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Comment by belligeront | Hacker News Reader

> looked at census data on the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas and found there are 5.47 million vacant housing units, with an average vacancy rate of 7.22 percent.

This feels sensational. Imagine a common scenario: a unit is rented for 2 years (24 months), and then is vacant for 1 month while the owner repaints, performs maintenance, and relists the property for rental. That is 1/(24+1) = 4% vacancy. Given you can easily get to 4% vacancy with simple turnover, you can see why very low vacancy rates are bad for renters: they indicate it is extremely competitive to find housing. You can see this anecdotally in extremely tight housing markets like NYC where renters looking for apartments often report they need to move extremely quickly to secure rentals and some people even ofter to pay more than the listing price for desirable apartments.

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I believe they accounted for this in the lending tree article. Looks like the main cause is units for rent at 26%, and units undergoing repair are at 6%.

I’ll say from personal experience it is somewhat rare to have this one month gap period between renters. I tend to see the super (manager) paint the unit in 1-2 days or even overnight. Then repairs can happen as the tenant reports them while living in the unit, barring any severe damage.

That example hit 4%, but that’s a long way from 7.22 percent. It’s common for rental properties to be occupied by the same tenants for 10 years or longer, 7.22% of that is 8.7+ months which suggests the 7.22% is further concentrated around shorter rental periods.

It’s the same deal with unemployment, 7% is much worse than 4% even though the numbers aren’t that far apart because it’s a composite of a baseline and issues.

Common, really? Have you got any kind of figures to back that up? Because anecdotally speaking neither I nor anyone known to me has ever rented for anywhere near ten years. I always get curious when claimed statistics greatly disagree with my experience.

I believe it varies significantly by demographic (older renters move less frequently)

Nationally yea, rent control is one reason. NYC has people living in the same apartments for 30+ years.

Subsidized housing is another, the waiting list can be years long and people then generally stay until they are kicked out.

It’s also age related, retired people have fewer reasons to move and families are harder to relocate. Further looking at individuals you don’t yet know how long they are going to be in that location.

PS: 5.5% of renters have lived in their home for more than 20 years. Average is 3 years nationally at 7.22% that’s ~2.6 months between occupancy which seems long IMO.

Very common in California where rent is outrageous and rent control strongly disincentivizes moving.

Rent control in California isn't particularly protective of spiraling rents. The statewide law applies to 15+ year old units and per year rent increases are limited to 5% plus inflation or 10%, whichever is lower.

The statewide number is simply a maximum not a statewide standard.

In San Francisco, rent in rent-controlled apartments can only be raised by 2.6% per year. Which is far more impactful.

I’d guess that the vast majority of California renters are in big cities, where 3% rent control is typical. You get stuck after a year or two, unable to move without leaving the state, and landlords exploit this by neglecting repairs (i.e. lead, mold, asbestos). There is a pretty big range of “livable conditions” which I’ve experienced as a renter. So the divide between rich and poor (owner and renter) increases and the only socially acceptable solution it seems is yimbism, which seems to mean “increase the number of landlords until the problem disappears.” Or outright communism, where the state is the landlord, which has a history of failure.

The US has major issues with the state as landlord but other counties pull it off fairly well. That suggests me it’s the US that has the problem not the approach of having the government involved that’s at issue.

The US seems to default to doing the worst possible solution. Take long term rent control and private ownership, because like seriously WTF??? That’s literally combining the worst aspects of communism and capitalism.

Other countries that pull it off do so in extremely YIMBY ways: they simply build enough housing that market rents fall.

This debate over "public housing" vs "more landlords" is kind of dumb; both operate by increasing the supply of housing and rely on fundamental market factors to work.

> where 3% rent control is typical

> landlords exploit this by neglecting repairs

To be fair, if rent can never go up more than 3% per year, how long until the landlord can't afford to do any repairs?

Property tax goes up 2% every year, so there's only 1% headroom. If some other expense starts to go up wildly (such as insurance has been doing for years now) it can eat that up and then the landlord is losing money every month, which leads to abandoned maintenance. Which isn't good for anyone.

In Los Angeles, it seems to be 4% per year + and additional 1% per covered utility. In addition, the controls only apply to older units. This 3% average in major cities in CA notion is a floating assumption without any hard analysis backing it as far as I've read. https://la.lawsoup.org/legal-guides/tenant-renter/rent-contr...

The property tax increase is at a max of 2% cap, it has not been a full 2% most years in my experience (anecdotally in my area).

Property tax is a finite fraction of a landlords costs, it could go up by 3% and the headroom exists on the rest of their expenses.

Further if all expenses increase by 3%, then profit also increases by 3%. With decades of inflation well below 3% landlords weren’t having issues affording repairs, they simply weren’t getting the maximum benefit from the area’s prosperity increasing.

And yet here I sit in a rental since 2005, and in software and IT the whole time. You just didn't happen to know me.

Your individual experience means essentially nothing, and I frankly disbelieve you don't even know anyone who has not or will not eventually have rented for 10 years, since they are everywhere.

I know a lot of people on the east coast who end up moving every ~2 years between rentals.

Professionals? Who move around based on changing income, family size, and neighborhood dynamics? Sure.

I know a lot of working class people who live in the same neighborhood they grew up in and have rented the whole time. Just depends on who you know a lot of I think.

5.5% of renters have lived in their home for more than 20 years. https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/renting-statistics The average renter stays for three years in a single-family home. Which means the vacancy between occupants averages 2.6 months or so. https://policyadvice.net/insurance/insights/rental-statistic...

You tend to know people like yourself. Young professionals move quiet frequently. Do you know anyone in a rent controlled or subsidized apartment? How many retired couples do you permit know? What about school teachers or police officers etc?

Also, looking at people who can’t tell if someone is 2 days into a 15 year stay which makes it easy to overestimate how mobile people are. You really need to look at things from the perspective of move out dates not how long people have been in their current apartment.

For how many years of their life, how many 2-year cycles? You can switch jobs every 2 years for a 30-year career, but having a family slows things down, usually.

I've moved 3 times in 7 years. But never has my old landlord or new landlord taken a month to repaint things. It's always been re-rented in under 2 weeks. This is all in NYC though, so things might be a bit different here.

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