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Comment by ejstronge | Hacker News Reader

> You're just trying to ban apartments here. Corporate SFH housing basically doesn't exist but mom and pop large apartments don't either.

This definitely isn't true - there are markets where apartments aren't allowed/desirable, and in which corporate actors 'build to rent' entire subdivisions.s

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That's rare though. Build to rent an entire subdivision is a risky business because there are so many unpredictable costs involved with owning that many houses, and you have to maintain them even if they're not being rented out. It's much more common to build them and then sell them off so the family owning it has to deal with it. As I said, that's why the average landlord in the US owns two properties.

Apartments have the opposite situation for weird legal reasons; there are almost no condos built in California anymore because the laws allow the original developer to get sued over quality issues, whereas for apartments the landlord has to deal with it.

It is rare in my part of the world, but it isn't (currently) rare in places where roofs don't have to withstand snow. No comment on the historical trend.

> Apartments have the opposite situation for weird legal reasons; there are almost no condos built in California anymore because the laws allow the original developer to get sued over quality issues, whereas for apartments the landlord has to deal with it.

This feels like it confuses a couple of issues - one really needs to know the recourse a homeowner has against a home builder and how long this lasts (and to compare that recourse to what is available to condo owners)

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