A Boring Dystopia

Do you know the difference between profit and income for a personal landlord?

I was asking about the qualitatve difference, not the quantitative.

Effectively not much.

Citation needed. Im guessing that the minimum is more than a few hundred Euros a month net profit per rented out unit. That's nothing to sneeze at for one household. Especially considering how low effort one unit is (can't be more than a few hours a month).

It’s not just an investment for them, it’s a good chunk of their job and their income.

For private landlords: Definetly not. The needed labour for owning a unit is negligible in comparison to a full-time job.

They can rent their property at a rent lower than upkeep because they are gaining capital that they can eventually sell.

This might be an ideal but it contradicts with your statement below. And even if: At some point someone wants to make profit off the property. Your "argument" only kicks the bucket down the road until some buyer (and I wonder who can buy inflated house prices) will increase the rent for profit.

Rent-seeking is the most popular form of gaining income, since it requires no work (except for upkeep) and has virtually no risk, compared to a market.

Larger landlords can even do better due to the economy of scale for upkeep costs.

Those larger landlords want even more return of investment. Don't tell me you're so naive to think that no one wants to actually make money of the people with the least power in this dynamic: the tenants.

Unfortunately, landlords will often try to make the most and so maximize rent based on the market.

Aha! So now, we're leaving this ideal world of yours. Why do you think that's actually an anomaly of the system?

The market should balance this out (ie if being a landlord is so lucrative, more people should become landlords and that would increase the competition and costs would go down). But many people don’t want to figure out all the details, borrow large sums of money, take on the risk, take on the stress of managing tenants, etc. - which just shows the value added by the landlord is real.

You ignore that the housing market is very inflexible. People always need housing, so there is a natural demand, along with incredibly prohibitive costs of entry. People can't afford any homes (that's the housing crisis), because property values are through the roof, driving up rents! You act as if people are too "lazy" to become landlords, but most can't even afford their own homes!