Comment by rprend
20 hours ago
I think it’s important to note that this is asking rent, not what people are paying on average. Landlords do tricks to make rental history appear more expensive than it was, and every online posting should be read as aspirational price, not a real one. Listing inflation helps increase price expectations for the future, and has helped drive the crazy rent inflation NYC has seen post covid (exceeding other expensive metros like SF).
For example- my current apartment had a crazy high lease concession. The paper rent is 30% higher than what I pay. The only inconvenience is that i had to pay a security deposit at the paper rent, not actual rent. It’s like a software business giving 2 months free then multiplying MRR by 12, not taking churn into account. I am moving out after a year.
Realtors pull a similar trick: instead of dropping the price on Zillow (which flags it), they delist and relist at a lower price. Zillow treats it like a new listing, so the price history looks clean. Totally skews market transparency.
I follow our local market very closely because we're considering moving and have never seen this. I've even seen houses delisted and relisted, and the full pricing history remains on Zillow. Can you share an example?
Zillow probably has an incentive to not fix this “bug”, because they could easily track prices based on the address.
I wish lease concessions were also illegal. They've always come with extra gotchas to get them which wouldn't be included in a normal lease, and like you say, encourage this false history.
This is a widespread issue and one of the sources of the major dislocation between theory (supply-and-demand) and practice (rents effectively never drop, on paper). It needs to be outlawed. If you have to lower your rate, you (should) have to actually lower your rate. The rent is (should be) what tenants pay, full stop.
I'm sure the people underwriting the loans will catch on as long as we're not dumb enough to bail them out a second time.