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Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

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Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#71

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

theduro wrote: post #12

Rent control is a failed experiment. All it does is force land lords to massively increase rent amounts when someone moves out to account for multi-year market increases. Basically, if the real market price of an apartment is ~$3,000/mo, but in 5 years it realistically would be $5,000, they will simply list it for $5,000 now, to mitigate the loss. My mother-in-law is a land lord in Los Angeles (a very fair one at tha…

Nothing against your MIL but it is extremely common for people to not walk the talk. It's much easier to talk in pure abstract models when it is someone else's life and money on the line.

I am sure most people here who claim that the likes of Google and Apple should not 'avoid' taxes take every possible tax deduction in their personal lives so as to minimize their tax liability.

There's a reason the young are such idealists. It's easy to preach in the abstract about how OTHER parents should raise THEIR kids. Or how OTHER landlords should manage THEIR property investments. When these people become parents and homeowners themselves is when the rubber hits the road, and most just regress to the mean.

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#72

Post by robrenaud »

0wing wrote: post #26
crdoconnor wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Rent control removes the incentive to build new apartments. Not even 1% as much as untaxing land and property does.

Actually the opposite, by taxing land in high demand urban cores it would incentivize more efficient use of the land - i.e. building up to support more occupants or higher value economic activity. [1] Deregulating the zoning restrictions would allow more buildings to be built. [2] Here is a startling fact: in 2014 there were 142,417 housing starts in the city of Tokyo (population 13.3m, no empty land), more than the…

Japan is weird. They demo/rebuild housing much more than in other places in the world.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/03/31/how-tos/ja...

You'd really want some kind of net housing units measure, rather than housing starts, to compensate this when comparing Tokyo to other cities.

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#73

Post by aero142 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #42
theduro wrote: post #12

Rent control is a failed experiment. All it does is force land lords to massively increase rent amounts when someone moves out to account for multi-year market increases. Basically, if the real market price of an apartment is ~$3,000/mo, but in 5 years it realistically would be $5,000, they will simply list it for $5,000 now, to mitigate the loss. My mother-in-law is a land lord in Los Angeles (a very fair one at tha…

"Rent control is a failed experiment. All it does is force land lords to massively increase rent amounts when someone moves out to account for multi-year market increases." Forces them? As if they wouldn't raise rents as much as they felt they could get away with anyway. Or as if without rent control landlords would keep rents low, merely out of the goodness of their hearts.

This isn't as obvious as you make it sound. If all landlord realized they will have a future loss, they are looking for a way to recoup this. If they believe other landlords are going to do the same thing, they know they can raise prices without getting undercut because others know the same thing they do. Quips about the goodness of their hearts isn't as deep a thought as you think.

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#74

Post by thaumasiotes »

snissn wrote: post #51
tomohawk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heinlen in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" introduces the idea of a legislature with 2 chambers. One for creating laws and the other for getting rid of them. The threshold for creating them being higher. The way it is now, everything is geared towards "doing" things, and credit is received for "accomplishments". Its usually much harder to undo things. It would be refreshing to have specialists in undoing things.

Has that ever been tried in practice?

Under Icelandic Viking law, every year one man had to recite the law. (I believe this was given one day.) Anything he forgot to include was no longer the law.

Different system, but some thematic similarities.

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#75

Post by 0wing »

vinniejames wrote: post #29

Of course it is. It artificially limits supply due to long term rent squatters taking advantage of the system

Building additional units (supply) in SF isn't being limited by the renters, it's zoning laws, prop 13, and NIMBYs.

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#76

Post by Spooky23 »

theduro wrote: post #12

Rent control is a failed experiment. All it does is force land lords to massively increase rent amounts when someone moves out to account for multi-year market increases. Basically, if the real market price of an apartment is ~$3,000/mo, but in 5 years it realistically would be $5,000, they will simply list it for $5,000 now, to mitigate the loss. My mother-in-law is a land lord in Los Angeles (a very fair one at tha…

When the earthquake levels half the city and your mother in law is bankrupt because here tenants have no connection to the community and jet, I’m sure she will be very interested in government asssitance.

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#77

Post by derekp7 »

snissn wrote: post #51
tomohawk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heinlen in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" introduces the idea of a legislature with 2 chambers. One for creating laws and the other for getting rid of them. The threshold for creating them being higher. The way it is now, everything is geared towards "doing" things, and credit is received for "accomplishments". Its usually much harder to undo things. It would be refreshing to have specialists in undoing things.

Has that ever been tried in practice?

Wasn't that one of Trump's promises, that for every new regulation, two old ones had to go?

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#78

Post by rhino369 »

s73ver_ wrote: post #49
ghouse wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But rent control manipulates the free market. With rent control, people who might otherwise move, don't. Further, people who might rent a vacant apartment while they're overseas don't. Or people who start a family and move to the suburbs keep their city place as a pied a tier. So supply is suppressed, but demand is not.

"With rent control, people who might otherwise move, don't." I'm failing to see the problem. Unless those people would have moved for reasons other than soaring rent, them getting to keep their homes is a GOOD THING.

There are plenty of bad outcomes: say they no longer need a 3 bed apartment. But with rent controls, they might actually pay more if they moved to a 1 bed. Or they get a job in San Jose and are forced to commute instead of just moving because they are getting such a deal.

But the bigger issue is that is artificially raises demand. That prices up for everyone else, which does more harm. It's a subsidy for older people paid for by younger people.

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#79

Post by linkregister »

s73ver_ wrote: post #48
mattlong wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rent Control surely just prevents local families from being muscled out by the tech employees? Correct. And in the process of doing so, further contributes to the lack of inventory of market-rate rental units available to the influx of newcomers/tech employees. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments here, this causes huge disparities for rents of similar units within a given building as landlords attempt to compens…

So what's the solution for addressing this problem, AND not having local families from being muscled out by tech employees? Because whatever is proposed, if it means that local families have to leave because the rent was increased astronomically underneath them, then it's a non-starter.

What in particular about incumbent renters justifies making policies that benefit that group above all others? Is there something inherently less worthy about families seeking to return to a city after having left it? About a daughter seeking to move out of her parents house?

Re: Stanford paper says rent control is driving up cost of housing in San Francisco

#80

Post by lern_too_spel »

dmix wrote: post #10
ghouse wrote: post #5

Rent control solves some problems. Creates other problems. Similar to almost any intervention in free markets. Sometimes the cost of intervention outweigh benefits, sometimes they don't. Rent control allows people (wealthy or poor) to remain where they are without purchasing their residence. Unfortunately, to do accomplish this objective, it increases the price for new arrivals (be they wealthy or poor). In Californi…

> Sometimes the cost of intervention outweigh benefits, sometimes they don't. + Sometimes it works for a short period, as the policy reflected the economy at the time of creation, then becomes irrelevant via technology/market reaction to policy/general progress... but yet stays a policy for decades. The important point is that we rarely ever measures whether it does work or not, and policy tends to have an extremely…

These studies already are commissioned by the state. The problem is when they are ignored, like with ballot initiatives that implement rent control and tax control over the objections of nearly every working economist.
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