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'Renters Are Struggling': Economists Back Tenant-Led Push for Federal Rent Control
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
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Eh, I mean there is a record number of vacant homes at the moment. The investor class owns a fuck load of housing that could be actually be used to ya know, house people. I'd bet If a large tax was placed on 2nd homes /income property, there'd be no supply shortage. So many people bought homes for AirBNB, and rent seeking in the last decade that in years past would be being bought by families. I know in my town they've been putting up high rise after high rise. Rent still goes up because of (imo) artificial scarcity. Landlords are using software to fix price on rent, banks intentionally trickle out foreclosures to not flood the market, companies with vacant units are not allowed to drop price of rent and keep pricing high because of financing agreements made when the building was built. Most of the luxury apartments that have been built are maybe 30% full. No one wants to live in a duplex/ triplex /multiplex. People want houses, and there are none because companies like Blackstone backed Invitation homes and Chinese companies/ citizens buy them all to rent seek.
The ripple effect from these rate hikes might help drop rents because a lot of commercial loans are ARMs, and when that rate adjusts, landlords are going to feel pain, but they may just pass it on to their tenants and make housing affordability even worse. We've allowed too many people to commodify what was once viewed as a necessity, and the single family home is now an investment vehicle for big business.
The real estate market as a whole feels like a giant game of hot potato at the moment. Something has got to give. The America of today is so much worse than the one I grew up in as a result of all the BS we've allowed the investor class to do. It needs to get reigned in somehow because imo the American dream is dead as a result.
We're currently close to the record for all time lowest vacancy rates. We're at 6.3%. The highest (over the past 70 years) was in 2009, at 11.1%. It got down as far as 5% a few times. I downloaded the raw data and it says the average is 7.28%
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRVRUSQ156N
There's a popular image of a bunch of Scrooge McDucks sitting on giant inventories of housing but the evidence doesn't support that. Someone saying, "I saw a bunch of empty houses." is exactly as logical an argument as a climate denier saying, "It's been cold all week." That's just an anecdote.
The data is very clear on the matter. We don't have enough housing.
A vacant home doesn’t mean affordable or accessible. Single family homes are stupidly inefficient and expensive or in middle of nowhere. Dense cities are the only solution.
Vacant does not always mean available.