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I'm buying a house right now, and while I don't feel it's rigged- it sure is a pain the butt. You realize rent control isn't just about baby boomers, right? Pr

I'm buying a house right now, and while I don't feel it's rigged- it sure is a pain the butt. You realize rent control isn't just about baby boomers, right? Pretty much all the minority advocacy groups fight for more rent control, or at the very least section 8 housing- and I'd like to see a single study showing a city > 100,000 people with 80% of the market locked up in rental control. I have a hard time believing any market would even get to 30%, after all the people with REAL money (the developers/land owners) want nothing to do with it. Also agree with you on getting let down by our parents/grandparents on the education issue. I was born in '82 and had it rough, I can only imagine what a kid born in '92 had to deal with. Edit: I'm moving from Seattle to Portland, so does that mean I'm one of these people they're talking about that has to move out, or one of the assholes moving in? Both?

bunnymancer 10y ago
Well Portland is hotter than Seattle right now so you're a privileged asshole..? I dunno.. Enjoy your move and please help keep Portland weird :)
- manyxcxi 10y ago
  I actually grew up in Portland, in SW- and having been outbid by 10 and 20% on multiple other houses I got to experience the heat from that housing market. For us, we're moving back home. So maybe when I moved to Seattle I was the asshole and now I'm just a movie trope small town dude moving back from the big city to raise the kids. EDIT: I'll add that having grown up there really helped me know what were completely BS/bubble prices on properties. Houses with bids going to $560k where the neighborhood was in the high 200s, low 300s a decade before. Where you know the traffic sucks, the neighborhood isn't anything special, and generally know what the neighborhood is like crime/people wise made it so much easier to just look at a house price and say no without getting caught up in the frenzy.
predius 10y ago
San Francisco has just under that– around 73%. https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-San-Francisco-apartments-are-under-rent-control https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-San-Francisco-apart...
- sbov 10y ago
  And just to clarify, it's 73% of the rental market. If you build new housing and it's all owner occupied, they won't budge that 73% number. It might not be a huge factor but it's something to keep in mind.
  - jahewson 10y ago
    You're forgetting that the price of any new owner-occupied property must also price-in the opportunity cost of not renting out that property. Nobody buys a house when they could get rich by renting out the same house to someone else. Indeed a foreign investor is likely to buy it, because it's a great source of income, and they already have somewhere to live. If I can rent a property out for thousands of dollars a month, that property is worth a lot of money. So it's really the rental market that is pushing up prices in the owner-occupied market.
    - sbov 10y ago
      In the last housing bubble rents detached from housing prices pretty severely. Back in the 80s, it was generally cheaper to buy than rent - the 20% down saw to that. But things completely flipped with the more recent financial ingenuity. In a way, I see rising rents in SF as a return to normalcy.
    - snowwindwaves 10y ago
      Lots of people buy real estate in can Vancouver and leave it empty instead of renting it out. It is a safe place to park money and the hassle and wear of tenants isn't worth the money they pay when the market has been going up so much. I've heard there is a city in Australia that also has loads of empty condos bought by investors... Surfers maybe? Buying a house and not living in it or renting it is definitely a thing
      - brianbreslin 10y ago
        this happens in miami ALL the time. tens of thousands of empty apartments owned by foreigners parking their cash.
Chathamization 10y ago
Indeed, rent control is usually about preventing people from being priced out of neighborhoods. It seems that a lot of people are happy if people get priced out of areas, as long as it's other people who get priced out of them. And even though it's more socially problematic - it's more of a problem when a family is forced to relocate against their wishes (and dealing with issues like switching schools) than when someone who is already relocating can't find an affordable apartment in the area they prefer.
- jahewson 10y ago
  That's a strawman. People moving in can have children too, or be looking to start families. Likewise people in rent-controlled properties don't all have school-aged children, and they certainly don't all send them to local schools. I'd argue it's a bigger social problem for talented young people to not be able to move into centres of employment because of people who's children have grown up and left home still living in rent controlled properties. Such people are locked out of living in a perfectly reasonable place against their wishes - because of a rigged system that entitles those who came first to play by an entirely different set of rules. Why should they get an easy ride, while everyone else, who's working just as hard - or often much harder, to pay their inflated rent - suffers as a consequence?
  - Chathamization 10y ago
    > People moving in can have children too, or be looking to start families. Yes, but rent control doesn't force them to relocate or switch schools - the people who are negatively affected by this are people who have already decided to move. In contrast, the people who are negatively affected by removing rent control will be people who don't want to move but are forced to move by rising rent. At least to me, it seems that people having to leave their neighborhoods because of rising rent is a larger negative impact (both to them personally and to society as a whole) than people who are already moving having to pick a neighborhood that is not their preferred neighborhood.
    - jahewson 10y ago
busterarm 10y ago
The number of units in NYC under 'rent control' is ~30,000. Yes, it's that low. It's less than 2% of the available housing.
- jahewson 10y ago
  It's also not really true. NYC likes to use other terms such as "rent stabilization" to describe the rent-control-like protections they have in place. Some 45% of NYC rental properties fall under such protections. The combined figure for rent control, rent stabilization and other controls bring just over 60% of the NYC rental market under pricing controls. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_New_York https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_New_York
- mancerayder 10y ago
  Nope, nope, you have it right but in the context of this discussion you have it wrong. :-) There is rent control and rent stabilization, two separate items under the rubric of "rent regulated housing". See, those terms have political and legal connotations that don't necessarily perfectly match with the colloquial or intuitive phrase "rent control". Rent control is specific to a tiny percentage of buildings and units, relevant to the situation where a) the tenant is in a rent-controlled building [ build before 1941 ] and b) the tenant or their descendants have been continuously occupying the unit since 1971. That's your rent control. Rent doesn't ever go up. The stereotypical picture here is of an older woman in her 70's or 80's living in a three bedroom walk-up apartment in Greenwich Village paying $500 a month while other units rent for $6500 or some such. Rent stabilization is a different matter. About one million units in NYC (out of 2 million, perhaps?) are rent stabilized. That means a lot of things, but in summary it means the rent can't go up by a percentage set yearly by a board of individuals called the Rent Guidelines Board. Now it gets interesting because in NYC, a rent stabilized unit can be cheap, well below market, depending on how long the tenant's been there, or it can be high. A unit can actually fall out of rent stabilization if the tenant makes above 200,000 a year and the unit hits 2700. It gets more complex: the landlord can make improvements to the building and use that to increase the rent to a degree; rent stabilized units are typically pre-war units/buildings but not exclusively, as a now-expired (this year) program called 421a gave developers tax breaks in exchange for rent stabilizing their units (even if their starting rent was market rate). As an aside, and back to the original point -- here in NYC we're in the throes of some major class conflict and it centers enormously around 'affordable housing' in this city of 8.5m (up from 8m in 2000). Our mayor was elected on the platform of providing cheaper housing. Gentrification is a huge topic here, subject to daily barrages in rags like the Gothamist (whose comments section has commenters with about 50% the average IQ of the people here, I might add). So approximately 50% of our housing stock falls under some form of housing regulation. Source, I'm a NYC resident and landlord; also, this: http://www.nycrgb.org/html/resources/faq/rentcontrol.html#difference http://www.nycrgb.org/html/resources/faq/rentcontrol.html#di...
jahewson 10y ago
> I'd like to see a single study showing a city > 100,000 with 80% of the market locked up in rent control. It's not hard to find. San Francisco is pretty close, with around 72% of the rental market under rent control. (I saw a figure somewhere claiming it was effectively as much as 85%, but I can't find the reference from my iPhone). https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-San-Francisco-apartments-are-under-rent-control https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-San-Francisco-apart...
rayiner 10y ago
> Pretty much all the minority advocacy groups fight for more rent control, or at the very least section 8 housing Rent control and section 8 are totally different things. Also, in much of New York 80%+ of apartments are rent-controlled: http://www.nakedapartments.com/guides/nyc/renting-in-new-york-city/rent-regulation http://www.nakedapartments.com/guides/nyc/renting-in-new-yor....
- nicwolff 10y ago
  You mean rent-regulated. From your link: "Less than 2% of NYC apartments are rent-controlled".
liquidcool 10y ago
Rent controlled city with population >100K? Try Los Angeles, population 3.8M. From http://la.curbed.com/2016/1/27/10872448/rent-control-rent-stabilized-apartments-los-angeles-map http://la.curbed.com/2016/1/27/10872448/rent-control-rent-st...: ...there are around 118,000 [rent controlled units] in play in LA right now, making up "about 85 percent of the city's rental housing stock"

bunnymancer 10y ago

Well Portland is hotter than Seattle right now so you're a privileged asshole..? I dunno.. Enjoy your move and please help keep Portland weird :)

manyxcxi 10y ago
I actually grew up in Portland, in SW- and having been outbid by 10 and 20% on multiple other houses I got to experience the heat from that housing market. For us, we're moving back home. So maybe when I moved to Seattle I was the asshole and now I'm just a movie trope small town dude moving back from the big city to raise the kids. EDIT: I'll add that having grown up there really helped me know what were completely BS/bubble prices on properties. Houses with bids going to $560k where the neighborhood was in the high 200s, low 300s a decade before. Where you know the traffic sucks, the neighborhood isn't anything special, and generally know what the neighborhood is like crime/people wise made it so much easier to just look at a house price and say no without getting caught up in the frenzy.

predius 10y ago

San Francisco has just under that– around 73%. https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-San-Francisco-apartments-are-under-rent-control https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-San-Francisco-apart...

sbov 10y ago
And just to clarify, it's 73% of the rental market. If you build new housing and it's all owner occupied, they won't budge that 73% number. It might not be a huge factor but it's something to keep in mind.
- jahewson 10y ago
  You're forgetting that the price of any new owner-occupied property must also price-in the opportunity cost of not renting out that property. Nobody buys a house when they could get rich by renting out the same house to someone else. Indeed a foreign investor is likely to buy it, because it's a great source of income, and they already have somewhere to live. If I can rent a property out for thousands of dollars a month, that property is worth a lot of money. So it's really the rental market that is pushing up prices in the owner-occupied market.
  - sbov 10y ago
    In the last housing bubble rents detached from housing prices pretty severely. Back in the 80s, it was generally cheaper to buy than rent - the 20% down saw to that. But things completely flipped with the more recent financial ingenuity. In a way, I see rising rents in SF as a return to normalcy.
  - snowwindwaves 10y ago
    Lots of people buy real estate in can Vancouver and leave it empty instead of renting it out. It is a safe place to park money and the hassle and wear of tenants isn't worth the money they pay when the market has been going up so much. I've heard there is a city in Australia that also has loads of empty condos bought by investors... Surfers maybe? Buying a house and not living in it or renting it is definitely a thing
    - brianbreslin 10y ago
      this happens in miami ALL the time. tens of thousands of empty apartments owned by foreigners parking their cash.

Chathamization 10y ago

Indeed, rent control is usually about preventing people from being priced out of neighborhoods. It seems that a lot of people are happy if people get priced out of areas, as long as it's other people who get priced out of them. And even though it's more socially problematic - it's more of a problem when a family is forced to relocate against their wishes (and dealing with issues like switching schools) than when someone who is already relocating can't find an affordable apartment in the area they prefer.

jahewson 10y ago
That's a strawman. People moving in can have children too, or be looking to start families. Likewise people in rent-controlled properties don't all have school-aged children, and they certainly don't all send them to local schools. I'd argue it's a bigger social problem for talented young people to not be able to move into centres of employment because of people who's children have grown up and left home still living in rent controlled properties. Such people are locked out of living in a perfectly reasonable place against their wishes - because of a rigged system that entitles those who came first to play by an entirely different set of rules. Why should they get an easy ride, while everyone else, who's working just as hard - or often much harder, to pay their inflated rent - suffers as a consequence?
- Chathamization 10y ago
  > People moving in can have children too, or be looking to start families. Yes, but rent control doesn't force them to relocate or switch schools - the people who are negatively affected by this are people who have already decided to move. In contrast, the people who are negatively affected by removing rent control will be people who don't want to move but are forced to move by rising rent. At least to me, it seems that people having to leave their neighborhoods because of rising rent is a larger negative impact (both to them personally and to society as a whole) than people who are already moving having to pick a neighborhood that is not their preferred neighborhood.
  - jahewson 10y ago

busterarm 10y ago

The number of units in NYC under 'rent control' is ~30,000. Yes, it's that low. It's less than 2% of the available housing.

jahewson 10y ago
It's also not really true. NYC likes to use other terms such as "rent stabilization" to describe the rent-control-like protections they have in place. Some 45% of NYC rental properties fall under such protections. The combined figure for rent control, rent stabilization and other controls bring just over 60% of the NYC rental market under pricing controls. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_New_York https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_New_York
mancerayder 10y ago
Nope, nope, you have it right but in the context of this discussion you have it wrong. :-) There is rent control and rent stabilization, two separate items under the rubric of "rent regulated housing". See, those terms have political and legal connotations that don't necessarily perfectly match with the colloquial or intuitive phrase "rent control". Rent control is specific to a tiny percentage of buildings and units, relevant to the situation where a) the tenant is in a rent-controlled building [ build before 1941 ] and b) the tenant or their descendants have been continuously occupying the unit since 1971. That's your rent control. Rent doesn't ever go up. The stereotypical picture here is of an older woman in her 70's or 80's living in a three bedroom walk-up apartment in Greenwich Village paying $500 a month while other units rent for $6500 or some such. Rent stabilization is a different matter. About one million units in NYC (out of 2 million, perhaps?) are rent stabilized. That means a lot of things, but in summary it means the rent can't go up by a percentage set yearly by a board of individuals called the Rent Guidelines Board. Now it gets interesting because in NYC, a rent stabilized unit can be cheap, well below market, depending on how long the tenant's been there, or it can be high. A unit can actually fall out of rent stabilization if the tenant makes above 200,000 a year and the unit hits 2700. It gets more complex: the landlord can make improvements to the building and use that to increase the rent to a degree; rent stabilized units are typically pre-war units/buildings but not exclusively, as a now-expired (this year) program called 421a gave developers tax breaks in exchange for rent stabilizing their units (even if their starting rent was market rate). As an aside, and back to the original point -- here in NYC we're in the throes of some major class conflict and it centers enormously around 'affordable housing' in this city of 8.5m (up from 8m in 2000). Our mayor was elected on the platform of providing cheaper housing. Gentrification is a huge topic here, subject to daily barrages in rags like the Gothamist (whose comments section has commenters with about 50% the average IQ of the people here, I might add). So approximately 50% of our housing stock falls under some form of housing regulation. Source, I'm a NYC resident and landlord; also, this: http://www.nycrgb.org/html/resources/faq/rentcontrol.html#difference http://www.nycrgb.org/html/resources/faq/rentcontrol.html#di...

jahewson 10y ago

> I'd like to see a single study showing a city > 100,000 with 80% of the market locked up in rent control. It's not hard to find. San Francisco is pretty close, with around 72% of the rental market under rent control. (I saw a figure somewhere claiming it was effectively as much as 85%, but I can't find the reference from my iPhone). https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-San-Francisco-apartments-are-under-rent-control https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-San-Francisco-apart...

rayiner 10y ago

> Pretty much all the minority advocacy groups fight for more rent control, or at the very least section 8 housing Rent control and section 8 are totally different things. Also, in much of New York 80%+ of apartments are rent-controlled: http://www.nakedapartments.com/guides/nyc/renting-in-new-york-city/rent-regulation http://www.nakedapartments.com/guides/nyc/renting-in-new-yor....

nicwolff 10y ago
You mean rent-regulated. From your link: "Less than 2% of NYC apartments are rent-controlled".

liquidcool 10y ago

Rent controlled city with population >100K? Try Los Angeles, population 3.8M. From http://la.curbed.com/2016/1/27/10872448/rent-control-rent-stabilized-apartments-los-angeles-map http://la.curbed.com/2016/1/27/10872448/rent-control-rent-st...: ...there are around 118,000 [rent controlled units] in play in LA right now, making up "about 85 percent of the city's rental housing stock"