4 ms·

Holy shit, how bad is that? People have been saying that market demand is the reason for rising rents, but in reality it's just landlords colluding to fix price

Holy shit, how bad is that? People have been saying that market demand is the reason for rising rents, but in reality it's just landlords colluding to fix prices and leaving units empty to create artificial scarcity? This is worse than I thought.

denimnerd42 4y ago
They’ve been doing this manually with NYC storefronts forever. Now the automation exists (and has for at least 10 years) to do it globally. Yikes. i say at least 10 years as that’s the last time I rented. My apartment definitely used this software then and realpage hq is just across the street.
- jareklupinski 4y ago
  if you search nybits.com (i think the last nyc apartment aggregator that sorts by date), you can see a daily flood of realpage-adminstered buildings shifting their units' prices up or down a few dollars every day I don't think they do this on purpose; when I called one of the buildings I was interested in, their leasing agent was surprised I could even see the 'real price'...
anonymouskimmer 4y ago
It's both, not an either/or.
rootusrootus 4y ago
It's not just landlords, no. Some people want to force urbanization, so the government creates urban growth boundaries to limit sprawl. But then many of the people inside the boundary don't want high density housing near them, so they support zoning to keep it away. And mostly I don't think landlords are the ones leaving units empty -- it's investment groups that don't want to have tenants in the first place, they don't want to be landlords, they just want an asset that grows in value. There is a very legitimate supply problem, and blaming landlords won't solve it. They only have the leverage they do because the government gave it to them. We could make the gov't back off if we wanted to, but by and large we don't seem to want to.
- crooked-v 4y ago
  With investment groups, I've seen a few convincing theories that most of the mass investment group housing purchases were a result of the zero interest rate for an extended period and the effect of that on other investments, and that big investors are likely to try and divest themselves of all those houses over time now that interest rates are back up all at once. That still leaves landlords, but the only reason landlords have outsized power in the first place is that there's a massive housing deficit in every place in the US people actually want to live.
bequanna 4y ago
The primary reason behind rent increases is the sudden, artificial increase in the number of households. This is likely due to the suspension of student loan payments and will correct if/when these payments resume.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
NYC vacancy rate is currently 4.5%, less than 1% above all time lows. Yes, artificial vacancy exists, especially in the ultra luxury market, but the data seems to show the extent is overblown.
- jareklupinski 4y ago
  > More than 353,000 units were vacant but unavailable in 2021, up from 248,000 in 2017. A 42% increase in 'vacant but unavailable' sounds pretty significant, even if artificial... https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/5/17/23108792/nyc-apartment-vacancy-rate-housing-emergency https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/5/17/23108792/nyc-apartment-vac...
vanilla_nut 4y ago
And housing prices are spiking... because more people, not to mention corporations, see a market opportunity to profit from skyrocketing rents. Which pushes priced yet higher, because demand increases. I really hope the government intervenes. The situation is dire for renters across the country right now in a way I've never seen. Rent rising everywhere seemingly regardless of desirability, wage gains, or cost of living. Or I could hope for a housing crash, I guess, when they finally drive rent too high and nobody can afford it.

denimnerd42 4y ago

They’ve been doing this manually with NYC storefronts forever. Now the automation exists (and has for at least 10 years) to do it globally. Yikes. i say at least 10 years as that’s the last time I rented. My apartment definitely used this software then and realpage hq is just across the street.

jareklupinski 4y ago
if you search nybits.com (i think the last nyc apartment aggregator that sorts by date), you can see a daily flood of realpage-adminstered buildings shifting their units' prices up or down a few dollars every day I don't think they do this on purpose; when I called one of the buildings I was interested in, their leasing agent was surprised I could even see the 'real price'...

anonymouskimmer 4y ago

It's both, not an either/or.

rootusrootus 4y ago

It's not just landlords, no. Some people want to force urbanization, so the government creates urban growth boundaries to limit sprawl. But then many of the people inside the boundary don't want high density housing near them, so they support zoning to keep it away. And mostly I don't think landlords are the ones leaving units empty -- it's investment groups that don't want to have tenants in the first place, they don't want to be landlords, they just want an asset that grows in value. There is a very legitimate supply problem, and blaming landlords won't solve it. They only have the leverage they do because the government gave it to them. We could make the gov't back off if we wanted to, but by and large we don't seem to want to.

crooked-v 4y ago
With investment groups, I've seen a few convincing theories that most of the mass investment group housing purchases were a result of the zero interest rate for an extended period and the effect of that on other investments, and that big investors are likely to try and divest themselves of all those houses over time now that interest rates are back up all at once. That still leaves landlords, but the only reason landlords have outsized power in the first place is that there's a massive housing deficit in every place in the US people actually want to live.

bequanna 4y ago

The primary reason behind rent increases is the sudden, artificial increase in the number of households. This is likely due to the suspension of student loan payments and will correct if/when these payments resume.

HDThoreaun 4y ago

NYC vacancy rate is currently 4.5%, less than 1% above all time lows. Yes, artificial vacancy exists, especially in the ultra luxury market, but the data seems to show the extent is overblown.

jareklupinski 4y ago
> More than 353,000 units were vacant but unavailable in 2021, up from 248,000 in 2017. A 42% increase in 'vacant but unavailable' sounds pretty significant, even if artificial... https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/5/17/23108792/nyc-apartment-vacancy-rate-housing-emergency https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/5/17/23108792/nyc-apartment-vac...

vanilla_nut 4y ago

And housing prices are spiking... because more people, not to mention corporations, see a market opportunity to profit from skyrocketing rents. Which pushes priced yet higher, because demand increases. I really hope the government intervenes. The situation is dire for renters across the country right now in a way I've never seen. Rent rising everywhere seemingly regardless of desirability, wage gains, or cost of living. Or I could hope for a housing crash, I guess, when they finally drive rent too high and nobody can afford it.