7 ms·

Why rents are still rising too fast

27 points by jcartw 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dkdbejwi383 2y ago
not enough housing, too many landlords.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- falcor84 2y ago
  Isn't the issue about there being too few landlords? I recall growing up in a time when it seemed that pretty much anyone in the middle class could become a landlord as a venue of investment, and many would. But nowadays, at least where I live, it seems that very few people choose that, and the ones who do make it almost a second job, with multiple places they rent out. And at the same time, it seems that more and more properties are owned by firms. TFA briefly mentions regulatory barriers to becoming a landlord; I wonder if that could be a significant part of the issue.
  - jltsiren 2y ago
    I think the ease of becoming a landlord was a big part of the problem. Or at least how it started. If middle class households buying rental properties can outbid lower middle class households trying to buy a home, the lower middle class household will often be stuck renting in the long term. And if it makes financial sense for a middle class household to become a landlord, rich individuals and institutional investors will eventually notice it and outbid them. Market-rate rentals should be the exception, not the norm. Some of them are necessary to house people who have recently moved in the area, especially if they don't expect to stay in the long term. But because market-rate rental units largely displace owner-occupied units, having too many of them is bad for the society.
    - fc417fc802 2y ago
      > outbid lower middle class households trying to buy a home, the lower middle class household will often be stuck renting in the long term. If the market is working properly then additional units will be built until the price begins to drop. If there are buyers at a viable price then you should expect there to be sellers. What you are describing is a lack of liquidity. That shouldn't happen in the typical case unless there is bad policy.
      - jltsiren 2y ago
        Bad policy seems to be the typical case. People can't even agree on what is good policy. Expecting them to implement good policy consistently is just unrealistic. Meanwhile, as we wait for the elusive capitalist utopia, there are real-world issues that should be solved. The solutions will likely involve policy changes. Which will likely have both positive and negative outcomes. And the negative outcomes will probably require further policy changes in the future.
        fc417fc802 2y ago
        > The solutions will likely involve policy changes. We're in agreement. My point was that the issue is due to policy. Landlords aren't the problem. Getting rid of landlords would at best be a tiny bandaid and you'd have to change policy to do it so you might as well just address the root cause.
  - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
    Both types of landlord have their own problems. Personally I’d prefer the state to own more properties.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      I've had some annoying landlords, but I would take every one over Trump. People tend to imagine a counterfactual where the state is idealized instead of looking at the state they have.
      - saikia81 2y ago
        in the Netherlands the state managed housing is the best. While private renters skirt their responsibilities, and enforcing a contractual is hard.
- gruez 2y ago
  >too many landlords. Unless you want "buy" (as opposed to "rent") to be the only option for housing, you need landlords. If there's going to be landlords, you want more of them, because more supply translates to lower prices for consumers. Nobody complains about there being too many farmers, for instance.
  - swagasaurus-rex 2y ago
    I'd like to buy. My father bought his first house when he was 23. He came from poverty and had a middle-class job. I'm ten years older than he was and I still can't afford a house.
    - Analemma_ 2y ago
      Your beef isn’t with landlords, it’s with the single-family homeowners in your area who use every available legal and extralegal angle to block any new construction, because “it would change the neighborhood character”. They fuck you over and get to absolve themselves of blame and guilt by talking about evil developers and landlords as a smokescreen to keep you from seeing that they are the problem.
      - swagasaurus-rex 2y ago
        As much as I'd like to agree, nationwide the prices of housing has skyrocketed. In the last 5 years, there's been a 50% increase in home prices where now $450,000 is the median home price. Can it be that the issue you're describing explains what's happening in every single state? Has development stalled all across the USA (and abroad) simply due to regulation?
        thereisnospork 2y ago
        >Can it be that the issue you're describing explains what's happening in every single state? Has development stalled all across the USA (and abroad) simply due to regulation? I mean this is pretty trivially true, excepting some markets like Japan. 100-200 thousand dollars of wood and drywall and concrete sells for 0.5 to 2 million in much of the country. People (builders) haven't started hating money, they just aren't allowed to build. Heck if it were legal I'd personally find some investors, buy up a few 1 million dollar sfh's and replace them with 8 500k condos each.
toomuchtodo 2y ago
https://archive.today/26uEh https://archive.today/26uEh
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mistrial9 2y ago
a single individual woman in California who inherited her family rental units business in Southern California declared on her IRS returns seventy thousand dollars a month personal income, for the year of 2019. The number of apartment complexes is about a dozen, of varying sizes. It is not clear that she has any real duties on a given week, living far away from the location with no contact details.
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  Is that from the article? > living far away from the location with no contact details. To be fair, if I was renting apartments, I would 100% never give tenants my contact information, and have them deal with some sort of management company. I'd rather pay someone else to receive the "oh shit, the pipes burst" phone call at 3am.
  - __loam 2y ago
    The joyous nature of rent seeking. Best to completely alienate yourself from the people who enable your carefree lifestyle.
    - 13_9_7_7_5_18 2y ago
      [dead]
    - thatguy0900 2y ago
      You wouldn't want to feel any sort of guilt or regret when you raise rent prices on a struggling family you've actually met, of course.
    - pavel_lishin 2y ago
      Business owners don't typically post their home address and cellphone number for customers to contact them directly, either. (With some exceptions, to be fair. My plumber gave me his direct cell number, though that may be a separate work phone.)
  - tetromino_ 2y ago
th4th3h 2y ago
[flagged]
- ahsidncjsha 2y ago
  Not sure why this is being downvoted, but the fact that it is is why the problem won’t be fixed. Nationalism (noblesse oblige) is the historical solution to this issue. The wealthy elites we have now don’t really care for the average American, so you’ll see the same policies described above continue. We live in a time of incredible technological advancements on a uniquely resource rich land. Things should not be getting more expensive, harder, etc yet they are and that’s entirely due to our elites desire to increase the wealth gap. There’s a lot of bipartisan consensus against nationalism and that’s not coincidental. America is run by billionaires. Any notion of left vs right in this country is just for show. Their bottom line is never affected.
  - FreebasingLLMs 2y ago
    [dead]
- parpfish 2y ago
  sure, i see cars where maga and greatful dead bumperstickers coexist, but overall this narrative of hippies becoming selfish seems a bit like a fallacy where we're attempting to understand the aggregated group behavior as if it were a single coherent individual there was a small segment of boomers that were hippies, but there was a much larger segment that was resentful of the hippies. they were cleancut and voted for nixon. and then a few years later they REALLY voted for reagan.
  - slater 2y ago
    https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
betaby 2y ago
Population is still rising to fast. https://www.census.gov/popclock/ https://www.census.gov/popclock/ 17:53:01 UTC One birth every 9 seconds One death every 10 seconds One international migrant (net) every 23 seconds Net gain of one person every 19 seconds
- gruez 2y ago
  >Population is still rising to fast. Says who? Malthusianism was canceled decades ago. Housing might be scarce, but that's due to political factors, not some sort of resource limitation. There's plenty of land to build with in the US.
  - betaby 2y ago
    > Says who? The link provided, from the USA gov. You may check other sources as well. > There's plenty of land to build with in the US. And within Canada or France. But here we are.
    - gruez 2y ago
      >The link provided, from the USA gov. You may check other sources as well. I'm questioning the "too fast" part. Not the specific numbers. >And within Canada or France. But here we are. "Housing might be scarce, but that's due to political factors"
      - betaby 2y ago
        > I'm questioning the "too fast" part. You have to define what is too fast for you. For me 0.5% yearly is too fast. Percentage wise the USA, Canada and India are growing at about the same rate according the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio... > "Housing might be scarce, but that's due to political factors" That's not changing the fact that population grows while housing does not at the needed rate.
        deleted 2y ago
_fat_santa 2y ago
I really don't understand the anti-landlord sentiment. Folks seem to get this idea that your average landlord has no costs, takes on no risk, and just sails away with the rent they collect every month and spend it on a lavish vacation. Newsflash but buying property introduces significant costs, complexity and risk. By renting you simply choose to pay a monthly fee to a business that will provide you that same property but will take on all that risk instead of you.
- kardos 2y ago
  Things like this juice the anti-landlord sentiment: https://www.propublica.org/article/justice-department-sues-landlords-alleged-price-fixing-realpage-rent https://www.propublica.org/article/justice-department-sues-l...
- claudiulodro 2y ago
  > By renting you simply choose to pay a monthly fee to a business that will provide you that same property but will take on all that risk instead of you. I think the issue is that for many people it's not much of a choice since they can't afford to buy housing. It's pay a landlord or be homeless, and some form of shelter is necessary for humans.
- knuckleheads 2y ago
  I ask sincerely, have you ever had a bad landlord? Because if you had, you would understand why some people would hate them. Many people do not have the choice to buy a home and so must rent, and often they have to deal with terrible people.
  - javagram 2y ago
    So they would rather be homeless? In a market without landlords, everyone who couldn’t afford to buy a home would have to live in their car or camp on the street.
    - geoffpado 2y ago
      In a market without landlords, especially corporate landlords, more people would be able to afford to buy a home.
betaby 2y ago
The USA have added about 2 million people the last year. That about the size of Houston, TX. The USA are not building at the rate one city of Houston per year. Source https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population...
- the_gipsy 2y ago
  Build one city of Houston where? That's the issue. There are plenty of empty housings, the problem is it's not where people want/need to live.
  - betaby 2y ago
    That's just a comparison to understand the amount of new housing needed per year. Every year.
    - the_gipsy 2y ago
      But it's not "the amount of new housing needed". Housing exists, empty or affordable, just not where it's needed. Where it's needed you either can't physically build it, or of you can, then it just further blows up the prices.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    This is a situation where beatings will continue until morale improves. There is near infinite room for housing. As long as people keep living in and moving to expensive cities, jobs will continue to concentrate there. Companies follow the talent, and talent follows the companies. The feedback will continue until one party blinks.
    - fc417fc802 2y ago
      You forgot the third party, zoning laws. The rational outcome for the two parties you describe is for height limits to be removed and extremely dense infrastructure to be built out. It's entirely a policy failure.
parpfish 2y ago
five years ago, i was hopeful that widespread WFH would result in a great geographic population redistribution that would alleviate housing competition in popular cities and revitalize smaller impoverished communities by bringing in good-paying (remote) jobs. i guess not.
- pavel_lishin 2y ago
  Some people did move out to those smaller communities, but plenty of people like living in dense urban areas, and would prefer to continue living there - just cutting out the daily commute to elsewhere.
ConspiracyFact 2y ago
When did the establishment start referring to developed nations as the “rich world”? That reeks of the kind of globalist elitism that conspiracy theorists go on about. Many an undeveloped nation is undeveloped because of the people who live there and their culture. They should not be considered some sort of baseline.

27 points by jcartw 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dkdbejwi383 2y ago

not enough housing, too many landlords.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
falcor84 2y ago
Isn't the issue about there being too few landlords? I recall growing up in a time when it seemed that pretty much anyone in the middle class could become a landlord as a venue of investment, and many would. But nowadays, at least where I live, it seems that very few people choose that, and the ones who do make it almost a second job, with multiple places they rent out. And at the same time, it seems that more and more properties are owned by firms. TFA briefly mentions regulatory barriers to becoming a landlord; I wonder if that could be a significant part of the issue.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  I think the ease of becoming a landlord was a big part of the problem. Or at least how it started. If middle class households buying rental properties can outbid lower middle class households trying to buy a home, the lower middle class household will often be stuck renting in the long term. And if it makes financial sense for a middle class household to become a landlord, rich individuals and institutional investors will eventually notice it and outbid them. Market-rate rentals should be the exception, not the norm. Some of them are necessary to house people who have recently moved in the area, especially if they don't expect to stay in the long term. But because market-rate rental units largely displace owner-occupied units, having too many of them is bad for the society.
  - fc417fc802 2y ago
    > outbid lower middle class households trying to buy a home, the lower middle class household will often be stuck renting in the long term. If the market is working properly then additional units will be built until the price begins to drop. If there are buyers at a viable price then you should expect there to be sellers. What you are describing is a lack of liquidity. That shouldn't happen in the typical case unless there is bad policy.
    - jltsiren 2y ago
      Bad policy seems to be the typical case. People can't even agree on what is good policy. Expecting them to implement good policy consistently is just unrealistic. Meanwhile, as we wait for the elusive capitalist utopia, there are real-world issues that should be solved. The solutions will likely involve policy changes. Which will likely have both positive and negative outcomes. And the negative outcomes will probably require further policy changes in the future.
      - fc417fc802 2y ago
        > The solutions will likely involve policy changes. We're in agreement. My point was that the issue is due to policy. Landlords aren't the problem. Getting rid of landlords would at best be a tiny bandaid and you'd have to change policy to do it so you might as well just address the root cause.
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  Both types of landlord have their own problems. Personally I’d prefer the state to own more properties.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I've had some annoying landlords, but I would take every one over Trump. People tend to imagine a counterfactual where the state is idealized instead of looking at the state they have.
    - saikia81 2y ago
      in the Netherlands the state managed housing is the best. While private renters skirt their responsibilities, and enforcing a contractual is hard.
gruez 2y ago
>too many landlords. Unless you want "buy" (as opposed to "rent") to be the only option for housing, you need landlords. If there's going to be landlords, you want more of them, because more supply translates to lower prices for consumers. Nobody complains about there being too many farmers, for instance.
- swagasaurus-rex 2y ago
  I'd like to buy. My father bought his first house when he was 23. He came from poverty and had a middle-class job. I'm ten years older than he was and I still can't afford a house.
  - Analemma_ 2y ago
    Your beef isn’t with landlords, it’s with the single-family homeowners in your area who use every available legal and extralegal angle to block any new construction, because “it would change the neighborhood character”. They fuck you over and get to absolve themselves of blame and guilt by talking about evil developers and landlords as a smokescreen to keep you from seeing that they are the problem.
    - swagasaurus-rex 2y ago
      As much as I'd like to agree, nationwide the prices of housing has skyrocketed. In the last 5 years, there's been a 50% increase in home prices where now $450,000 is the median home price. Can it be that the issue you're describing explains what's happening in every single state? Has development stalled all across the USA (and abroad) simply due to regulation?
      - thereisnospork 2y ago
        >Can it be that the issue you're describing explains what's happening in every single state? Has development stalled all across the USA (and abroad) simply due to regulation? I mean this is pretty trivially true, excepting some markets like Japan. 100-200 thousand dollars of wood and drywall and concrete sells for 0.5 to 2 million in much of the country. People (builders) haven't started hating money, they just aren't allowed to build. Heck if it were legal I'd personally find some investors, buy up a few 1 million dollar sfh's and replace them with 8 500k condos each.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

https://archive.today/26uEh https://archive.today/26uEh

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mistrial9 2y ago

a single individual woman in California who inherited her family rental units business in Southern California declared on her IRS returns seventy thousand dollars a month personal income, for the year of 2019. The number of apartment complexes is about a dozen, of varying sizes. It is not clear that she has any real duties on a given week, living far away from the location with no contact details.

pavel_lishin 2y ago
Is that from the article? > living far away from the location with no contact details. To be fair, if I was renting apartments, I would 100% never give tenants my contact information, and have them deal with some sort of management company. I'd rather pay someone else to receive the "oh shit, the pipes burst" phone call at 3am.
- __loam 2y ago
  The joyous nature of rent seeking. Best to completely alienate yourself from the people who enable your carefree lifestyle.
  - 13_9_7_7_5_18 2y ago
    [dead]
  - thatguy0900 2y ago
    You wouldn't want to feel any sort of guilt or regret when you raise rent prices on a struggling family you've actually met, of course.
  - pavel_lishin 2y ago
    Business owners don't typically post their home address and cellphone number for customers to contact them directly, either. (With some exceptions, to be fair. My plumber gave me his direct cell number, though that may be a separate work phone.)
- tetromino_ 2y ago

th4th3h 2y ago

[flagged]

ahsidncjsha 2y ago
Not sure why this is being downvoted, but the fact that it is is why the problem won’t be fixed. Nationalism (noblesse oblige) is the historical solution to this issue. The wealthy elites we have now don’t really care for the average American, so you’ll see the same policies described above continue. We live in a time of incredible technological advancements on a uniquely resource rich land. Things should not be getting more expensive, harder, etc yet they are and that’s entirely due to our elites desire to increase the wealth gap. There’s a lot of bipartisan consensus against nationalism and that’s not coincidental. America is run by billionaires. Any notion of left vs right in this country is just for show. Their bottom line is never affected.
- FreebasingLLMs 2y ago
  [dead]
parpfish 2y ago
sure, i see cars where maga and greatful dead bumperstickers coexist, but overall this narrative of hippies becoming selfish seems a bit like a fallacy where we're attempting to understand the aggregated group behavior as if it were a single coherent individual there was a small segment of boomers that were hippies, but there was a much larger segment that was resentful of the hippies. they were cleancut and voted for nixon. and then a few years later they REALLY voted for reagan.
- slater 2y ago
  https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

betaby 2y ago

Population is still rising to fast. https://www.census.gov/popclock/ https://www.census.gov/popclock/ 17:53:01 UTC One birth every 9 seconds One death every 10 seconds One international migrant (net) every 23 seconds Net gain of one person every 19 seconds

gruez 2y ago
>Population is still rising to fast. Says who? Malthusianism was canceled decades ago. Housing might be scarce, but that's due to political factors, not some sort of resource limitation. There's plenty of land to build with in the US.
- betaby 2y ago
  > Says who? The link provided, from the USA gov. You may check other sources as well. > There's plenty of land to build with in the US. And within Canada or France. But here we are.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >The link provided, from the USA gov. You may check other sources as well. I'm questioning the "too fast" part. Not the specific numbers. >And within Canada or France. But here we are. "Housing might be scarce, but that's due to political factors"
    - betaby 2y ago
      > I'm questioning the "too fast" part. You have to define what is too fast for you. For me 0.5% yearly is too fast. Percentage wise the USA, Canada and India are growing at about the same rate according the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio... > "Housing might be scarce, but that's due to political factors" That's not changing the fact that population grows while housing does not at the needed rate.
      - deleted 2y ago

_fat_santa 2y ago

I really don't understand the anti-landlord sentiment. Folks seem to get this idea that your average landlord has no costs, takes on no risk, and just sails away with the rent they collect every month and spend it on a lavish vacation. Newsflash but buying property introduces significant costs, complexity and risk. By renting you simply choose to pay a monthly fee to a business that will provide you that same property but will take on all that risk instead of you.

kardos 2y ago
Things like this juice the anti-landlord sentiment: https://www.propublica.org/article/justice-department-sues-landlords-alleged-price-fixing-realpage-rent https://www.propublica.org/article/justice-department-sues-l...
claudiulodro 2y ago
> By renting you simply choose to pay a monthly fee to a business that will provide you that same property but will take on all that risk instead of you. I think the issue is that for many people it's not much of a choice since they can't afford to buy housing. It's pay a landlord or be homeless, and some form of shelter is necessary for humans.
knuckleheads 2y ago
I ask sincerely, have you ever had a bad landlord? Because if you had, you would understand why some people would hate them. Many people do not have the choice to buy a home and so must rent, and often they have to deal with terrible people.
- javagram 2y ago
  So they would rather be homeless? In a market without landlords, everyone who couldn’t afford to buy a home would have to live in their car or camp on the street.
  - geoffpado 2y ago
    In a market without landlords, especially corporate landlords, more people would be able to afford to buy a home.

betaby 2y ago

The USA have added about 2 million people the last year. That about the size of Houston, TX. The USA are not building at the rate one city of Houston per year. Source https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population...

the_gipsy 2y ago
Build one city of Houston where? That's the issue. There are plenty of empty housings, the problem is it's not where people want/need to live.
- betaby 2y ago
  That's just a comparison to understand the amount of new housing needed per year. Every year.
  - the_gipsy 2y ago
    But it's not "the amount of new housing needed". Housing exists, empty or affordable, just not where it's needed. Where it's needed you either can't physically build it, or of you can, then it just further blows up the prices.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  This is a situation where beatings will continue until morale improves. There is near infinite room for housing. As long as people keep living in and moving to expensive cities, jobs will continue to concentrate there. Companies follow the talent, and talent follows the companies. The feedback will continue until one party blinks.
  - fc417fc802 2y ago
    You forgot the third party, zoning laws. The rational outcome for the two parties you describe is for height limits to be removed and extremely dense infrastructure to be built out. It's entirely a policy failure.

parpfish 2y ago

five years ago, i was hopeful that widespread WFH would result in a great geographic population redistribution that would alleviate housing competition in popular cities and revitalize smaller impoverished communities by bringing in good-paying (remote) jobs. i guess not.

pavel_lishin 2y ago
Some people did move out to those smaller communities, but plenty of people like living in dense urban areas, and would prefer to continue living there - just cutting out the daily commute to elsewhere.

ConspiracyFact 2y ago

When did the establishment start referring to developed nations as the “rich world”? That reeks of the kind of globalist elitism that conspiracy theorists go on about. Many an undeveloped nation is undeveloped because of the people who live there and their culture. They should not be considered some sort of baseline.