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Comment by tonyhb | Hacker News Reader

Small landlords don't own apartment buildings. They buy houses/units to rent, lowering availability for buyers. So, you'd at least want to look at the number of new apartment rentals available plus the number of first time house buyers to get a better picture.

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Small landlords also rent out basement suites and carriage homes on their own property, no? Those may very well sit empty if the return isn’t worth the risk.

Editing to just add: I absolutely support transparent pricing for rental properties.

They don't own the buildings, but it's frequently part of a condo association and they own a unit or two.

Yes, this is the same as buying a unit and renting as in my original post.

And market-rate rental complexes replace condos. I can see legitimate reasons for subsidized rental complexes, and there is always some need for market-rate units, but I don't see any justification for dedicated market-rate complexes. People who can afford paying the market rate should be able to buy if they stay in the area long enough, but American cities have a shortage of smaller units you can buy. For some reason, maybe due to regulatory and market failures, developers prefer rental complexes over condos.

Mine did, in North Hollywood, owned a 2 story building, I think 8 units with varying floor plans. Does that qualify as an apartment building? He did all the work himself unless it was something like HVAC or required permitting. He was an IT dude who got laid off by Century Link and diversified. Didn't seem to enjoy the maintenance part though, but was perfectly capable.

> lowering availability for buyers

This makes an unsubstantiated assumption that everyone would rather buy and can afford to, ignoring that people have reasons to rent.

No, it doesn't. It states that if a landlord has 3 houses and exits the landlord market, those houses are either kept unused or sold and are available for new buyers.

Sold...to a large landlord company... yes. That is what happened in Seattle

Assuming the same homes, which group do you think is larger:

A) Households who are currently renting who would prefer to own their home

B) Households who currently own who would prefer to be renting

I'm going to guess A >>> B, but I've never seen the data.

"prefer" is irrelevant. I prefer to be a billionaire and own an island. Question is of ability.

Your last point was that some people prefer to rent. I don't think it's irrelevant to compare that to the number of people who would prefer to own.

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