Land Ahoy!

As a landlord, the first thing I would lobby for is to reduce land available for development. That way, the bidding for rents would increase and I would profit by it. The surest way to ensure a reduction in land is to lobby for more gardens, religious places etc. in prime properties, especially after ensuring that I had a stake in a nearby property.

The bidding could technically reach ridiculous levels, and underhanded tactics of acquiring property would surface and re-surface. Standard vote-bank politics of pitting 'rich versus poor', 'upmarket versus downmarket', 'gardens versus roads' would emerge.

Thus, higher the scarcity levels, greater the price. Scarcity can be the result of lack of resources or a manufactured result. Either way, competition gets bad. The only way out is to enforce availabillity of housing at acceptable levels of living. That would mean larger land banks being developed, with greater emphasis on budget housing and improving standards of the poorest, as the rich should be able to afford their standard of living. (One would need to challenge the assumptions that land has a fixed yield and a fixed availability.)

I can hear detractors say,"All this is Old Hat!"

Now lets imagine that property development is like education development.....