Comment by ctmlr
12 hours ago
Most landlords arent big corporate in the USA either especially in areas where the housing crisis is the worst.
I think this narrative is just meant to distract people from questioning the necessity of the landlord class, they want people angry at a faceless corporate boogieman instead of local landlords (for obvious reasons)
Rental prices are set at the edge, so you only need to own a fraction of the market to drive rent increases. Corporate landlords absolutely do this.
The "mom and pop" landlord who owns a few houses is much less likely to keep a property vacant to support higher rents. They have taxes, insurance, and probably debt to pay off. They need cash flow; they'll be more likely to cut their rent a bit to get a tenant.
Services like RealPage provide information that allows the small landlord to act like corporate overlords, praise be American corporatism.
How about an app that collectively bargains rents algorithmically? Call it RedPage lol.
That's basically a listing search page that allows you to sort by price.
What else do you expect "collective bargaining" to do in a market where every tenant has a different landlord? Your landlord isn't going to care if the tenants of 10,000 other landlords threaten to move out. They only care if you threaten to move out, and then to credibly do that what you need is to show them the unit you could move into which is asking for less.
The real problem is that you need the unit you can threaten to move into to first exist, rather than its construction being inhibited by zoning etc.
5 replies →