3 ms·

I don’t think so. For an individual corporation that owns 4000 houses empty houses are really bad. Perhaps in the short term, they’ll try to hold a price, but w

• HWR_14 4y ago
  Total revenue remains constant as long as X=X. Without an increase in total revenue, there is no reason to incur the costs of renting out a unit. So, if I have 4,000 units and I let 100 stay empty to raise rents 8%, I win.
  • prepend 4y ago
    Why not raise rents 8% and rent out all 4,000. Rents aren’t chosen arbitrarily by the landlord. They can’t set to whatever they like, else they’d increase 100%. This is different is a single landlord has a monopoly or there’s a cartel. But in a typical city there might be 500k units for rent. So if a landlord raises rent by 8% on their 4,000 units, then people will likely choose other units that didn’t go up. Not to be dismissive, but this is basic econ101 and any intro text will have lots of examples and evidence of these principles at work.