> They should order a property tax reduction. It’s getting clear in cities like Ithaca that landlords pass high property taxes onto tenants quite directly. I

> They should order a property tax reduction. It’s getting clear in cities like Ithaca that landlords pass high property taxes onto tenants quite directly. I don't believe a property tax reduction gets passed on to tenants. The goal of landlords is to make money, so the incentive is to keep rents as high as possible without having long vacancies; the only reason to reduce rents is if your property is empty. The hope of a market system is that with lowered expenses, some landlords would reduce their rent, which then allows renters to potentially move to those properties forcing other landlords to reduce rents in turn. This could theoretically happen in a cycle to a new equilibrium where rents have gone down by ~ the reduction in expenses. But there's a lot of forces in play that interrupt this and allow high rents to continue even with a drop in expenses: * The vacancy rate is very low, so there are very few landlords that would take advantage of the opportunity to lower their rent to get tenant. * Landlords know renters can be long term, so often prefer a longer period of vacancy over reducing rent. * Current renters are captive as moving costs are high, so their landlords are insulated from market pressure. * The rental market is very coordinated by a) companies that own many properties, b) property management agents that manage many properties and c) rent information companies like RealPage. The result is similar to a cartel, where property owners will allow vacancies directly in order to keep the market rate from falling. * Many current owners see the property value as a source of growth, and so care less about actual rental income. All of these mean that a property tax reduction is more of a windfall to landlords than a way to bring down rents.