> If significant numbers of landlords remove their properties from market, scarcity will drive up rental prices anyway.
unless you're imagining they're destroying the property, you cannot "remove" it from the market (or they decide to leave it vacant deliberately - an illogical a choice as destroying the property).
If they sell to a owner occupier, it removes that buyer's original rental demand, by the same amount as the removal of the rental property from the market.
If they live in it themselves, it's the same (just no money changing hands).
Its not that the house is destroyed, its that they aren't spherical cows that immediately exist on the sale market. Renters cant become owners instantly. Landlords cant sell properties instantly. These things take time. Housing is not a perfectly elastic market.
unless you're imagining they're destroying the property, you cannot "remove" it from the market (or they decide to leave it vacant deliberately - an illogical a choice as destroying the property).
If they sell to a owner occupier, it removes that buyer's original rental demand, by the same amount as the removal of the rental property from the market.
If they live in it themselves, it's the same (just no money changing hands).