I was testing smoke alarms in a new townhouse development for compliance reasons and a site manager approached me to query which ones I'd completed.
We got to talking about the site and I asked a few questions.
Me: Out of interest how much are the 4 bedroom townhouses?
Site manager: 'for rent?'
Me: 'oh no, I mean to purchase'
SM: 'oh, they're not for sale'
Me: 'oh, what did they go for?'
SM: 'Nothing, they're owned by name of owner, he owns this development'
Basically he goes on to say that 1 guy owns 180 townhouses worth between 800k to 1 mil+ each. And he'll just rent them all out.
Later in the conversation, and back on the topic at hand. I remarked how surprised I was with the amount of 9 volt batteries I had to swap out. He said he wasn't surprised because these new townhouses were locked up for over a year and that the batteries were drained in the alarms. ( No mains power).
Long story short… How f.u.c.ked is it that one guy owns half a suburb while there's a chronic shortage of housing. And locks them up during COVID years (for reasons unknown) and ramming the rents sky high for greed.