Why collect rent when the property price keeps increasing regardless? Saves you from having to deal with the tenants and saves you tons of worries/busywork like:

- How tedious will it be to find suitable tenants (do you want to go through 1000 emails)?

- Will they make a mess of the place?

- Will they call you at random times to complain about neighbors?

- Will you have to organize and deal with mechanics when e.g. the heating breaks?

And so on. If property prices go up x% per year, buying housing is a great investment even if you leave it empty. And yes, this is a serious problem in larger cities, where investors (domestic or even foreign) just buy up housing without any intention to let people live there, exacerbating the problem.

To be clear, I am just a tenant, but the above incentives for investors are straightforward to see.

> Why collect rent when the property price keeps increasing regardless?

Because then you get the property price gains and the rental income on top!

I don’t doubt this is happening, I’m just trying to wrap my head around it.

As an individual person with a heart, it's hard to wrap one's head around. But the problem is landowners are usually very rich and soulless, when not actual corporations who have nothing human at all. To them, an empty apartment is just a line in a spreadsheet that will bring them money sooner or later. Renting the apartments would be more trouble for them, despite bringing in a little more money.

Seems like a market opportunity. Take on the rental risk and management costs for some fraction of the rent payments. Insurance can be used to hedge against damages.

Many companies are doing that already, and it's not working as a strategy for housing people (despite making some people very rich). The problem is that housing is a market to begin with. Basic commodities like housing shouldn't be subject to speculation and other capitalist nonsense.

They might think it's more profitable to wait so that they can sell or rent the unit later at a higher price.

> How is it that rents are so high and yet there are empty housing units?

Rents are so high BECAUSE there are empty housing units. If all available housing units went on the market, rent prices would collapse along with the real-estate speculative bubble, which is precisely what landlords are trying to avoid.