Actually, here in Toronto, Asians are buying multiple properties and renting them out. There is a distinct shortage of rental properties here in Toronto, largely because of the dampening effects of the Landlord and Tenant Act that is in place Provincially that can limit a landlord in significant ways and has created many barriers to removing bad tenants. We had one situation recently - admittedly, not the norm - where a tenant in social housing, which is the provision of living space to the poorest of the poor, who had refused to pay his rent for well over a decade, some $65,000 plus in arrears, because he felt his unit and his building weren't properly maintained. The City of Toronto's public housing corporation finally got him evicted from that unit but only by moving him to another public housing unit and even then he didn't want to go but the courts forced him to go.
The Act placed significant limits on the amount of rent increases that could be applied, set Provincially and related to inflation, and required landlords to petition the agency in charge to allow increases over that amount based on proven cost increases. Only recently has the Act been amended to grandfather a lot of older housing stock and allow newer housing stock to set higher market based rates and market based year over year increases. As a result, here in Toronto, the condo market is booming and most of the units in new buildings are owned by non-resident landlords who lease them out as an investment.
And just, anecdotally, I have a neighbor who is a real estate agent in my area and she recently had an Asian client who flew in for a week to buy houses. They bought seven houses during the week and on the last day they bought a house as their last investment and paid $150,000 above the asking price and their's was the only offer on the house. Asians investors have money to burn and even at the going prices our real estate is cheap to them. Try buying a condo in Hong Kong or Singapore, in comparison.