Is there any empirical evidence that rent as a fraction of GDP, grows? That could happen in case of quick economic growth combined with a lack of major inventions (people get more money but struggle to find what to spend it on - they already have all newest stuff and newer one is slow to get invented - so keep a lot of free cash -> rent grows). But these times aren't like that.

So i tend to believe these observations are largely made up. There is no "squeeze" in the sense that economy-wide, cyclically adjusted, rents do not grow faster than GDP per capita does.