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No, because they’ll make condo conversion illegal, or at least very difficult.

It’s a sucker’s game to think that once you have a regime which is willing to impose draconian economic regulations you can just get around them cleverly exploit the loopholes.

The history of rent control in San Francisco, to pick one example, has been forty years of rental property owners trying to figure out some escape from the regulations in order to maintain some semblance of private property rights, and the city closing down the escape routes, one by one.

Specifically in regard to condo conversions, decades ago San Francisco limited the right to convert to a couple hundred units per year, awarded by lottery.

You will also see almost all single family/duplex units put up for sale. Even if the owner has to take a loss they will because when there is rent control you also get the problem of tightening of rules/laws for eviction.

California has some of the most tenant friendly eviction laws in the country.

For example; the tenant can fail to pay rent and receive a 30 day notice to pay or quit, but if they don’t pay then the landlord has to file an unlawful detainer suit. That usually give the tenant another 60-120 days before the court hearing is scheduled. The tenant can then file bankruptcy which then require the landlord to go to court and get an order that relieves their property from the bankruptcy procedure, (another 30-60 day delay). Frequently, a tenant with a lawyer will ask for continuances or challenge the process service requiring another delay.

Once all these delays are over the landlord then has to wait for the Sheriff to schedule the actual eviction before they get their property back. So, there could be around 6-12 months to evict a tenant.

All this time the tenant will deny the landlord access to the unit for repairs and upkeep, (which frequently becomes an allegation of habitability for the eviction case in court).

I have seen units where the tenant stripped all the gypsum boards from the walls, removed all the pipes and electrical wiring, removed the heating/AC unit and water heater, even all the sinks and toilets from a unit before the final eviction.

Landlords will not be able to survive with rent control on top of the problems that they already have to deal with. There is no profit in it for them and the property value will drop substantially.