Comment by WalterBright

7 hours ago

The government heavily interferes in the housing industry. Hence, the higher costs. It's the same for everything the government interferes with - such as education and health care.

For examples:

1. there are 57,000 unoccupied apartments in NYC because city regulations on rents make them unprofitable to rent out.

2. the glacial pace of issuing building permits for burned out homes in LA.

3. the sudden influx of many millions of immigrants pushes up the demand for housing, resulting in higher prices

11 comments

WalterBright

Reply
throwaway2037  4 hours ago 

    > 1. there are 57,000 unoccupied apartments in NYC because city regulations on rents make them unprofitable to rent out.

The correct quote should be:

    > According to state data, approximately 57,421 rent-stabilized apartments were vacant across New York City

The key term here is "rent-stabilized". And the reasons why they are vacant is much more complex "because city regulations on rents make them unprofitable to rent out". That is simply one category of rent-stabilized apartments that are vacant.

  • laughing_man  1 hour ago

    I don't think it's much more complicated than that. If you own a "rent-stabilized" apartment there's going to be a very low limit to the amount of money you're willing to spend to keep it habitable. If it needs a lot of money to make it legal to rent out, you're just going to leave it vacant. You don't really have a choice.

  • AnthonyMouse  4 hours ago

    > And the reasons why they are vacant is much more complex "because city regulations on rents make them unprofitable to rent out".

    Is it actually more complex than that? If the regulation that makes it unprofitable to rent them out is rent control, that's still an accurate statement of why they're not being rented out.

0c3ca83  5 hours ago

> there are 57,000 unoccupied apartments in NYC

That's about 2.4% of the total number of rented apartments, and about 1.5% of the total housing stock.

How long do you think those apartments are unoccupied, on average?

What portion of the stock do you think would normally be healthy to have on the market?

  • WalterBright  4 hours ago

    google prompt: "how many unoccupied apartments in nyc"

    Scroll down a bit and read the section: "Key Causes of Vacancies"

Timon3  7 hours ago

[flagged]

  • socalgal2  7 hours ago

    I genuinely can not understand how anyone with basic knowledge of economics could believe that government intervention is not responsible for the majority of rent price increases

    The market, left to its own, will keep building because someone will see the prices people are willing to pay and think “I want in on that” but then the government comes in and blocks them from building. No building = supply lower than demand which always equals higher costs

    Further, It would only have taken you one 5 second search to see the ways government regulations can cause unoccupied apartments

    https://www.google.com/search?q=in+what+ways+can+government+...

  • WalterBright  7 hours ago

    That's because you inserted the word "all" which was quite absent from what I wrote.

    Please try again.

    P.S. google "how many unoccupied apartments in nyc"