i dont know what that means.

1. The government doesn't own all the rental property in Austria, though im sure it s subject to local laws.

2. The Austrian Government has nothing to do with the US government. I am not familiar with Austrian politics, but the US govt is almost entirely dysfunctional at every level, usually on purpose, for a variety of reasons.

3. i imagine the Austrian housing market in vastly different from the US housing market

4. Regulating the entire rental market in the US in such a fashion would probably destroy billions, probably trillions of dollars in wealth for mostly retired Americans because housing prices would instantly crater. So on top of being entirely politically unfeasible it also just bad policy. All your doing is stealing for one person to give to another.

imagine how fucked in the head you would have to be to think "the government owns all the rental housing" isnt some dystopian nightmare 10x worse than whatever already exists.

Thats extremely unlikely. Maybe it could theoretically rent for that it wasnt regulated, but it obviously is, so the actual rent he could collect on the unit is a fraction of that.

Its sealed up because the cost to renovate the unit is likely so much higher than the rent he could legally charge that he would never recoup the cost.

and having someone in the unit that may not even be legally habitable, or just barely habitable, to collect bread crumbs and field 20x service calls a week is not worth the hassle.

He likely bought it with an understanding that the laws likely will change at some point. But he could also be wrong and they might not change, or at least not in a time frame he can take advantage of.

Frauda*