If there were enough supply and competition in the rental market, this would never work. This kind of post would be made to the sound of a laugh track, they'd sit on their empty apartments, their property values wouldn't go up, and they'd eventually come back down on their pricing. Instead, even if you don't get tenants, you can still make money on property values going arbitrarily upwards. At that, large real estate holdings (like apartments) are increasingly held by a handful of small players that obviously won't compete against themselves, so they just charge whatever they want, which raises the ceiling on what the little guys can charge, too. We have a trailer that family is staying at that, honestly, the fair price to rent it is $5-600/mo + utilities; like properties are going for almost twice that, and spare rooms in my city start there. It's because of how little choice and opportunity we have in housing that the system can be this exploitive. Sometimes, it's dizzying how much needs to change, but it must be done or things will just keep getting worse.