Free Republic

Martín López is an Argentine landlord, but in recent years he felt more like a nervous fugitive. Now based in Madrid, he spent much of 2022 and 2023 mired in anxiety and paperwork—not because he did anything immoral, but because Argentina's rental laws made being a landlord a liability. "Martín López" is an alias. Until late 2023, he rented out his two-bedroom apartment in Buenos Aires' upscale Belgrano neighborhood through a tangle of short-term contracts, never fully sure whether his actions were legal. Argentina's 2020 rent control law, repealed by President Javier Milei in December 2023, had loaded aboveground landlords...

A free market for housing is one that benefits both renters and landlords.It should go without saying, but the United States became the world's most-prosperous large nation by generally allowing the market economy to work. By contrast, Argentina has remained a poor backwater thanks in part to its far-reaching price controls. So it's ironic that "free-market" America needs to learn a key economic lesson from down south, at least on the issue of rental housing. Argentina's governments have since the 1940s reflected to some degree the Perón-ista worldview, named after Juan Domingo Perón and his authoritarian-populist government. Last November,...

With everyone following every facial tick and minor mis-statement by (P)resident Biden at his presser last night, there has been surprising little notice—and no press follow up so far—to his suggestion that the Biden Administration wants to institute nationwide rent control, and maybe even price controls on the resale price of houses. Here’s what came out of his mouth:“We’re going to make sure that rents are kept at 5% increase in corporate rents for apartments and the like. Homes are limited to 5%.” WHAT?!?! This ought to be a HFS moment for everyone (except certified morons like Bernie Sanders, Lizzie...

After months of delays, the battle between landlords and tenants in one Bay Area city has come to an end. A rent control ordinance in the city of Concord went into effect Friday after its opponents failed to get enough signatures to place the issue on the November ballot. “We are thrilled that the people of Concord have spoken again in favor of people over corporate greed,” Rhea Elina Laughlin, executive director of advocacy group Rising Juntos, said in a statement. The ordinance reduces the annual percentage by which landlords can raise rent in Concord and bolsters certain eviction protections....

PHOENIX — Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is suing several owners of apartment complexes throughout the Valley for allegedly engaging in illegal "price-fixing" and creating a mechanism that's exacerbated Arizona's housing crisis. The state's top legal official announced Wednesday her office had filed a lawsuit against nine major residential apartment landlords in Arizona and RealPage Inc. for allegedly conspiring to inflate rental rates and eliminate competition in the market. "One reason renters in the Phoenix and Tucson metropolitan areas are paying more is because RealPage has facilitated a price-fixing conspiracy among a large share of multifamily apartment lessors in Arizona,"...

America’s renters - more than one-third of the nation’s households - are in for trouble. Left-wing politicians are demanding rent regulation from coast to coast. Wherever it is adopted, the result will be a disastrous reduction in the rental housing supply, leaving renters desperate for places to live.New York is the poster child for the failures of rent regulation. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently mulling a challenge to the constitutionality of the city’s rent regime.Whatever the justices decide, the public needs to consider less destructive, more targeted ways to help low-income people pay for housing. The court of public...

In a case that promises to utterly upend New York politics — and boost the city’s housing market — the Supreme Court may soon strike down the essence of the rent-control laws. *** New York landlord groups asked the court to hear their challenge to the state Rent Stabilization Law, which lets the city cap rent hikes and gives tenants a virtually ironclad right to renew their leases. It’s led to some people renting the same unit for decades — and then passing it to a family member, *** *** In many cases, building “owners” never regain control over those...

California cities are adopting rent control as housing production plummets, leading to further declines in the housing development necessary to make rents more affordable. The neighboring Los Angeles County cities of Maywood, Bell Gardens, and Cudahy, each dense, renter-heavy communities long known for their affordability, have adopted rent control measures, according to The Los Angeles Times. The efforts are aimed at preventing outmigration of longtime residents as vast shortfalls of housing production and increasingly high desirability have led housing prices to explode. Citing high levels of local poverty, especially among the elderly, the City of Maywood froze rent increases through...

Renters living in the New York metro area have the highest rent-to-income ratio in the country at nearly 69 percent, according to a new report from Moody’s Analytics. Figures show that for the first time in over 20 years, the entire United States is rent-burdened, as the average American rent-to-income ratio reached 30 percent. The ratio reflects what percentage of a household’s income is spent on rent. That total is up 1.5 percent from last year’s estimation. New York was followed by Miami, Fla.; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Los Angeles, Calif.; and Palm Beach, Fla., respectively. Northern New Jersey; Boston, Mass.;...

The Biden administration rolled out a blueprint for a renters bill of rights, a major win for tenants, advocates say. Some of the upcoming changes could include curbing ‘egregious’ rent hikes in certain properties, and more funding to get low-income tenants facing eviction access to legal representation.

Ideas that start on the progressive fringes have a way of becoming government policy these days, as President Biden’s $400 billion student loan cancellation shows. Lo, Democrats in Congress are now pressing the President to impose rent control nationwide. The White House is considering a series of executive actions that are ostensibly intended to protect tenants. Rents on average increased 17.6% in 2021 and another 3.8% last year. One culprit was near-zero interest rates while they lasted, which inflated housing prices and made it harder for young people to buy a home. The result: More demand for rental housing. Landlords...

Progressive Democrats in Congress, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D–N.Y.), are urging the White House to marshal all available organs of the regulatory state to impose rent control on the entire country. A letter authored by the two, and signed by 50 members of Congress, proposes seven actions of varying radicalism and legality that President Joe Biden could take to cap rent increases. "We urge your Administration to pursue all possible strategies to end corporate price gouging in the real estate sector," reads the January 9 letter to Biden. "Simply put, the rent is too...

Mostly I write about energy policy; but another important topic for this blog is housing policy, particular as practiced here in my home town of New York. For reasons that might not be immediately obvious, these topics of energy and housing policy are closely related. Both involve ignorant politicians promising to supplant the imperfect freedom-based economic system and achieve utopia by using their coercive powers to order that it shall be so. Yet somehow, utopia continues to elude us, and the government mandates only make things worse. And no lessons are ever learned. Today’s topic is the latest in New...

The city of Kingston, New York, is ordering landlords to reduce their rent by 15%.Pretty much every economist, even the ones on the left, agree that, in the long run, rent control reduces both the quantity and the quality of rental housing.Rent control is great for people who already have a rent controlled apartment.But it’s horrible for people who are looking for an apartment.The Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, a housing expert, said that “rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city – except for bombing.”That being said, as a person who does not...

To alleviate an alleged housing emergency, officials in Kingston, New York, are mandating a 15 percent reduction in rents. Rental property owners are now suing the city, arguing it failed to meet state requirements for adopting rent control and that the ordered rent reduction amounts to retroactive punishment. "It's going to bankrupt many [landlords]," Richard Lanzarone, executive director of the Hudson Valley Property Owners Association (HVPOA), says of Kingston's Rent Guidelines Board decision last week to reduce rents by 15 percent for leases signed between August 2022 and September 2023. "If it stands, it'll lead to abandonment, tenant displacement, blight,...

An Orange County circuit judge erred in allowing voters to weigh in on a proposed rent control ordinance, an appeal court has ruled, siding with realtors and landlords over renter advocacy groups who argued soaring housing prices constituted an emergency. A sharply divided Orange County Commission voted 4-3 in August to let voters decide if rent increases should be capped. If approved by voters, the proposed ordinance would have imposed a one-year cap of rent hikes for potentially 104,000 apartments in Orange County at 9.8%. After the Florida Apartment Association and Florida Realtors sued to block the measure, it narrowly...

Nearly 1 In 10 Rent-Regulated Apartments In NYC Were Vacant In 2021It only takes so long before rising prices and surging crime start to show up in a city’s population and housing data. The latest such data point for New York City is a report from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development that 88,830 stabilized apartments were vacant in 2021. This number is significantly higher than the previously reported 61,000 by the state, according to the City, who obtained the previously unreleased updated figures. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development based its estimates on data collected by the...

Gov. Kathy Hochul said that she’s requesting more federal aid from the Biden administration for New York’s since dried-up rental relief program, ahead of the likely expiration of the state’s eviction moratorium this coming weekend. The eviction ban – in place since March 2020 – is expected to lapse on Saturday, Jan. 15. “What we want to do is let people know that that is concluding very shortly. I’m having conversations with the legislature on what to do on this issue,” Hochul said during a press conference in Manhattan. The moratorium was first signed as an executive order by ex-Gov....

Not content with jacking up taxes massively and dangerously mushrooming the state budget, legislators are now looking to inflict yet more pain, by sneaking through a “universal rent control” bill that would clobber the housing market. This, even though rents in New York City have plunged to decade-long lows. The legislation, now in committee in both the Assembly and the Senate, is misleadingly labeled “Good Cause Eviction,” when it would essentially force landlords statewide to accept tenants for life — with a cap on yearly rent increases.

Progressives in the state Legislature aren’t done damaging the city’s housing market — indeed, they’re now aiming to slam the entire state. They’re looking to impose universal rent control — subjecting every Empire State apartment to rules that say that rent hikes are “unreasonable” if they exceed 3 percent, or one-and-a-half times the inflation rate. The “Good Cause Eviction” bill would prohibit landlords from evicting tenants in nearly every market-rate apartment without first showing “good cause.” Tenants could fight evictions if they say they can’t pay such an “unreasonable” rent. Right now, roughly a million apartments in the city, all...