51–60 of 78 posts
Governments are always unsuccessfully trying to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand. They've been trying to do it for the last 4,000 years. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1610161408/
In San Francisco, I’m not a fan of Aaron Peskin’s ban on algorithmic rent-setting (Admin Code 37.10C https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s... ) (which is probably similar to the other cities) because 1) it goes beyond antitrust law in just banning data gathering for no good reason, and 2) it rewards bounty hunters. 1. It goes beyond antitrust guidelines by banning rent prediction using any “non…
SF as a city has the fundamental problem that there's a huge part of the electorate will blame the housing shortage on absolutely anything they can find that's not the actual fundamental physical shortage of housing. That leads to an endless tangle of local laws and organizations supposedly trying to "do something about it", that are fundamentally just making the problem worse by adding marginal cost to every new alr…
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Why would landlords not seek the highest possible rent without rent control?
Under rent control the highest possible rent is set by laws. If you fall behind on the allowed rent increase you’re usually not allowed to catch up to market rate later, such as when your tenant leaves and you put the unit back on the market. So to avoid getting stuck at below market rate with no legal way to catch up, you have to take the maximum allowable rent increase every year. In some situations it’s better to…
It's honestly absurd to read this thread because everyone who has ever rented in the SF bay area knows this, yet there's a whole discussion based on some half-assumed idea of what the system is.
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What second-order effects...? Feels like such an oddly opqaue way to talk about them. And how do you ignore the effect of the fact that rent no longer rises during the life of the tenant, making it lower after a while than it would otherwise be...? (How) is it so obvious that that is dwarfed by the second-order effects of uncontrolled rent that it doesn't even warrant a mention? Because it isn't to me.
> And how do you ignore the effect of the fact that rent no longer rises during the life of the tenant, Rent control schemes don’t work like this, except in completely broken policies. Landlords are given an allowance for rent control increases year over year. The point is that they basically have to take the maximum allowed every year to avoid getting stuck.
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Housing shortages are a result of local policies, and rent control makes housing shortages worse ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105113772... ).
Just as well I’m not arguing for rent control or any particular policy then isn’t it? I’m pointing out that the “it’s my property I can do what I want” attitude needs to be balanced with public needs for housing, because society isn’t purely about optimising the content of your wallet, and extreme deregulation results in slums. (Your linked paper there also says that rent control results in more properties having aff…
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With rent control, you are limited in how you can increase rent later, so it’s to your benefit to let the apartment sit vacant longer until you get a desirable rent. Without rent control, because you can just increase rent next year by whatever, you can rent it at the market rate right away without waiting.
TL;DR => Sowell, "Basic Economics".
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> The point seems to be to punish landlords more than it is to establish fair rules. Rules without punishments are useless though.
> Rules without punishments are useless though. There’s proportional punishment based on harm, and then there are abusive booby-traps. If a landlord uses a nonpublic dataset (e.g., a vendor’s model based on year-old data that would not harm competition under the antitrust settlement), then a tenant and nonprofit can each sue for civil penalties plus attorney fees even though there is no harm.
Don't worry, no landlord will die or be maimed in the process.
> based on harm
Most laws don't require direct harm to have already occurred, fortunately.
If one landlord is violating the law, then they deserve due punishment. Law and orders shouldn't stop at landlord.
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If rent no longer rises then the profit doesn't rise commensurately with demand, so the money isn't there to build supply. Rent control crushes supply to the degree that the rent control caps rents below the actual market rate. If you're lucky enough to get rent controlled housing then you're in good shape. But good luck getting it when things get far enough down the timeline. Rent fixing is the other side where supp…
If rents can’t rise quickly, then the expected profit of a building goes down, which means prices for land go down, which means it is cheaper to build, which means it balances out. If the balance is far enough off that everything turns into commercial real estate, that can be solved, too.
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I live in NYC, which has rent control, and the idea that a landlord would otherwise lower rent is hilarious. Landlords raise rent by the max allowed because they can. There is no “catch up” because the purpose is to protect renters against huge jumps. I think rent controlled units that sit empty should be subject to a tax based on an escalating percentage of the market rent. You can own property to rent out, but in a…
> I think rent controlled units that sit empty should be subject to a tax based on an escalating percentage of the market rent They would just be taken off the market and then relisted later. Forcing people to rent their properties and also forcing the price isn’t something I can get behind. People need to be able to choose what they do with their property.
We have a severe housing shortage and these are developers building high-rise apartments. This isn’t me saying you should be forced to rent your second bedroom.
They are getting permits and incentives _to build housing_.
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If rents can’t rise quickly, then the expected profit of a building goes down, which means prices for land go down, which means it is cheaper to build, which means it balances out. If the balance is far enough off that everything turns into commercial real estate, that can be solved, too.
You’re misunderstanding 2 fundamental things. First is that it’s very expensive to build anything in major US cities with the high cost of labor, materials, and permitting. Rent control completely tips the balance against building housing that you’ll rent out. Second is that the value of land is not going to depreciate in these premier US cities just because it’s not profitable to build rental units. There’s many val…