Easy answers, as usual, are not the solution to hard problems. The real problem is housing scarcity.

Landlords, whether corporate or small-time, will always ask as much for rent as the market will bear.

Those rents they take are quite independent from speculation and independent of who owns property. That's why a critical real estate investment indicator is the price to rent ratio. It helps you identify speculation and bubbles.

If only property values were going up, we could solely blame speculators and corporate ownership, but in that scenario rents would be staying flat.

But rents in BC are out of control. They're climbing faster than inflation. They're a disaster.

The reason rents are going up so fast is there is not enough housing supply.