I live in Italy, sadly in a tourist city. You can't find houses easily: a 2-room house goes by 800 euros at least and if you search listings you can only find 3-4 houses that are actually good albeit expensive.

But then you go Airbnb and you can find 500+ listings, with an average of 80 euros per night for a 2-room house, so 2400 per month. The reason might be better security for the landlord but you can't tell me that there's not an economic reason, too.