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Neither was Anne Frank but we remember her. We remember victims of atrocities.
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The redistribution of housing wealth caused by rent control (2023) [pdf]
131–140 of 161 posts
Re: The redistribution of housing wealth caused by rent control (2023) [pdf]
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Neither was Anne Frank but we remember her. We remember victims of atrocities.
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oh so it's okay to just murder a random guy if it turns out the guy once had less than a gram of cocaine in his pocket (but you didn't know that he did)
What is this character assassination nonsense? To give someone the death penalty you have to go through a trial for a specific crime they did. You can't just shoot first and find excuses later.
Re: The redistribution of housing wealth caused by rent control (2023) [pdf]
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
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oh so it's okay to just murder a random guy if it turns out the guy once had less than a gram of cocaine in his pocket (but you didn't know that he did) What is this character assassination nonsense? To give someone the death penalty you have to go through a trial for a specific crime they did. You can't just shoot first and find excuses later.
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Re: The redistribution of housing wealth caused by rent control (2023) [pdf]
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're wildly overestimating the rationality of investors.
If other investors are irrational that's a wonderful arbitrage opportunity. But good arbitrage opportunities are rare and don't last very long, so maybe they are rational.
You’re really asking for a Keynes comment here. :-)
He flirted with bankruptcy multiple times.
Re: The redistribution of housing wealth caused by rent control (2023) [pdf]
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's not a law in the same way as physical laws. Most of the failures in economics of the past 50 years can be mostly directly attributed to a fatal overcommitment to the belief that these attributed relations are incontrivertible. What really exists, closest to the limit we will call "hard science" or "physics", is the microcosmic focus on individuals interacting in a market. Everything else -- supply and demand…
No, no, see, of course it's a law! Now, I'll explain it to you: First, assume a spherical economy in a frictionless vacuum... (/s)
Technically, the earth is a spherical economy in a frictionless vacuum
Re: The redistribution of housing wealth caused by rent control (2023) [pdf]
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Massachusetts law requiring cities/towns to build high-density housing around commuter rail stops neglected one thing. There's no open space. To build high-density housing, the city or state would have to buy out the existing landowners, demolish the existing property, and then build anew. They also neglected the effect of travel time on behavior. Back in the day, I was commuting from a rich suburb to Cambridge,…
I think your model is off. If single family homes got rezoned to allow large complexes near trains, those plots of land would be worth more and it would likely be worth it for the people living there to eventually sell to developers. This doesn't require the city or state buying anyone out. In the greater boston area NIMBY's are incredibly effective and will pull out every stop. I.e. instead of designating normal are…
Thank you. I hadn't even thought about the prices of property. To get an idea of what property costs would be in an area I'm familiar with, I looked on Zillow at properties around a couple of train stations in Weston.
Looking at one of the train stations in a lower-priced section of Weston, properties within walking distance of the stop go for roughly $2 million per acre, according to Zillow. Given what happened to the properties around the Green Line extension, I would expect those properties to sell for at least twice their Zillow listing price.
I thought about what it would take to get me to sell. I think it would take multiple millions, with a sub-5% mortgage, to get me to sell. It is kind of hard to put a value on it because I have established mini-orchard and berry patches.
How many housing units and parking spaces can you fit into two acres? Unless the units are heavily subsidized, I don't think any of them will be considered "affordable" because condos in the area sold for around half a million dollars seven years ago, and so I'd expect these to go for at least $750,000 to a million.
Re: The redistribution of housing wealth caused by rent control (2023) [pdf]
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Massachusetts law requiring cities/towns to build high-density housing around commuter rail stops neglected one thing. There's no open space. To build high-density housing, the city or state would have to buy out the existing landowners, demolish the existing property, and then build anew. They also neglected the effect of travel time on behavior. Back in the day, I was commuting from a rich suburb to Cambridge,…
> Sadly, the billionaires would be untouched. Why would you conclude that? Billionaires have their money invested in the same things as your 401k, etc.
When you have billions, you have so much margin for loss that it would not materially affect your life; if you lose 80% of your wealth, you can still survive and continue rebuilding it. Whereas if you've got 1 mil in your 401k and you lose 80% of that, well, you're f-ed for retirement.
Re: The redistribution of housing wealth caused by rent control (2023) [pdf]
#138Important context: This paper is from 2023. In 2025, St. Paul massively rolled back rent control restrictions. Their rent control used to have no exemptions, but now it's become very similar to SF rent control. Strict limit on how much rent can go up for current tenants, but can reset close to market rate when there's a 'just cause' vacancy. And all buildings built after X date are exempt entirely. (X=2004 in St. Pau…
> but can reset close to market rate when there's a 'just cause' vacancy. Unfortunate policy, and generating weird incentives to get people to leave! In Queensland (not exactly perfectly managing the rental crisis but...) their policies include not being able to raise rent more than once every 12 months (leases tend to be 12 months). Importantly it's linked to the property, not the tenants. There's no actual cap in p…
BC, Canada has a similar "just cause" (they have a list of valid reasons to evict). Although they do allow unlimited rent raises between tenants.
The key is that there is a very low cost resolution tribunal, and the penalties for evicting improperly are incredibly harsh (12 months rent to be paid to the tenant in cash).
Re: The redistribution of housing wealth caused by rent control (2023) [pdf]
#139> This paper studies the effects of rent control on the housing wealth of renters, landlords, and homeowners. Over the nine months following the passage of rent control in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2021, average property values fell by 4.4% to 5.8%. This seems like too short-term a study. The argument against artificially holding prices down is that people won't produce as much as they would otherwise and people won't b…
I propose the Invisible Hand… ahm, Grenade: it is likely impossible that a thread about rent control can exist without it being quickly dismissed because of the Free Market.
Housing policy debate is not allowed nuance, as unregulated capitalism is the ultimate goal of Humanity.
Re: The redistribution of housing wealth caused by rent control (2023) [pdf]
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Laughable the one thing that all the English speaking capitalistic countries share today is that most of its citizens most of whom don’t have rent control by the way are headed for a lifetime of being a renter all their life. They are also headed towards paying more than 50% of whatever income they make to rent that’s the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland. I can’t speak for the…
> The shortage of affordable housing has nothing to do with rent control Oh, it absolutely does. The abandonment of rent properties in NYC is ample evidence.
The point of the comment you're responding to is that shortage of affordable housing is ubiquitous, and you can't blame rent control on that in most places (which don't have rent control in the first place).
I don't think rent control is the most efficient solution to the problem, but believing it's a greater problem than the status quo is delusional. The status quo suck, and it mostly sucks because over the past 30 years housing policies in the West have been driven by the belief that markets dynamics are a good way to manage housing.