Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wikipedia
Absentee landlord is an economic term for a person who owns and rents out a profit-earning property, but does not live within the property's local economic region. The term "absentee ownership" was popularised by economist Thorstein Veblen's book of the same name, Absentee ownership.
When used in a local context, the term refers to a landlord of a house or other real estate, who leases the property to tenants, but fails to ensure that proper maintenance is done on it. This in turn leads to what may appear to be abandoned buildings, causing significantly lowered property values and urban blight.
Tax policy seems, overall, to favour absentee ownership. However, some jurisdictions seek to extract money from absentee owners by taxing land. Absentee ownership has sometimes put the absentee owners at risk of loss.
Usage examples of "absentee landlord".
It was far easier to rent an estate from an absentee landlord, then let it to peasants at an extortionate rate.
His absentee landlord apparently had a fixation on Leda and the Swan.
He was a Cheshire poacher who had been offered a chance to enlist in the army rather than face transportation for stealing a brace of pheasants from an absentee landlord.
Jack: if we start on this thing, you'll be farm manager and I'll be the more-or-less absentee landlord.
Her father was organist at your own church, and a hard struggle he must have had of it, with an absentee landlord, and a congregation of seagulls, I should think.
The absentee landlord was content with regular payments (cash, delivered by messenger) and a tenant, Siegmund Baum by name, who made no complaints.
He couldn't remember any story associated with it when I asked, but then he was an absentee landlord who only held the land for summer hunting in the forest.
Hers is the age-old story of the absentee landlord, the queen in the castle and the serfs in the fields.
She tried to punch some air holes but the bag was a glass laminate, tough as an absentee landlord's heart.