[Politics_Observer]

@Fasces @Potemkin @Rancid

Personally, I remain unconvinced that rent control or rent caps is the answer to high cost of rent in big cities. Tenants can also negotiate too though with landlords regarding the monthly cost of their rent when they don't have tenants to fill their apartments. For example, offerring to sign a longer lease in return for a lower monthly price on rent.

Or offerring to help the landlord with repairs around the apartment complex in return for a lower cost on rent. If another apartment complex with equal value is offering a lower monthly cost of rent, kindly and respectfully let the landlord know when using it as bargaining leverage.

Plus if you have good credit and a good rental history this gives you bargaining power with landlords when supply is high. They would prefer to fill their units up with those who have good credit and good rental history. Having a good reputation in keeping your apartment clean and not causing damages along with great recommendations from past landlords goes a long ways too when bargaining. You know?

Once supply increases, you have to consider that it gives renters some bargaining power with landlords and it's not the interest of landlords to keep those rentals empty forever and that can happen once supply starts dramatically increasing.

Here is a very short video on the long term consequences of rent control:

[Fasces]

Tenants can also negotiate too though with landlords regarding the monthly cost of their rent when they don't have tenants to fill their apartments.

Not in practice - landlords prefer to keep their housing empty in major US cities than deal with tenants unions or lowering rent, as I said. You're in denial.

There are 90,000* vacant apartments in New York City that are purposely held vacant - because their market rate is "too cheap". Warehousing by landlords is a huge problem in cities that already face a supply crunch. Is it the biggest problem? No, but it exists, and solving it requires a 'reset' of the 'market rate' which can be done by increasing supply of low and middle income homes.

*and tens of thousands more reserved for short-term AirBNB style rentals.

[Politics_Observer]

@Fasces

Some landlords might be unwilling to negotiate but other might be willing to negotiate. Every landlord is different. Moreover, this also applies to property management companies. You can negotiate with the property management companies too. They would prefer to have good renters who they can count on to make timely payments and not cause expensive damages to their property.

Keeping your apartments empty when supply is saturated is not a good strategy for property management companies and landlords who are there to make money. They still got to pay property taxes and upkeep on those empty apartments. You better believe some of those with good rental history and credit are going to want to bargain and get the best deal they can get. Who wouldn't?

Individuals bargaining for a better deal is not a union. Thats just business. And apartments that remain empty just aren't making money and they still have overhead costs to pay for.

[Fasces]

Every landlord is different

Again, there are dozens of tools in use today that allow landlords to collude rent prices. RealPage's Yieldstar is even under investigation by the Department of Justice, but it is one of many.

It takes all the data in that it has on the property, on the apartment that’s being priced. And then also market data in, and that market data includes information from nearby competitors, that is not necessarily public. It’s the actual rent that they are charging to tenants. It’s not what you see on, say, apartments.com, or whatever is the advertised rent. So it takes the actual rent every single day, and it feeds that into this algorithm that spits out a suggested price for the landlord. And most of the time the landlords are adopting those prices. And so the concern is just that this would be a way for landlords in a very small, small geographic area to essentially all raise their prices at the same time.

[...]

We don’t have the national picture. And that’s part of the problem: we don’t know which buildings are using it, which ones aren’t using it. Renters don’t have that information. We really don’t know that. And in that, we actually don’t know, the 50% we know is a potential floor. We looked at one zip code, and found there were little more than 9,000 apartments that were in buildings with five or more units, considered multi-family, and there were 10 property managers that were managing 70% of that market. So it’s a very concentrated market in terms of the number of property managers, there’s not a lot managing a lot of units. And we were able to determine that all 10 of them were using RealPage pricing software, but certainly there could be others that were. And some of those might not use it in every single building. So it’s a really difficult situation, because I think it’s very hard for the consumer to really understand what is behind a lot of these prices.

https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/02/ ... t-renters/

They still got to pay property taxes and upkeep on those empty apartments. You better believe some of those with good rental history and credit are going to want to bargain and get the best deal they can get. Who wouldn't?

Which is why I said:

Historical protections, zoning and bans on multifamily homes need to go.

[...]

Rent control is necessary to incentive medium and low income housing.

[...]

especially in conjunction with other reforms (property taxes in the US for residences are absurdly high in many cities, for example

There isn't a 1 fix solution here. It requires a multipronged reform. Rent caps on new developments is part of that to insure that we alleviate the supply crunch in areas it actually needs to be alleviated.

Individuals bargaining for a better deal is not a union.

Individual families do not have bargaining power in overstaturated rental markets.

[Politics_Observer]

@Fasces

When the market is saturated with supply, the landlords or property management companies that keep their apartments empty might eventually be forced to take renters whose credit and rental history is not so good and that's a raw deal for them. Or they convert them to condiminiums, sell them and get out of the apartment rental business. And people can work in the big city, but not live there and not have a long commute and get cheaper rent that way even if landlords are colluding. In some me cases those landlords can be avoided. I would imagine collusion is illegal too.

[Fasces]

When the market is saturated with supply, the landlords or property management companies that keep their apartments empty might eventually be forced to take renters whose credit and rental history is not so good and that's a raw deal for them. Or they convert them to condiminiums, sell them and get out of the apartment rental business.

So you agree that current landlords are incentivized to either charge high rents or develop their properties into those that can charge high rents. A cap on rents forces people who want to redevelop their properties to foxus on redevelopments which serve communities facing the rental crunch - low and medium income families.

And people can work in the big city, but not live there and not have a long commute and get cheaper rent that way.

This is the current American solution - if this is your position, I am unsure why you're concerned with high city rents or why you created this thread. Of course rents are cheaper in the outskirts.

Personally, I am not OK with requiring the poorest in our society to spend several hours a day commuting - made worse by American policy that is actively hostile toward public transport options. A Starbucks barista should be able to live in the community they work in, not have to ride a train for three hours in and three hours out to serve coffee to Wall Street bankers.

Comptroller Stringer’s study examined microdata from the 1990 and 2000 census and the 2013 American Community Survey to evaluate trends in work and commuting hours. The analysis found that full-time workers in New York City spend slightly more time at work than do workers in the next 29 largest cities, but they also spend about two hours more per week commuting — an average of 6 hours and 18 minutes per week.

For instance, security guards have the longest commutes, spending more than eight hours per week commuting on average. Nursing and home health aides and maids and housekeepers also report long commutes, while chief executives, physicians and surgeons report some of the shortest commutes.

The average low income worker in a highly dense US city commutes for more than 20% of their workweek - likely longer because few low income service jobs provide individuals with a full 40 hour workweek to cut back on benefits - because high rents drive them out of the city.

To say nothing of the carbon cost of requiring such huge numbers of people to commute such large distances.

US urban centers are 18th century polities using 18th century solutions to deal with 21st century population numbers.

[Politics_Observer]

@Fasces

I am just saying that renters with good credit history and rental history have options. The solution to high costs of renting in the big city is not rent control. I am sure some politicians in the big city impose rent control because that position helps to get them elected to office but it ultimately doesn't solve the problem. And landlords or property management companies that are engaging in collusion, you are just going to have to pursue legal remedies against them to minimize that problem.

[Fasces]

I am just saying that renters with good credit history and retail history have options.

High rents aren't a problem for people who can afford them. What a revelation.

A credit score of less than 700 is regarded as 'low' for most financial institutions.

The average credit score in the U.S. is 716.

The average credit score for Americans ages 23 to 29 is 660.

80- to 89-year-olds have the highest average credit score of 757.

Low-income families have a median credit score of 658.

Asian Americans have the highest credit score of any race at 745.

Black Americans have the lowest credit score of any race at 677.

Men hold a slightly higher credit score than women.

23.3% of Americans have a credit score in the 800 to 850 range.

Is the point of this thread really just about solutions to help middle and high income people save some money? Do you believe it is justified that low income service workers in US cities should have to commute several hours a week?

It appears so. We're ultimately talking about two seperate problems, then.

Thank God we live in a system where low income workers can spend a portion of their income on commuting - in money and in time - and where they can live in areas with low property values (and consequently shit education systems) to breed a new generation of low income workers. What a great system.

[wat0n]

The average size of a luxury condo in NYC, Chicago, or LA is 150 to 290 m2. Part of the cost is size, part of the cost is land price/taxes, and part of the cost is in onsite services/facilities.

Capping the price of rent keeps the housing in city centers affordable for nuclear families at the cost of all three.

I suggested other reforms as well. I said before - there is no justifiable reason for single family rowhouse blocks that house 200 individuals in central Manhattan or Chicago, or luxury apartments that house a few hundred more, instead of high density residential towers that can provide housing for several thousands on the same footprint.

Turn this into this... not this. Capping rents per unit in US big cities (the topic of this thread) incentivizes that.

I agree, and that's my point! 150m (the lower end in your range) is pretty damn large as is. That type of size goes very much against the idea of increasing density.

[Fasces]

And 1,000$ per month per 100m2 in the city centers of American megalopolises, the cap I mentioned, isn't some overly restrictive rate, @wat0n. A family of four can fit in a 100m2 unit comfortably, and $1000 per month should be affordable for them in the US.

A developer can profit, but it forces new developments to focus on supplying housing to populations in need of that housing and in areas most affected by the rental crunch. It forces developers to think on economies of scale to extract the most value from smaller footprints, which encourages residential high rises rather than luxury midrises - which is precisely what cities like New York, Chicago, LA, or San Francisco need. The supply crunch issue is that new multihouse developments in these regions are often built to house 20-50 units, on a footprint that could easily accomodate 200-500. This is what we need to look at - units per plot. Build up!

Capping rent per unit will only effect those areas where land prices are incredibly high anyway, ie: city centers. Increases in density through this sort of cap will be focused there.

[wat0n]

I'm not sure about the cost/m2 to be sure $1,000 for 100m2 would be profitable. But you could achieve the same goal by just changing zoning as to allow for an increase in density.

[Fasces]

We can debate the specific rate (and municipalities should!), but reforming zoning to increase density without discouraging luxury developments doesn't accomplish the goal of reducing rents.

[Politics_Observer]

@wat0n

But you could achieve the same goal by just changing zoning as to allow for an increase in density.

Isn't changing zoning to allow for an increase in density deregulation to some degree?

[wat0n]

@wat0n



Isn't changing zoning to allow for an increase in density deregulation to some degree?

Yes, but as you said only to some degree. You shouldn't literally get rid of zoning as it fulfills completely rational purposes (e.g. protecting public health). But it should be relaxed if we want to put rent and home prices under control.

Of course, this comes with a cost: Increasing density undoubtedly decreases quality of life. More people means more noise, more congestion (if you drive), less privacy, etc. So one can in fact legitimately oppose changing zoning, but if you do then you need to accept the literal cost (it's more expensive).

[Politics_Observer]

@wat0n

You shouldn't literally get rid of zoning as it fulfills completely rational purposes (e.g. protecting public health). But it should be relaxed if we want to put rent and home prices under control.

I agree with you on that and in my previous posts in this thread, that is the position I have taken. However, the title of the thread misleads others on the position I have taken. I didn't do that intentionally, I just didn't think to spell out more precisely my exact position on the issue.

[Saeko]

German is such a beautiful language.

[Pants-of-dog]

The source does not show that rent control discourages investing in existing units.

The landlord always has this disincentive to invest in existing units. Landlords have no opposing incentive to invest more in existing units where rent control does not exist.

[Politics_Observer]

@Fasces

Here is a link which discusses some of the collusion software you were referring to in your previous posts. Currently, those software companies and the property management companies that used such software are facing legal action in civil court. I think the article also mentions possible criminal prosecution as well.

https://www.propublica.org/article/yiel ... -collusion

[Potemkin]

German is such a beautiful language.

Swedish, @Saeko. He was a character from The Muppet Show, the greatest and most popular TV show of all time!! Well, of the 1970s, which is the same thing. How quickly they forget….