. Unoccupied properties are also more likely to be squatted, and vandalised.

Those are the tales people told by people who are not landlords. The real estate investment money comes from two different categories:

1. Landlord leverages the cashflow to acquire property and bets on appreciation of real estate. Margins are very thin. These are the people who buy buildings when the asking price is less than 10x of a yearly rent roll and sell building at 12x-13x of yearly rent rolls ( longer for commercial). They are leveraged to the max. Think Trump Organization or Kushner Companies or your average landlord/slumlord.

2. Purely investment plays. Buildings/units are owned outright. Those typically are multi-hundred thousand to multi-million dollar condos. They are either used for hedging, money laundering or diversification. Tenant in this cases is irrelevant unless it is a specific kind of a tenant. One can see this all over NYC for example. Storefront and condos that sit empty or years.

- An investor's margin on appreciation of real estate will be much higher if it's rented out rather than empty.

- An investor who owns whole buildings/units has massive economies of scale from renting out.

- Hedging, money laundering or diversification are orthogonal to letting/leaving-empty, see also the original article.

- I don't see empirical evidence of buildings/units are are owned outright and left empty in London and a substantial scale. Please supply quantitative evidence to the contrary if you have any. Where are all those empty building in London?

- Regarding landlord/slumlord. As far as I'm aware, most large developments are done by investment funds insurance etc. Names like Trump and Kushner are too emotionally charged to lead to a serious discussion, and I'd appreciate if you could quantify what fraction of the London property market is left empty for speculative purposes.

I lived in London and saw that first hand - also houses bought to rent out, but with no rush to bringing to market - they get to the market eventually, but this can take months.

I now live in a small seaside town and one of the issues here is people buying 'cheap' houses to own as a holiday house. They might be here every weekend, or maybe just a few weeks a year. This is taking away a house from a 'local' - someone who would either buy or rent to have as their main residence. To this end I'd rather see them on AirBnB than just empty - at least that way people are enjoying the house/location and spending money in the area. (Though I'd obviously rather see someone who lives and works here able to afford the houses in the area).

Yeah, that is certainly the reasoning that pushing prices up is based on in London.

Another angle is that more expensive properties are more efficient, so the bubble of foreign investment in property has lead to a rise in the construction of hyper-premium properties which the market does not especially demand, and a lack of construction of mid-range or lower tier housing, pushing the prices up in those sectors.

   rise in the construction of hyper-premium 
   properties which the market does not 
   especially demand,

If you look at the parts of London with extreme building activity over the last few years (Nine Elms, Battersea Power Stn, Docklands, Aldgate, Old Street, Stratford, Kings X), you'll find that almost everything falls into the studio, 1-bedroom or 2-bedroom range. There has also been a lot of development of commercial student accomodations, see e.g. [1]. Pretty much the antithesis of "leaving things empty".

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/may/27/revealed-d...

Let's take a pass on the dingbat apartments and look at the single-family-home-wingdings, which can also be stuffed into REITs. The corrupt REIT doesn't care if it buys 1 or 10 houses, so long as they are bought. The local owners cheer the purchase even if the house sits empty. Anyone who wants to buy into that market has to make more money. So they negotiate salary. The companies then pay more in salary. Corporate profits are at an all-time high, so it's hard to justify not paying the salary, especially in the face of housing costs.

So now the would-be owner who finds themselves stuffed out of a remarkably expensive housing market (it increased significantly between the interview and the start date) moves into the rental market, which, while high, is nothing compared to the first few years of home ownership. Someone who could afford a house in the local market can afford the rent, particularly if they make the painful decision to forgo pets, or (as in our case) give their pets to their parents. "For a couple years, we'll be back".

I've been thinking about this lately because I want to rent out my flat and move abroad.

It turns out that, if I take into account my mortage, building charges, and expected empty time between tenants the minimum I can charge for rent is... actually kind of similar to the market rent.

It would seem like there is a floor to London rents, and it is related to the mortage payment, which is related to the value. If the value was 50% lower, then landlords renting at the current level would be undercut.

I understand why you think that is the minimum. But, let's say that your mortgage is 100, building charges 10, and expected empty time cost another ten, 120 in total. How is charging 0 (not being able to rent it because no one is willing to match your minimum) better than, say, renting it for 110? I assume that you already own the property, so you have no choice of directing that mortgage to other investment opportunities.

Do you pay income tax on the rental income as well? This would add about %30-45 to your mortgage payment breakeven as well, no?

If your mortgage payment is $1000/mo, you need that in after-tax dollars in addition to gap months and maintenance. This pushes rents up for single property landlords in the top marginal rate, or am I missing something.

You only pay income tax on your net profit (in the US at least).

Net expenses, but the equity in the property seems like income (as you can tell iana landlord).

Income taxes likely contribute a significant percentage of the difference between mortgage payments an rent prices. For a REIT, this is different, but for an individual owner renting out a second property and paying income taxes on the rent income, would this not create a significant difference?

This is all predicated on the idea that somebody else should pay your mortgage for you no doubt ...

Well if they rent it out without paying for their mortgage the renter will be evicted as well.

Yes, but I just wanted to be clear that’s what we’re talking about. The expectation that you should be able to claim the capital gains that somebody else has paid the maintenance on.

Rental value sets the sale value, not the other way around!