I’m not sure what you’re trying to suggest about hypothetical rent control in London, but it should be clear that London was geographically exhausted long ago and they’ve been debating architectural preservation and building height control ever since.
You can’t simply buy a property in London, knock it down, and build a 50-story skyscraper. Using it for your case study on rent control doesn’t make any sense.
> Seems to me it's the landlords that really "suffer".
This is the fantasy: Stick it to those evil developers and landlords, amirite?
The fallacy is assuming that you get the exact same apartment under rent control, but cheaper. You don’t.
The truth is that being a rent-controlled landlord is easy mode. You have very little competition, by law, and the waiting list to get into your apartment can be years or decades long. As a result, you don’t have to compete on anything. Who’s going to turn your apartment down when it’s their only shot at housing and no one’s building new construction to compete at artificially depressed prices?
Now you don’t have to worry about installing good appliances or even nice carpet. The air condition doesn’t work well? Too bad, as long as it meets regulations (if any) then that’s good enough. Why would you if your tenants aren’t choosing based on competition? The tenants suffer, too.
And you’re still ignoring all of the people locked out of the system by the ensuing decade-long wait lines, as is the case in this article.