Canada

Rent controlled apartments are still capped at 2.5% increase per year.

Yes, while anybody who is not in a rent controlled unit is facing a bloodbath, plenty of people are seeing their rents go down once you figure in inflation. It's just that "dog doesn't bite man" is even less of a news story than "dog bites man".

Even setting aside rental income, the increase in property value itself has been plenty remunerative.

You are entering personal opinion territory with that remark, which has no place in a discussion, but I will stricken the opinion part and work with what information remains. Given that, I take it to mean that a business seeking profit does not necessarily need to find profit by way of cashflow, but rather asset appreciation. Is that a fair assessment?

That is technically true. Agriculture in particular loves that model – and it has burned many, many, many farmers before. Remember the 1980s? They had to go as far as to have concerts to try and bail farmers out because it got so bad. It is super high risk. Farmers will often put up with that insane risk because they have a passion for farming and will take the risk just so that they can do what they love.

Does anyone have a passion for being a residential landlord? To the best of my knowledge, the answer is no. Landlords are in it purely as a business. And a business is going to focus on income fundamentals to not go down the road of needing concerts to save them when the promise of asset inflation fails.

Of course, with big risk comes the potential for big reward, but it seems there is no reason for residential landlords to take that gamble. It is not a passion project.

First of all, fuck landlords and double fuck people that buy up single family homes to rent out. This is not an endorsement, just a basic explanation of opportunity cost for anyone interested.

Fuck landlords, in case you missed the first one.

Now that that's out of the way, opportunity cost is what you lose by not doing something else with your capital.

For example:

You assume you could make an average of 10% a year in the stock market.

You have 100k equity in a rental property.

You collect rent, after paying the mortgage, taxes, maintenance, and any other expenses you make 10k in a year.

That's 10% of your 100k in equity, the same you estimate you'd make in the market, no opportunity cost.

Some number of years later between paying more of your mortgage and increase in the value of the property you have 500k in equity.

You only increased rent enough to cover increases in taxes, maintenance, and other expenses so you still only make 10k a year.

That is now 2% of your 500k in equity.

The 8% difference between the 10% you think you could make in the stock market if you sold the place and the 2% you're getting without jacking up the rent, is the opportunity cost.

Of course there are more things to take into account, this is just to give you a basic idea.

Fuck landlords.