The problem with real estate is that you can't short your house very easily.
(Rental costs) = (interest payment + maintenance costs - mortgage deduction - liquidity or risk premium) ...er, I think... If not then there should be an arbitrage oportunity and property will convert rather rapidly between rental and condo. Maybe someone will check my logic.
Rent control is funny because it just drives up the price of existing non-regulated property while instantly killing new rental development (just suggesting it kills rental supply as developers dive for cover).
I love liberals. No one can screw over poor people better than a good liberal. Its almost comical.
Sounds like they may have created a whole new slew of Republican voters in Portland. The law of unintended consequences...
One mistake made by those who favor rent control is perceiving that landlords and tenants are somehow in competition with each other. In fact, that's not true. Landlords want to rent out apartments; tenants want to live in them. Their interests are not competitive, but rather cooperative. The real "competition" for tenants is other tenants. Rent control doesn't serve so much to protect tenants from landlords, but rather from other would-be tenants.