In times of massive apartment booms, rents have in fact held steady or decreased. Seattle is a recent example. There are only so many people who want to live in

In times of massive apartment booms, rents have in fact held steady or decreased. Seattle is a recent example. There are only so many people who want to live in a particular city, so supply and demand do play a part here. https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2019/01/apartment-rents-dropping-in-seattle-landlords-compete-for-tenants-as-market-cools.html https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2019/01/apartment-rents-... Based on your logic, we could build more apartments in a particular city than humans exist and rents would continue to go up, even if most of those apartments are empty. That clearly doesn't make sense. Your last argument misses the point. As cities become more fashionable, not building more housing is a guarantee of increased costs due to supply and demand. In cities like SF, rents continue to rise faster than most cities. SF is also the hardest place to build anything. I wonder if those two are related.