If no one ever bought houses to use as investment properties then demand would be a lot lower, making houses cheaper and thus more affordable to families. There are plenty of places in cities in Canada where the cost of renting a house today exceeds what it would have cost for a mortgage just a few years ago. Investors buying houses for rental income (and appreciation returns) compete with family home-buyers to drive up prices in desirable areas, especially near schools.
How does an investor who is renting drive up the cost of housing? Barring certain oddities (e.g. college towns tend to have higher rental costs than purchase due to the transient nature of the populace) rents and mortgages should obtain parity very quickly, especially for families looking to stay longer than the transaction cost of the loan.
Because real estate prices are highly location-specific. People looking to buy a home in a nice, safe neighbourhood with a school in walking distance are forced to compete with investors buying houses and turning them into Airbnbs. As the article says, 30 per cent of home buyers are investors looking to grow their portfolio, not people looking for a place to live and raise a family. If those investors put their money into the stock market instead then that would free up the limited resource of homes near schools, causing prices to fall and making it more affordable to start a family.
Imagine what life would be like if we let billionaires buy up all the lakes, rivers, and other freshwater reservoirs. Water prices would shoot through the roof and we'd all be forced to pay the "water barons" whatever they decide to charge. It would be a dystopian nightmare and absolutely toxic to society. If you're curious, this is the premise of the classic sci-fi book Dune.
I spoke to the owners of the last 3 Airbnbs I stayed in. All of them were converted from long-term rentals. The landlords in all 3 cite much higher profits from Airbnb as the reason for conversion.
That's fine, but isn't evidence that short-term rentals dominate the rental housing market. They don't. Short-term rentals make up less than 1% of the housing stock.
Obviously, the housing that short-term rentals use has to come from the housing stock somehow, so it's not interesting to point out that Airbnb's cannibalize the long-term rental market.
(Over the medium-long term this is a problem that'll be solved by a combination of more construction, which is desperately needed anyways, and ordinances regulating Airbnbs, like NYC just passed.)
Within capitalism, we could have some kind of system to provide equity to tenants. They are effectively already paying a mortgage (just not their own).
I don't know how such a system would work exactly, but I know it would require that we stop treating houses like speculative assets and start treating them like a basic need (shelter).
In Switzerland they tax imputed rent. If you buy a house and live in it, you are paying extra taxes for the privilege. For strongly related reasons the rate of living in a home you also own is only about 35% in that country.
