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Comment by 6f8986c3 | Hacker News Reader

As with most things: it’s complicated.

When you sign a lease agreement, you get a guarantee that your rent will not go up during the term of that agreement.

So, if you sign a lease for $1000 a month on Monday, and on Tuesday the market rent for that area spikes to $10,000 a month, you’re locked in with a lower rate.

If I were a landlord in Oregon, given the above law, I would just only rent month to month. Breaking a lease becomes easy, but you also lose the pricing guarantee.

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That doesn't make any sense, the Oregon law works very well for the landlord in that case. Tenant is locked in at $1000/mo. 6 months in, decides they want to move. Tenant pays $1500 to break lease, and landlord can charge $10000/mo immediately to the next tenant.

Yes, but the point is that the tenant doesn’t want to break the lease then, but the landlord does. 12 month leases protect the tenant from rent hikes as much as they protect the landlord from losing a tenant. If legislating easy breaking of the leases results in removing landlord protection, the landlords will stop offering 12 month leases as they confer no benefit to them, and will only offer month to month lease. Then, you’ll be able to break lease easily too, but so will the landlord be able to kick you out on the month notice.

In the UK, all leases are legally for at least 6 months; 12 months obviously is common.

So you could combine that with Oregon law. Or use the German system someone mentioned.

Basically anything but the unfettered free market is going for home tenancy, given the obvious and large power imbalance between renters and landlords.

Why on earth would the tenant spend $1500 to break their lease, just so they can go find a new place for $10000/month?

They’ve bought a house, moving out of state, moving in with their boyfriend, lost their job and moving in with their parents, been convicted and going to jail, etc, etc.

Except 99% of people wont accept month to month due to the instability.

Another option is for landlords to price the additional risk into the rent itself.

But there’s no way you’re going to add risk into the market without that having some effect on pricing.

Which is why, if there's any possibility of a sudden 10x price hike, the rents will start going crazy in advance. Because rent prices don't hike like that unless there's some disaster event, the existing system works well.

Housing is a policy area with a lot of unintended consequences. I honestly don't know how I feel about the Oregon law.

Yes playing with regulations might help some renters to the detriment of others, but on average landlords will probably make the same.

where does rent spike to $10,000 a month?

palo alto

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