They do when they have the capital.
>"If a landlord is rendered insolvent, they aren't even rendered destitute;" - ? why do you assume that?
Because I've been through the books of multiple major banks, REITs, investment funds, commercial owners, commercial tenants, private individuals with residential real estate portfolios, etc.
You have to be incredibly negligent to lose money in an industry where your assets have been skyrocketing in value for over a decade.
But it is. If a business decreases social welfare (like cartels enabling coordination to jack up prices) the government should regulate it away. Most of what landlords do is cause friction in the real estate market (and hurting everyone else in the process) in hopes to gain some more mpney from it.
'Property management' is a real thing and businesses don't want to necessarily own property.
Managing property is a service like any other - and rates for their goods are market based - just like any other market.
"If a landlord is rendered insolvent, they aren't even rendered destitute;" - ? why do you assume that? Property owners are often leveraged like many other businesses. If x% of their portfolio goes bust - they go bust.
There might be opportunities to make things a little bit more fair one way or another, but it's not rational to single out one form of business as being 'better or worse' than another.
What could be reformed is the fact that economic rent is not really valuable for society at large. 'Trading playing cards' benefits nobody, we should be investing in value creating operations.