It helps remove the incentive to buy up all of the single family homes. The calculus is pretty simple -
- buy a house
- rent it
- pay the mortgage, insurance, and maintenance with the overinflated rental costs because everyone colluded to jack up rental prices across the board
- eventually own the house entirely off of the back of renters
- repeat
Renting a home shouldn’t cost enough for that cycle to be self sustaining.
I’ve visited some friends in those rental only neighborhoods. The lawns are all trashed. The neighborhood was less than three years old but it was already sliding toward a slum because of the clear lack of ownership by the occupants.
Honestly I can’t believe that part of the rent didn’t go toward neighborhood wide lawn care.