I've been wondering if this is actually a problem of over-regulation. When there...

I've been wondering if this is actually a problem of over-regulation. When there are more and more regulations at the national, state, city, and neighborhood level, at some point, the little-guy landlords start to give up, out of fear that they'll never be able to comply with everything and ensure that they never get sued or fined. Maybe only the big companies, with the budgets to hire lots of lawyers and clerks to handle everything, and some political connections to smooth over any mistakes, are willing to touch real estate in this market. Now maybe these big companies don't care so much about a few months or years of being vacant, as long as the long-term numbers look good.

I'm not completely sure how big of a problem that is. I have a feeling there is a larger trend of the big companies squeezing out the little guys more and more. I don't think over-regulation is the whole picture, but I'm pretty sure it's at least a small part, and maybe a pretty big one. That makes it feel rather odd that the usual recommended solution is yet more regulations. One more set of regulations that the big companies will find a way to document their way around or use political pull to get around, while the little guy can't keep up with it all or document compliance with everything, and gets their business destroyed if they mess up.

I kind of hope somebody proves me wrong actually, since this makes me a little depressed about the future.