And, yes, prices are being held unnaturally high. If they weren't, I would expect to see far fewer empty storefronts than I do now -- and I've recently seen this not just in my local small town, but also in Sacramento, in the Bay Area, and even in Seattle.
Locally, I know for a fact that there are a number of property owners that would prefer to have their space sit empty rather than rent it out for the amounts that people are willing to pay right now. I've talked to them.
Housing is not that much different, except that at the moment there is higher-than-usual demand for rental properties, so the "market forces" are driving the prices upward. Still, unless you are a property owner who foolishly can't afford to let a building sit vacant, you can get away with charging higher rent than other people are for similar properties.
I agree with the person here saying that these effects are due to information asymmetry. As a prospective renter -- either for commercial or for housing space -- in order to find the best possible deal, I must invest a lot of time contacting numerous people, reviewing various Google Maps mashups, reviewing classifieds, and wandering around town. As a landlord, to set a price I simply have to take a quick glance at what nearby properties are going for, add a little bit to that amount, and then wait.
Eventually, a prospective renter will come along, because they don't know where the better deal is.
It is in the brokers' best interest that the landlords lower their price and pay a finder's fee. This makes the apartment easy to rent. The idea that somehow brokers bound together to control the price is simply untrue (this notion is somewhat true in sales). Landlords control the price based on supply / demand.
Everyone tend to think that brokers themselves represent market inefficiency, which is also debatable. Everyone knows Craigslist, and if they wanted to be on it, they can. Now, why do landlords go through brokers at all, knowing there is Craigslist?
Last but not least. The reason that renting is such a unpleasant experience lies in the nature of the business, and also what I call the Craigslist's dilema. If you are interested, I'd be happy to write another article to further elaborate on this point.
Isn't the problem with Craigslist simply spam? The property for rent listings on Gumtree (UK equivalent of Craigslist which is very useful for finding flatshares which don't involve intermediaries) are rendered unusable by spam for fake properties put in place by letting agents who will then subsequently offer you something more expensive and less appealing that actually is on the market. Essentially the agents collecting lists of tenants with multiple fake properties crowd out anyone trying to directly list real properties.