The Bay Area desperately needs ~6-story units in every urban area and near every public transit stop.
California Approves Statewide Rent Control
861–870 of 1001 posts
Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control
#862Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rent control decreases the liquidity of the rental market because anyone currently renting is strongly incentivized to stay put in order to keep their low rate.
I still don't understand this. Most people are motivated by a lot more than the desire to pay less rent. Jobs change, people move, they go upward in their careers, etc. Is there any evidence to suggest that rent prices are actually "strong incentives" to not move? I think this isn't true. I think people are much more motivated by their social circles, their job prospects, upward social mobility by working hard, or st…
Your experience may be exceptional. When money is tight, people make what can send to be strange decisions.
Also anecdotally, I don’t know anyone in SF living in a tent controlled apartment whose name is actually on the lease, they’re all illegally subletting from the actual named tenant to keep the rate locked in.
Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control
#863Rent control benefits no one, nor the landlord and certainly not the tenant. However, it is a classic "virtue signaling" used by politicians to advance their career. This is no exception.
Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control
#864Earlier quoted context omitted.
Markets are hardly perfect, but in this specific case it should be the most efficient solution to the problem - if you could fix the zoning and other laws that distort it so badly that it's dysfunctional. And your still going to want to add incentives for things you value but the market does not - perhaps like lower income housing. In some of the other cases you mentioned markets are not necessarily the best solution…
What are the zoning laws you see as the problem? Serious question, I'm not in that area and don't know much about SF's zoning issues.
There are severe restrictions on density and heavy parking requirements just to start. It’s much much more complex than that, but to simplify - people who lived in a given area want it to remain the same.
SF Bay Area is creating 3+ jobs per new unit built (any unit). So the gap is growing rather rapidly, resulting in demand far outpacing supply.
Most of the peninsula cities/towns do not want any growth and want to remain single family home neighborhoods. However, based on demand, they should probably evolve more into either denser row houses or apartment/townhome type.
The way to restrict this from happening is to require more land per sq.ft. of housing and require more parking per bedroom and guest parking for Multifamily housing. All this makes land use less efficient and therefore more expensive, deterring development.
Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control
#865Rent control benefits no one, nor the landlord and certainly not the tenant. However, it is a classic "virtue signaling" used by politicians to advance their career. This is no exception.
Rent control benefits current residents and communities from being disrupted by real estate pricing.
Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control
#866Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do tell me how your $4k apartment rental, at nearly 3 times the national average rent and above market for most of NYC, is the scourge of housing markets, forcing rents up for everyone and preventing new construction. Because that's what rent regulation's detractors are arguing, even though your empirical evidence (and mine) suggest the opposite. That's the context we're discussing this in.
OP and my apartments are actually new developments benefiting from these breaks.
Missing the forest for the trees.
Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control
#867Earlier quoted context omitted.
This makes me curious... is it the property management company or the landlord that sets the rental price? I recently rented a house and tried to haggle with the PM but they refused to budge on price but were willing to negotiate on other factors (like lease term and property rules), which made me wonder if the PM's hands were tied re: price.
I don't know exact specifics of typical PM agreements, but usually yeah the PM follows whatever the landlord specifies. If the PM doesn't like the landlord's terms, they will just decline to do business with them, but ultimately they're just the landlord's agent. I'd hazard that the PM charges a percent of the gross rent, but has a minimum irrespective of the rent actually charged, so the landlord will then just tell…
Most property owners leave rent decisions to their property managers, as they're treating their property as a somewhat passive investment. It's basically the entire point of having a property manager.
Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control
#868Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should I care about the woes of landlords as opposed to renters?
Ok. Then care about the tenants. Do you have one shred of evidence that rent control, broadly, helps tenants? Because every economist I ever heard on this topic, left or right, argues rent control is bad for tenants.
Rent control is good for politicians getting elected. No point in analyzing farther than that.
Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control
#869Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I’ve seen an estimate of 20,000 for SF proper. Even if that was added to the vacancy rate, that would still leave SF with around the national average (~7%) vacancy rate, and that's without counting the off-the-market housing anywhere else in the average (and not double counting actual on-the-market vacancies everywhere else, either.) Anyway you cut it, SF has a low vacancy rate/rate of empty homes.
Yeah, but 2% to 7% vacancy rate can mean the difference between rents that are $2000 per month and rents that are $4000 per month.
SF added 2,000 jobs in 2019 alone. If those were put on the market even in a huge lump sum, there's no way it would cut rent prices in half. Maybe it would keep the prices from rising for a year or so?
Re: California Approves Statewide Rent Control
#870Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still don't understand this. Most people are motivated by a lot more than the desire to pay less rent. Jobs change, people move, they go upward in their careers, etc. Is there any evidence to suggest that rent prices are actually "strong incentives" to not move? I think this isn't true. I think people are much more motivated by their social circles, their job prospects, upward social mobility by working hard, or st…
Your experience may be exceptional. When money is tight, people make what can send to be strange decisions. Also anecdotally, I don’t know anyone in SF living in a tent controlled apartment whose name is actually on the lease, they’re all illegally subletting from the actual named tenant to keep the rate locked in.
> because anyone currently renting
Not everyone who is renting has tight money situation. Your complement states that everyone who is renting will have a tight money situation and then follow the 'strong incentives' that you have prescribed to them without knowing who they are.
You don't know what incentivizes those people. It sure as heck isn't primarily saving on rent, especially in SF.
> Also anecdotally, I don’t know anyone in SF living in a tent controlled apartment whose name is actually on the lease, they’re all illegally subletting from the actual named tenant to keep the rate locked in.
Well that seems like an entirely separate issue. Go after the people doing illegal things that are hurting your rental market. Stop that activity from happening if it's illegal, don't use some existent, illegal activity to then set into stone why passing new laws is bad. That doesn't make any sense.