Hacker News Reader

Comment by trident5000 | Hacker News Reader

It shouldnt be allowed for people to raise rent on the property they own? Thats an absurd idea.

People have been complaining about not having the home they want in the location they want since the beginning of mankind.

View on HN

The parent comment is complaining about the specific amount, $500, and indeed, raising the rent by a large amount (defined percentagewise) is illegal in many jurisdictions. So it seems difficult to come the idea that it is somehow absurd.

Price controls dont work. This is economics 101 and tested many times in the past and as of recent. All you're doing with artificially constraining price and other regulations is reducing supply in the long run. The issue bubbles and then eventually bursts.

However, the issue in congested areas is a matter of physics and people unwilling to relocate. Its not from renters simply fulfilling the pricing demand. I mean what exactly is the long term play in areas like this? Just keep stacking people on top of each other into infinity? Its obviously not realistic.

You have to define the problem too narrowly in order to say that price controls don’t work.

Rental increase caps are not something designed to make the overall housing prices more affordable. That’s just not the goal in the first place. The goal is to provide additional stability to renters. That additional stability will, of course, get priced in.

It's not the rent prices that are constraining the housing market, but the restrictions on building new houses. And in many parts of the US, the prohibition on building anything other than single-family detached homes.

It's not absurd because nobody is forcing that person to rent. Housing is a public resource, and contributing to that public resource shouldn't come without asterisks.

Cities need the non-owning class to function, and cities function better when the non-owning class has some degree of stability-- letting landlords juice their tenants for as much as possible is counterproductive to this.

But if it becomes unprofitable (for some value of profit) to rent, they will stop renting, unless you force them at gunpoint to continue renting even when it loses money.

Offer to sell it to the tenant then. That should be more common.

The tenant almost by definition can't afford (if they could afford to own where they rent, they'd likely own).

(Sadly, when you see "rent to own" on houses, they're almost always a scam preying on poor people. The trick is to get them to pay MORE than fair market rent for an "option" to buy that you know they'll never be able to execute on, or if they can, said execution is in your favor. If you care for more details, https://johntreed.com/products/sisgle is worth the price, as it details exactly WHEN an investor can make money buying these "lease options" and how they're usually unprofitable and almost scammy.)

It does naturally occur in some cases - long term tenant who is comfortable renting is offered the house "off market" when the landlord decides he's done and wants to retire from the hassle of property management and sometimes is even willing to take back a mortgage (a great way to convert a rental income stream to a financial interest scheme and remove the property maintenance factor).

If they don't want to sell, and don't want to rent, what are they going to do with it then?

They'll hold it (this is currently happening) or they'll eventually sell at market rates.

It's totally fine if they raise rent in step with inflation. It's the dramatic raise that's the problem; the tenant will have to choose between paying the extra cost of rent, or paying the extra cost of moving out, and they have no way to avoid that cost, through no fault of their own. Someone could be forced out of the home around which they have built their entire life.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com