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California Approves Statewide Rent Control

nytimes.com

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Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#161

Post by holy_city »

ng12 wrote: post #112
holy_city wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was interviewing for jobs in the Bay area I noticed entry level salaries (even at smaller shops) were in the range of 100-120k and rent was like 35-40% of your salary after taxes. Certainly higher than the recommended 30% but it's not that different from somewhere like LA or NYC, even Chicago and Miami aren't much cheaper. Are my numbers just totally off?

$120,000 comes out to around $6k/mo. A mediocre studio in SF is pretty close to $3k.

After taxes it's a bit under $6,900 so 40% of that is ~$2,700. Browsing Zillow/Apartments.com/Padmapper shows several thousand listings for studios under $2k and single bedrooms around $2.2-2.7k, depending on area. SF proper seems pretty tiny and the most expensive, is everyone just trying to cram in there? Do people try not to commute?

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#162

Post by 0xEFF »

tmh79 wrote: post #56
pitaj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the cost of further disincentives to actually building more housing. What a great idea. Every field of economics agrees that rent control causes harm to the people it's supposed to help.

this doesn't impact new buildings (only buildings older than 15 years old), its impact on housing creating is miniscule compared with the regulatory barriers of zoning and cost barriers of impact fees and construction costs.

The value of a new building is lower because it’s expected future value is lower.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#163

Post by dfilppi »

wait-a-minute wrote: post #108
ahelwer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a condo too. And if I move I probably won't sell it, but rather rent it out until I move back (while living in a rented place of my own). Individual home ownership is not a problem, it should be encouraged. The problem is people (and REITs) who lever up with a bunch of properties to be fed half of people's paycheck in the manner described. I will nitpick and say that paying your mortgage is not a cost. That is…

You are very confused. A mortgage is definitely a cost. It's only meaningful equity if you ever sell it and get any of the money back, which is not guaranteed at all. And only public housing would collapse the entire economy. Plenty of countries tried this, most notably the commies in Russia and in eastern Europe.

Welcome to commiefornia

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#164

Post by baby »

neonate wrote: post #77
baby wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abused? When I moved here I heard horror stories of rent increasing suddenly. I did what any sane person would do. I looked only for rent controlled places before moving in.

Certainly it gets abused. People keep their apartments even though they're not living in them, because otherwise the rent would go up. I know someone who did that for 20 years with an apartment on Russian Hill. She would sublet the place for a year or two and then come back.

Nice negligible anecdote

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#165

Post by baby »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #42
baby wrote: post #23

I’m surprised to read negative opinions about rent control. The alternative to rent control is having one’s rent double next week. I’m amazed that rent control was not a thing!

Sorry if this comes off snarky but perhaps others posting here can see past next week. All too often these quick fix Band-Aids end up causing more problems in the long run while also spreading the problem far beyond where it had previously been contained.

Sure. In the mean time I’m not renting your place if it doesn’t have rent control. And anybody who does is insane.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#166

Post by dublinben »

tmh79 wrote: post #33
melling wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a 20 year old story about rent control in San Francisco. So, we are talking about a long term problem? “ A few months ago, when a San Francisco official proposed a study of the city's housing crisis, there was a firestorm of opposition from tenant-advocacy groups. ”

yes, and there was a huge well funded study a few stanford professors conducted of rent control in SF in 2018 that is a much more accurate study of the affects of rent control policies. "Rent control appears to help affordability in the short run for current tenants, but in the long-run decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative externalities on the surrounding neighborhood." To be clear, the…

It sounds like this is a poor solution for a non-problem then.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#168

Post by baby »

tim58 wrote: post #51
baby wrote: post #23

I’m surprised to read negative opinions about rent control. The alternative to rent control is having one’s rent double next week. I’m amazed that rent control was not a thing!

I think that artificially decreasing the price of a good/service through regulation decreases the incentive to produce more of the good/service. The solution to the housing crises is to build more housing. This discourages building more housing.

Why? In both cases there should be more housing. If rent control is a thing, now you have more rich people who can’t find a place and are willing to put money in building new housing.

Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control

#169

Post by john_moscow »

bhauer wrote: post #21

I am a landlord in Oregon, but not California. The curious, although ultimately predictable, outcome of the new rent control measure in Oregon is that while I have historically had an arrangement with my property management to be restrained in annual rent increases, they are now advising a default annual increase of the maximum allowed (7 percent before inflation). This is because larger adjustments cannot be made if…

>they are now advising a default annual increase of the maximum allowed (7 percent before inflation)

Is the property management company collecting an extra commission each time a new tenant moves in? Because all this strategy is going to do is let tenants quit once the rent goes considerably above the market rate.

A much wiser strategy, IMO, would be to watch the market rates and keep the existing tenants' rate constant until the market rate climbs considerably higher (7% sounds like reasonable threshold) and then raising it to be marginally below the market, incentivizing the tenant to stay.

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