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%

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.