I forget which city this happened in, but a disabled friend of mine was telling me a story This city had wheelchair accessible cabs, but the cost of converting a cab, combined with the extra time and effort needed to help a wheelchair bound person in and out, resulted in a higher price, about 1.5x the normal cab faire, it sucks but that's just how business works A group of disabled rights activists didn't like this, so that sued the company, and the courts ruled that they couldn't charge more than 1.25x the normal price So now the cab company can't make a profit on them, so they stopped offering wheelchair accessible cabs, save for a few So now wheelchair bound people can't get cabs in this city, all because they didn't want to pay for them
@@petelee2477 its because they want to be able to have the cake and look at it, as its generally a beautiful thing, but they want to eat it because its generally a delicious thing, but the eating of the cake deprives you of the having of the cake. Course you can just take a picture of the cake these days.
> all because they didn't want to pay for them This ignores that a lot of disabled people *can't* afford as much. Being disabled is already often expensive if you need to afford mobility aids, and the problem is further exacerbated by rather ridiculous restrictions on how much money disabled people can earn before they lose disability benefits.
I grew up in san diego and was homeless after high school because i couldnt afford rent on even a studio even with a full time job. This was over 15 years ago, i imagine its even worse now. Now i own a 3 bedroom home on 5 acres out in tn, and my mortgage is less than $800 a month. I could afford my home on minimum wage if i had to. Because my house was so affordable, i should be able to have it completely paid off within the next 5 years. I went from homeless to being able to have a house owned free and clear in under 10 years, just because i moved. Not only am i living more comfortably than i ever could in southern California, but since moving to the country, my health has improved greatly and i no longer suffer from anxiety and depression. Ill never live in a large city again and ill never understand why anyone would want to.
It's FAR worse now. I live in SD now and I pay $1850 for a two-bedroom that is below average inside and nice outside. If I had to set a price I'd say $650 MAX. Now I do believe in rent control for this very reason. This channel is billionaire-funded right-wing libertarian trash. I'm a civil libertarian but not an economic one. I'm an economic Socialist. You are entirely correct though, for those who are able, moving to a rural area could be a wonderful solution- but it's not THE solution. But I am super happy for you that you found an affordable place to live- everybody should be able to, in the city or not.
@@Krill_all_health_insuranceCEOs lol you think California is bad, try an actual socialist country like Venezuela or a “social capitalist” country like Brazil where I’m from
@@_jp_0966 I don't know all that much about Brazil other than there are sharp class divisions and a lot of corruption. I was there once in 2003, only for a few days. You didn't vote for bolsonaro did you??
Zoning is way more influential in restricting building and driving up prices. Local property owners lobby city officials to shut down any new building in their neighborhoods, especially apartments. This is to protect their own property values.
Local property owners typically don't do this, large multi-complex corporations do. Most local owners own maybe a building, maybe two, and are likely to live in it themselves, which is ideal for the renter(most the time). For similar reasons renter's laws and rent control laws hurt most renters they also hurt apartment owners that don't benefit from economies of scale, which requires a lot of units, far more than the majority of apartment building owners own. Housing works similar to any other market, in that small businesses typically want competition and those at the tippy top want to use government to create laws to squeeze out the competition.
I remember reading Henry Hazlit's "Economics in 1 lesson". All economic problems can be attributed to either of 2 things: 1; Special interest groups over the whole of society. 2; Short term plans applied for long terms.
This joke is old. That study was from msnbc or cnn.. I forget. But it showed the frogs changed behaviors when exposed to the chemical. Infowar posted about it and news articles acted like it was him being crazy. All he did was report the scientific studies
@@mobnowjoe6802 Frogs are hermaphrodites, meaning they can change their sex based on the environment. When there are not enough females and too many males, some of the males will change into female in order to preserve the population. Birth control hormones and Industrial xenoestrogens from factory runoff can force the change in hermaphrodites which is the issue Alex Jones was bringing up, albeit explained rather poorly.,
Some big cities like NYC are already close to the limit, in terms of housing density. The solution is: *build more cities* - Convert existing suburbs into vibrant places where fun things actually happen. The free market will naturally do this, if we get rid of old oppressive zoning laws.
Isn't the reason why they don't stop these regulations because they are popular and get votes from people since most people choose to be ignorant and act on emotion (the policy sounds nice). Also, anybody who tries to remove them gets called a racist or some other buzzword, which is bad for PR and in a democratic vote popularity is what matters not the effectiveness of policies, morals or legitimacy?
Well you give that poor, minority, female, and/or anything but a straight white cis man some cheap housing of course they are going to vote for you. Funny how the left cries about how the right only cares about rich white men and won't help anyone else yet the left will refuse to help straight white men. I wish everyone would see that each political party picks is pawns to exploit for votes.
Yeah, of course, they all exploit the way humans think in order to win votes, they have to. Being honest and speaking the truth does not win elections it's that simple and when you have the majority of people straight up refusing to inform themselves on political issues it's way too easy to exploit them with their emotions and alliances in order to get them to vote for you. A pure democracy (the US is a constitutional republic, not a pure democracy) will always become socialist and thus destroy itself as everybody votes for free stuff and how a utopia looks in their mind ignoring sustainability. We are traveling down a dangerous road paved by good intentions, ignorance and exploitation.
Spider-Man Nah, it's all about coruption here. The fun part of being a politician is that you get a loooot of bribe to put regulation on things so some big corporations can proffit. Coruption, coruption, coruption!!!
When myself and 2 friends tried to move in together rent control is what screwed us over. Almost every place that had a price we could afford was rent controlled and we made too much to qualify. When I say almost every place I mean 98% of apartment complexes in the area and even some houses. The places that were not rent controlled we too a bit too pricey for us to pay for and still live comfortable. Basically you had 3 guys with decent jobs that needed no government assistance yet we were being punished because we made too much money.
assassinwarrior Not criticizing, just trying to help you out. If you're saying "x and I" or "x and me" the way you can be sure which to use, try saying the sentence without the "and." For example, your comment would be "When me tried to move in..." Does that sound right? I'm sure you'd say no. Give it a try, it will help you. That's what my English teacher and I discussed a while back. It's what made sense to my English teacher and me. Cheers!
Sometimes they are both to blame, in London billionaire Russian, Middle Eastern and Chinese are buying property in London to lander their filthy money driving up housing
That's the story of german rent prices right now. It's being made worse by speculation that is now possible, large funds or companies keeping houses they own empty to simply wait for rising prices to sell.
Another problem the US is facing is Chinese investors buying up entire neighborhoods and raising prices. A country should never let foreign entities own land outright.
This would be a stronger argument if there weren't plenty of places that don't have rent control where companies have built plenty of new apartments and still not lowered what they charge for rent.
I agree that rent control is not the option to fix things but doing nothing is not the solution either. It's hard to imagine that its really a supply and demand issue when there are loads of empty houses. Its like saying the reason diamonds are still so expensive is because supply is low but the supply is artificially kept low to drive up prices not because so many ppl want them they have to charge more to discourage waste. Builing more houses sounds good but when they are bought by rich ppl and kept off the market it defeats the purpose and drives more waste.
Didnt help us, zoning laws are so messed up here we're zoned and taxed like we live in the middle of the city that's around an hour way, we can't add on without submitting a crap load of paperwork that likely won't be approved because reasons.
Exactly, I know a land developer who has tried so hard to develop housing for California but he continues to develop housing for Texas, because California is just unprofitable to develop in despite how high rent is. The existing landlords lobby the government and band together to sue people who enter their land to maintain the monopoly over the land, what should be an illegal monopoly. There would never be a monopoly if the government wasn't there upholding it. the NIMBYism in San Fransisco is astronomical, at this point so many people have mortgages at the existing prices that you'd cause a collapse by actually trying to solve the problem, it's a lose-lose.
They are waging a war against middle class and poor people. They think nothing will happen until they get dragged out of their homes and shot in the back of the head.
Keep raising the prices on rent, food, gas, etc, etc and a recession will be here before we know it. And it will be more terrifying then the 2008 recession.
@@quantumfrost9467 The only people I have ever heard say Thomas Sowell is great are right wing political pundits and random people online. I have never come across an actual economist who recommends his work. Probably because he is a partisan hack more interested in making pithy remarks than in actual economics.
Of course lets overlook the renters themselves . I have a friend who rents out five homes . EVERY time a renter moves out he has to spend money to remodel the home because they were not taken care of . This leads to him always wanting more to rent it to the next people . I am not talking about normal wear and tear , I am talking fixing holes in the walls , replacing cabinet doors (if not the whole cabinets) replacing closet doors , replacing light fixtures , ect. ect . So yeah , lets hear about greedy landlords .
Seemor...I have rented for 30 years in several apartments. I always leave my apartment in the same condition I got it. Landlords need to do a better job at figuring out good tenants from bad tenants. I can read people so easily. I now watch small claims court tv and predict who's going to lose the case at over 80% accuracy, before either party opens their mouth. A coin toss equals 50% accuracy. The camera is on each litigant as they enter court. I watch ever physical appearance detail as well as the way they walk and their facial expressions as the case is read to viewers. In under 60 seconds of each litigants responses, my adjusted guess who will win goes up to around 90%. Each case takes about an average of 15 minutes, not including commercials. There's so many good tenants out there. Do you think your friend is possibly making mistakes in choosing tenants. He only needs one good tenant, not 50.
Here in the UK we literally had a tower block of people burn to death, because those who installed the insulation cheaped out. You can always argue for less regulation, but certain regulations need to be in place.
You're not wrong; I like my food (relatively) insect-free and my buildings well-constructed. That said, I've seen restrictive regulations just in my own relatively small 'ol city. One man a few blocks from me wanted to put up a privacy fence. He mis-read the regulations, and put it 3 feet too close to the street. The city made him tear it down. Now, the purpose of requiring privacy fences to be back from the street is so motorists can see around corners clearly. But he doesn't live on a corner... not even *close* to one. Ergo, the very purpose of the regulation has no bearing whatsoever on this particular fence. The city has the ability to grant waivers to whosoever it chooses. It *could* have given the guy a break. But, they didn't. Now, the fact that they didn't that wouldn't bother me too much... IF that same city then hadn't turned around and granted a waiver to an incoming business to put in a privacy fence *10* feet from the road... including at a street corner. I can only imagine how much worse things are in even bigger cities.
I propose all retirees move to somewhere significantly cheaper to balance this alleged "supply and demand" 😂😂🤣 don't be spending all your hard earned retirement money and Social Security in these price gouging areas
just finished building a new 3,500 sqft house... high end down to the engineered quartz countertop... cost $140k including the well, septic, off grid electric & 20 acres of land. The mortgage is about 1k... city people must know something I don't... lol
OR it could also be true that landlords make up whatever they can until somebody bites, and regulations are actually not as prevalent because politics tend to help the lobby.
that explains a big city, I live in a small town in a very rural part of the country, at least 100 miles from any large city and the rent is high here also. There are several houses and apartments that are empty yet they still ask a high price for rent. So demand isn't that high here, yet they ask anywhere from 700 to a 1000 a month for a two bedroom place. Thankfully I bought my place long ago, but younger people who are trying to stay here can't afford there own place unless they have roommates. I know this happens in a high population area, but, shouldn't be happening in the area I live in. I think most of it is just people being greedy
This sounds like someone trying to sell you something explaining why you want the extra fees. The problem is just not this simple. I live in an area with absolutely no rent control and all of the housing around here is way over priced and keeps going up by more than 100 dollars each year for even the cheapest apartments. And there doesn't seem to be any supply and demand issues out here. But one thing I can definitely say is it seems like all of the rental housing is owned by just a few companies. Even the rent houses out here are rented through just a few different managing companies.
No. It's someone explaining basic economics, which has long been supported by empirical data, but which a lot of people don't want to hear because it seems easier to just impose price controls with no regard to long term consequences.
@@FEEonline Ok cool. Why is my rent still going up if there is no rent control in my area? Why are the cheapest apartments in my area still basically unaffordable to anyone making less than 50k a year? Is it maybe because rent control is not the only factor here? That was simply my point. It's not just dumb laws that are making prices sky rocket. I suspect there is a fair amount of greed there and an oligopoly on the market. To call the real reason your rent is so high is "because of rent control" is narrow minded and seems to have the intent to sow distrust in any legislation that is trying to help the consumer. And yeah I would agree that often the government makes the whole situation worse. But I do know virtually all "entrepreneurs" do not have their consumers best interest in mind. No I would say money comes first and the interest of the consumer is only acknowledged to the benefit of the entrepreneur.
@@baine3388 no one ever said rent control was the only factor. Your rent is going up because, at a fundamental level, there is more demand than supply of housing. I don't know where you live, but typically, this is very often a result of policies that make it difficult and expensive to build new homes and apartments. Restrictive zoning, complicated and slow permitting processes, mandates that require the use of more expensive construction materials, and in our current moment a year and a half of governments shutting down productive businesses and international trade that's created massive problems with supply chains and wrecked the ability of people to get goods and raw materials affordably. To give you a better sense of why your specific area is facing high costs, I'd need to take a deeper dive into the issues facing your area specifically. What I *can* say with certainty is that if your area had rent control, it would be worse. Wherever those rules exist, a tiny percentage of people benefit (literally having to win lotteries in some cases to get into the rent controlled buildings) and meanwhile those buildings don't get renovated or improved, people don't move out of them when they actually probably should, and few developers will build new buildings risking being forced into taking a significant loss on rent. Rent control policies only make the supply and demand gap wider. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/15/comeback-rent-control-just-time-make-housing-shortages-worse/ fee.org/articles/the-case-against-rent-control/ www.cato.org/commentary/rent-control-old-bad-idea-wont-go-away catalyst.independent.org/2019/09/18/rent-control-a-bad-idea-has-spread-again/
@@baine3388 on a separate note, you should meet more successful entrepreneurs. I've met a ton, and almost every one of them cares deeply about improving the lives of their customers, which is a major part of why they're successful.
@@baine3388 They didn't say that the reason rent was so high was "because of rent control." They said that rent is so high because the supply is insufficient to meet the demand. They then pointed out that rent control is *one* of the factors that can artificially reduce the supply while demand stays the same or even increases. Even in places where there is no rent control, various local regulations may keep suppliers from producing housing, whether that housing is single-family or multi-family in nature, because they don't believe they'll be able to get sufficient return on their investment.
Urban Growth Boundaries also play into this as it makes real estate scarce and thereby drives up demand. I think another factor, specifically with high rent prices for rental houses, is the, "Get rich quick," real estate investor that buys houses using mortgages, then charges rent that is higher than the mortgage payment. But the only way that works is if rent prices are artificially driven up by artificially created scarcity.
Im actually from a city with sky high rent *and* a rapidly expanding housing supply with both phenomena lasting over a decade. I had initially expected that the four simultanously completed new apartment towers visible from my door would have to lower their unprecedented asking prices with hundreds of new units coming on line at once in one corner of one neighborhood. Not a single one did. Instead they managed to get by just fine only filling a majority of their units at the high price and deciding to sit on the empty units to squeeze supply until demand reached their new threshold, for years on end. Any of them could have lowered their prices by even 10% and filled all their units in an instant, making more money overall than the other three, but they and most of the high density housing owners throughout the city have determined that lower profit in the short term is survivable and preferable to allowing any market correction to take effect. So they've implemented an artificial scarcity on their commodity. Meanwhile single family homes with yards, usually owned by individuals or smaller scale companies can't use the same tactic so effectively and have started reach similar prices to one bedroom apartments even though so relatively few units exist compared to high density. Your rented out mother in law or even 2nd home isnt the issue, and you're not the Greedy Landlords being spoken of. Large property management groups are.
Another angle of it is... why do you want to live in "big ol' city"? A lot of them have this "draw" for people who want to live there for... well... no good reason. They _only_ have a "dream" or "feeling" and just make it harder for folks who *need* to live there because they work there, or were born there and can't afford to move away. XP I'm not saying to prohibit people from moving to these places, it is just as someone who doesn't like cities with more than 100,000 population, it all confuses me. XD
Well, there is a certain draw to the idea of living in the city. I'd love to live in a big city. Wake up, not have to drive and be able to walk anywhere I want to go. I could work 4 blocks away from where I live an my commute could be all of ten healthy minutes of a walk. Have tons of time left to go do things I like and again walk there. Lots of people so it would be easy to make friends, lots of niche shops, and something would always be going on. Or at least that's what alot of us imagine it as. And for some people that is just kinda idealistic. But, of course theres real problems and cost of living and all that. But you can't blame people for being attracted to what they feel would be idealistic.
Remember, I said "big ol' city" city. If I was *not* quoting the video, I goofed! We aren't just talking about _any_ city, but places like New York City. Living within walking distance of where you work is about living within walking distance of where you work; small towns can do that same thing... and if your machinery is near enough your house and you don't count driving said machinery to the fields, it is true of farming as well. ;) As for walking everywhere... again, that seems more applicable to small town living than "big ol' city" life. You'll have fewer options in the small town, but you aren't *really* walking everywhere in a big ol' city. Places like NYC are just too *big* for that. A small city? Sure. Which probably has lower rent unless there's another factor to consider. :)
@@KamisamanoOtaku actually small towns and medium sized cities have massive issues with that. Because the pand is so cheap, it's really easy to spread thing out. And developers love this, they call it fill in. So what you end up with is alot of super spread out stuff. When I lived in a small town, everything was at least a half hour drive. Groceries, school, you name it. You needed milk, your afternoon was gone. And again I'm not saying that's the reality of city life, I'm just saying that's the ideal vision that brings some people to live in the city.
Rent = Slavery. Equity = Freedom. We need more houses that people can afford to qualify to own. If you don't own it, somebody else does. He who has the Gold, makes the Rules. Over time, as we are living in it, there are less home owners now then ever. Somehow (I know how) we ended Slavery, but really, its just a new System. Slavery has never Ended.
This leaves out a lot of factors. Appartments do not only compete with other apartments for the ground. Other big ground consumers are office buildings. Office space has in recent years been a better investment for buildersdriving up the prices of other ground users like Apparments. There are many other factors that i have not mentioned but dont bring this big issue down to a single cause when there are many.
Is anyone else watching this and disgusted? I call bullshit, because I feel that if we had more regulation on how high rent could be charged, the demand would be the same. However, the landlords would have tennants that stay longer because they can afford the rent. $1,000 is already a ridiculous amount to pay for anything more than a fully furnished home with utilities. $500 should be the average rent price. I'm furious that there is no regulation for this system.
That isn't AT ALL what would - or does - happen rent rent prices are controlled. What actually happens is that landlords disappear, people stop building (or maintaining) rental properties and the supply of available housing dries up. In the cities where there is a significant degree of rent control, there is a shortage of housing. Economists have studied this extensively. From the Brookings Institution: "A substantial body of economic research has used theoretical arguments to highlight the potential negative efficiency consequences to keeping rents below market rates, going back to Friedman and Stigler (1946). They argued that a cap on rents would lead landlords to sell their rental properties to owner occupants so that landlords could still earn the market price for their real estate. Rent control can also lead to “mis-match” between tenants and rental units. Once a tenant has secured a rent-controlled apartment, he may not choose to move in the future and give up his rent control, even if his housing needs change (Suen 1980, Glaeser and Luttmer 2003, Sims 2011, Bulow and Klemperer 2012). This mis-allocation can lead to empty-nest households living in family-sized apartments and young families crammed into small studios, clearly an inefficient allocation. Similarly, if rental rates are below market rates, renters may choose to consume excessive quantities of housing (Olsen 1972, Gyourko and Linneman 1989). Rent control can also lead to decay of the rental housing stock; landlords may not invest in maintenance because they can’t recoup these investment by raising rents. (Downs 1988, Sims 2007)." www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/ Now... It is true that people would not move as frequently because they would be worried about losing an artificially low cost apartment, but it's not actually obvious that this is a good thing. It creates other incentives for people not to move when they actually should... For example they may turn down a better job or an opportunity to find a better school for their kids, etc. because they don't want to leave a rent controlled building. Of course, that's in the world we live in now where only some buildings in some cities are controlled. If all buildings everywhere were so controlled, frankly, the most likely result would simply be that no one would build rental properties at all. Instead, we'd see higher priced condos and single family homes for *sale* instead of rent (as we see in cities with rent control), because building rental properties would only result in the owners taking a loss. This would not create the results you think it would in any sense. We'd end up with much fewer and more expensive housing options, not more affordable housing for anyone. Lastly, not to be flippant, but your feelings aren't a very good guide of what is true or false.
I agree. I think this was made to defeat prop 10 back in November. It was a proposition in California to allow city to implement rent control, specifically, to repeal Costa-Hawkins, a 1995 law that allowed landlords to raise the rent on certain properties any amount they wished at any time. The California Apartment Association threw $83 million into a PAC to defeat this widely popular proposition. They made a bunch of propaganda like this.
@@thunderfist25 Don't look up, you may see the joke soaring over your head. Internet word of advice: don't comment on a dead thread unless you have something worth contributing, and if you're going to contribute, you should insure that you're correct in what you're about to say.
We have building codes to prevent cities from turning into Kowloon Walled City. I know that there were some special circumstance behind Kowloon, but many of the problems are indicative of no regulation. However, I do agree that many city codes are too strict particularly about minutia.
Yeah... prices of houses went 2x more up in last 10 years, while did rents went 2x ... so not really bright future for tenants ... thank good I lived in one room until my 30, saved money to buy a flat, paid it in 10 years and now buying another one while renting ther first one ... of course I would not do that without support of family... but ... thats our family we do care about our next genrations and thats why I will be able to payback this help to my future generation ...
The entire _point_ of this video was to show why government interference is preventing competition, and therefore, preventing the effect. The only way you couldn't have seen that is if you just didn't watch the video seriously.
In other words, don't let people vote if they don't manage a business or never went to war, never let ONGs influence policy, and ban political parties members from government.
@@CvnDqnrU, not really. A vote is a choice of who you think will do best managing these things. I don't think there's a person inexperienced with choosing. Honestly, political parties are the worst things about America, that's why Washington condemned them
@@Doublemonk0506 Why did they vote for Trump instead of Ron Paul? Even without political parties, people would be tricked into demagogy and populism, because as you said, they don't know.
I see alot of ppl saying that there are too many government regulations in construction. Trust me, as a guy that has been on plenty construction sites, you want those building codes, permit requirements, inspections, laws in place. Just look on this site at other countries that have so many issues with construction. We have our government regulations in place for a higher quality of living. And I rather have a peace of mind when living in a new house or building.
@@monke204ah just the ones with the most investments. They spent a record amount in california to defeat rent control. No one has ever spent more on a prop campaign than the CAA (California Apartment Association, which is just a bunch of landlords)
They forgot something in this video, no land to build on. My city is located in a valley that is already full. The result is that average income is 40k per year while average home price is 375k, 560k for new construction. Who buys the properties? Rich retirees from out of town who rent at high prices. In a town of 60k peoole, average rent for a 2bd apartment is $1500, $2000 if its a house. The whole town is run by slum lords.
Alot of your points for these videos seem to follow the same system. high demand = high cost = conpetition = lower pricesbut that dosent really work if competers work togther to ensure prices stay high which we do see today with big bussiness. In theory this is a great idea but whats to stop landloards talking to each other and deciding that they will never drop rent bellow 2k?
I'm guessing the idea that because landlords are individuals and most of the time not company's that getting all of them to agree on any deal would be exceedingly difficult when a new one shows up lower than all the rest of them
That only happens if there’s a oligopoly, so if there 5 landlords.... then yes in theory they can do plot to keep prices high....but if there’s 100 then it’s harder for them to assemble
@@talesfromthecreeps4688 not really since in my experience (and im the uk not america so i could be wrong here) but most landlords work through a letting or tenancy agency and so all prices become fixed right now where i am all student house is around £1500 a month for a standard 4 bedroom house. the capitalist idea seems to fall apart when put into practise due to people trying to control the markets.
Thomaslawlet not all landlords work with tenancy agency....I haven’t heard of that actual. I use to work for a lawyer who had me managing his properties here in NY and a huge House in Maryland. His rent was based around the quarterly taxes and his mortgage. Which actually was reasonably priced. There’s definitely things that can bring property prices higher which obviously make rent higher or high demands, meaning that you could raise prices for the higher bidder. The fixed rent idea is exactly what this video is talking against
@@talesfromthecreeps4688 i fully understand that, but my point is that in order to maintain high prices and drive out competition all landlords have to do is work together or go through an agency which maintains high prices which in my experience always ends up happening. i don't disagree with the point of the video just that it is idealistic and these issues ruin it. im also living in the uk so some of the things i say may not apply fully.
Housing isn't in low supply because it isn't being provided by capitalists who would love to provide it if only the mean ol' government would let them evict poor families to charge higher rent. It's in low supply because other greedy people buy empty lots as investments and choose to do nothing with those empty lots because doing nothing with empty prime real estate makes that real estate rapidly increase in prices. Real estate companies know this. They will intentionally keep half of their holdings off the market to artificially raise the price of the other half.
I don't think you should be able to claim ownership over something just because you placed a fence around it... you'd own the fence, not the land inside. Unless you distinguishably transform something from it's natural state, then you should be the owner until you die, or until you sell/gift it. I would bet many of your gripes with capitalism are in fact issues with state coercion and authoritarianism.
1:30 "so the people who get rent capped places will be happy with their low cost places but those who dont will still be forced to deal with high costs" but if the government has set a rent cap on an area all places will be like that within that area. So no? There will just be finite space forcing people to spread out or look for room sharing possibilities. Which is what they'd do anyways just rent isn't suddenly crazy when theres a sudden population move to an area like what's happening in Oregon.
jesse eastman There's so much you can share from a small level apartement.Unless the amount of places increased the price will stay the same,especially in big cities where demand is high.
Dear Seamus, do me a favor and check out the Vancouver rental prices. The reason rent is so expensive is due to foreign investors buying up property en masse. Hell a lot of the houses sit empty, it's only now they are putting laws in place to charge home owners extra if the home isn't being inhabitated.
The main reason housing is usually so expensive is the endless regulations including zoning ordinances, building codes, etc. Most areas of the United States and Europe have kilotons of regulations and beaurocracy, each dwelling is required to be at least a certain size, there's restrictions on how tall a building can be and how many floors it can have, how many units are allowed per lot in a given zoning district, how the building must look\ what architectural styles are allowed, people usually being strictly prohibited from running home based businesses to more easily afford the rent, people not being allowed to grow food in the city limits, mandatory maximum occupancy of only two people per bedroom, etc. In most areas of the US and Europe, alternative housing structures are prohibited including tiny houses, yurts, tents ( even very nice ones ), trailers, earth sheltered homes, motorhomes\RVs, and houses built of certain materials or certain architectural styles. Also, you are required to get government permission to build on land you own. Bigger cities usually have the tightest of regulations and for some reason, city dwellers often advocate bigger government.
One thing that confused me, if the government mandates a price cap, then how could that make prices go up for other people? I could understand if the inevitable result was people running out of places to rent, but the prices going up doesn't really make sense, since it's illegal.
When rent prices are capped but the cost to build is still as expensive you won't be able to turn a profit on building a house. That in turn leads to less supply. And since it is made illegal to charge more even though there is barely any supply, you will have people stop buying real estate in that city and moving somewhere else. So basically they would just kill the entire housing market.
Ok since everyone under you explained it like they were a monkey on a keyboard I will explain. NOT ALL places in a rent controlled area are rent controlled. So lets say you place 10% of the market under rent control. Well what will happen? There is less interest in making new units since they will then risk becoming rent controlled (which is often a fair bit below market rate even before rent control). So now there are fewer new units but demand is still the same for new units. What happens when demand outpaces supply? Well that is simple prices go UP AND UP. Which sadly often spirals as it pushes fools to increase the rent control. Which then reduces supply which increases prices. Which then pushes more rent control. And so on and so forth. Eventually you have lots of demand but effectively no supply. In the end rent control is great for those who get in early. But for those outside it? Yeah they are screwed as the demand doesn't go away. Instead it pushes up into the not rent controlled higher priced markets. Which means the more expensive apartments are now even more expensive as there is more demand for them. Which then tends to even further spiral. Now they increase the price of apartments that will be rent controlled. So now its not just the lower end but the middle which goes right back into the spiral. And onward the cycle continues. TLDR it reduces supply without reducing demand.
dude, we are all living in the world so how is their not enough land for us in the world? Also, of course, the city owns the land but you should be able to buy land and build your house on it with minimal regulations. Also if there isn't enough land in the city you can expand the city limits or build up. If more people want to live in the city that there is space then not everybody who wants to live in the city will be able to only those who can afford to buy the land or rent it
allright find me a barren piece of land in Manhattan. and expanding the city limits is useless when the city borders are more than 50km away from the center. Building up isnt that easy either. For the most part the buildings would need to be teared down for a new and higher one to be build. And dont forget that most owners of these buildings wouldnt be to keen with tearing them down or even selling them bc of high land value. And if not everyone can live in a city thats generally a bad thing you know...
Doesn't this ignore the fact we have limited space in desired location. Wouldn't there come a time when the free market model no longer works as there won't be a way to expand supply of houses.
To be fair i wouldnt want to live in a house which doesnt comply with the safety regulations. See china and how all the buildings are falling apart because they were made with cardboard instead of plaster or concrete.
@@giovannirosado5606 They actually do. Imagine residential houses being next to a factory, skyscraper, power plant, etc. We need land use regulations for many reasons. I work in construction and even though it can be frustrating waiting in line to pull a permit, I can understand why there are alot of safety regulations and building codes. So many ppl would literally skip on building correctly to save a lil money or build structures where they shouldn't be built.
basic safety standards are good. but if you know anything about US law is that for every 1 useful regulation we have about 10 more that get in the way. our legal code grows by tens of thousands of pages each year
Regulatory burdens are nececary to make city livable. Do you really expect contractors to regulate themselves? I used to work with few NYC contractors, and they are as predatory as they can get. Regulations is what keeps them in check; otherwise buildings would be so dense, tall and with streets so narrow you would have to pay to see the sun.
I thought the price of something depended on what people agree on it. I don't remember there being a massive demand for the piece of modern art in your other video. And the supply of the items that made up that piece of morden art are readily and cheaply available. So which is it? Do people arbitrarily apply value to something or is it determined by supply and demand? Make up yo mind.
Why not both? Gucci sells stupid clothing and people take the bait. Demand is high, availability is low therefore sales are certainly high due to the demand as well. They correlate with each other.
That is what caused the problem though. People thought that they were entitled to cheap housing, and then this happened. Housing was treated as some kind of right, and then it just got more expensive. Doubling down on that mentality would only worsen the problem further.
@@profquad There are some things that a person is entitled to. Housing is not one of them. You have the right to be born and given the chance to survive. You do not have the right to survive. Your only real rights are the ones that involve you working to expand your capabilites. Housing does not fall under that context. You are not born with housing, you have to earn it by building it and/or by trading someone for it. People throw the word "right" around far too much. It's lost all meaning. That is, unless you're joking. In which case, sorry.
@@whatisupmyfellowamericans8808 I heard you use the word "right" in terms of working to expand your capapbilites. I have heard of the right to housing in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Ever read it? It doesn't have the made up right you mentioned, which, if I had to guess, I'd say is some libertarian jargon to basically mean "property" and/or "money". Or you're joking.
@@profquad So, you accept your definition of "rights" from a document that never actually defines what "rights" means and is from one of the single most biased and single least effective bodies on the planet? Forgive me for raining on that parade. This "Declaration" is just one, among many thousands, of legal documents that throws the word "right" around without ever bothering to clarify what it means by "right." Like social services, such as universal healthcare, which are one of this document's so-called "rights." That alone shows why the document is untrustworthy, and that is just one article. What I'm getting at here is that the UN is a terrible place to be getting your universal mandates from. And at that, the "made up" rights I made mention of are the rights to life, liberty, and property, which are all part of self-ownership. They're even mentioned in the document that _you_ accept and that _I_ oppose. Articles 3, 4, and 17 specifically, because they are arbitrarily spread out for some reason. So I'll ask you your own question, did _you_ read it? Say what you will about the libertarian perspective, but at least it's logically consistent from first principles, as opposed to being rooted in a human organization, made with all of the illogical flaws that people bring. One is far, far more consistent than the other.
They can make plenty of profit without price gouging, even with rent control there's plenty of incentive for companies to build in busy areas with high demand.
Opportunity cost is a real thing. Example: Why spend $100k for a measly $10k in profit, when there are other industries where you get $50k in profit? You also fail to address what gives some random politicians authority over someones else's property.
Ummm, idk I used to live in a small town and the majority of the buildings in the inner city were owned by a tiny group of rich people from the capital who drove up the prices
Aren't a lot of those regulations important? We can't use asbestos, or lead-based paint in housing because of their negative health effects. I'm convinced they shouldn't be regulating the price of housing, but removing regulations for safety and health seems silly
My only concern is on the other side of the wall is letting big business take over all of the housing, and not putting in regulations to prevent monopolization and abuse of the consumers. Obviously the guy charging 10k rent for a lot that he got for free from his daddy is going to be rolling in the dough, and since he's the only one making that dough, he's also the only one who can afford the expensive price tags of the other lots. There's no decrease in prices from this. He can just deny anyone who can't meet the price tag and leave the rooms empty! This happens in big cities too! That's why big buildings seem to sit abandoned, it's because no one can afford the extreme rent price and the person who owns it refuses to budge on their price. The scenario you set up can also work against your own argument as the people forced to pay these ridiculous prices don't do so because they want to, but because in order to have their 'dream job' they have to, and it essentially makes them poverty stricken workers. o n o I think regulations are required to prevent abuse and monopolies. Monopolies do not equal better business. It makes only 1 guy richer and everyone else around him poorer. It's called being a "slumlord"(it's a real thing, look it up), and I think it should have the horrible name, because abuse of the working class is sickening. Not to mention this will in turn just raise the minimum wage in order to afford these ridiculous prices and thus drive the value of the dollar even lower than it already is. (To put in perspective the hostage situation this creates.) The businesses need workers, the workers need a house, and the business needs consumers. If no one can work because the rent is too high, this forces the business owner to pay more to their workers, but have less workers. This drives supply down for consumers as there isn't enough workers to make the supply of goods they may want, so those consumers go elsewhere. The only guy profiting in this town is the greedy slumlord, while the local businesses and workers bleed income until they either go out of business or leave. Effectively killing a town or leaving the people living there poverty stricken. Supply and demand is great, but holding the supply hostage, in my opinion is cruel, and by U.S. law illegal.
Love the videos! It helps to get a quick refresher on something i learned a long time ago and just forgot about it. The unfortunate part is that there is no magic answer for rent. Somebody is going to get screwed when it comes to housing in major metropolitan areas. I live in an area that wasn't considered a major metro area roughly 10 years ago. Now, we have such a high influx of out of state people coming here to escape the cost of living in places like California, Washington, etc. There is a consequence to that though, the cost of living here has now gone up to the point where locals can no longer afford to live here. Kinda feels like they brought their problems with them.
I think I know why rant control is high in big cities, when people are complaning about the cost of living, many people will turn to goverment to fix the problem, even thou its goverment that made things cost so high, so people will call to emotion appeal first and reason second. Just a thought.
needs an update, with the amount of new housing being built that is being left empty and dont forget all the houses and apartments, ect left vacant and rotting. Yes its been talked about but again NY city is a wasteland.
This video alone is the best reason why you shouldn’t give your government too much power and why you should keep your government out of economics...........for the most part.
Many cities will actively look for builders to intentionally build luxury apartments in cities where industry has been removed in order to gain higher tax revenue. Section 8 laws only support those who provide food or sanitary services for those rich tennats or subleasIng property managers. Section 8 is a tool that allows builders to make money and cities to promote growth in a market that no one in the city asked for. It is the opposite of supply and demand.
In some cities like new york, the demand is in essence unlimited. In addition, space is limited and the margins are better for luxury appartments, which most people cant afford. Worse yet, these luxury apartments are often purchased or even rented by out of town billionaires who dont live there full time. As a result local business can struggle since there are neighborhoods with fancy owned apartments but not enough people.
There aren't enough billionaires in the world to make this a common problem. The billionaires of NYC live in a handful of penthouses along Central Park or in the Financial Distric... They aren't buying up whole blocks of Williamsburg as summer homes they never actually live in. Yes, Manhattan is dense, and that eventually pushes prices up. But there are a lot of ways around that - including moving outward into the borroughs, and building new buildings. What's more, those new fancy building may not be affordable for a lot of people (I lived in NYC and mamy wouldn't have been for me), but they take some competitive pressure off of the other buildings those wealthier people would have lived in had they not been built. That keeps prices down, even if they are still rising in general due to higher demand. The other thing you should keep in mind is that prices are signals that convey information and create incentives for people to change their behavior. As a result, people who might be thinking about moving to NYC may decide to move elsewhere. I no longer live in NYC, and I would really never consider moving back because of the cost vs. the standard of living you actually get for the money. It just isn't worth it to me. There's no magic here.
I am not claiming its magic. The billionaire problem is more of one in Tel Aviv than NYC, though it certainly contributes in NYC. There is and remains a massive demand to live in NYC and that does push prices up fast enough that especially low income houses disappear and are not built fast enough. Part of that is that low income housing isnt economical, since again space is very finite. Even in the outer boroughs. Williamsberg and much of queens is just as expensive as much of Manhattan these days. The Bronx is all thats really left, and even that is gentrifying. Sure we can say that not EVERYONE in the world wants to live in NYC, but more than enough do that the demand is for all intents and purposes endless. Will it meet an equilibrium? Maybe. Maybe not. But to say that the demand is technically finite does nothing really to keep prices down. In a closed system, your argument is very valid. I am not pretending that price controls are the answer. I am saying that its more complicated than the closed system example you gave. Largely because the demand is essentially limitless. There is no doubt that rent control disincentives construction of new units, and maintenance of old ones. Its a price control, which are almost universally bad. But unfettered competition I am not sure is a wise answer either. PS If I am talking with Seamus then I am a huge fan of yours and its my pleasure to discuss this with you!
No, like not allowing anyone to build a building taller than 3 floors, making it impossible to profit off of the development because it won’t offset the cost of purchasing the land. There are tons of examples of prohibitive regulations that have nothing to do with health or safety.
I should've tagged PaleBear too. The point I thought the two of you were making was that the majority of housing regulations were needlessly constructed for no reason - that if regulations didn't have a connection with health or safety, they were pointless. I think the opposite - that the vast majority of those regulations came about by some need and should be looked at carefully before we push for their removal. Using PaleBear's example about building heights, those restrictions are often in place to match what emergency services can protect (which isn't as high for more rural places), and/or to preserve the aesthetic of communities - which isn't a survival issue but it's still important, to a degree - and in many densely populated areas there are actually minimum building heights. These regulations aren't born out of a vaccum, or created by assholes who only think about money
That's why so many people are fleeing NYC for eastern PA and North/Central Jersey. Now rent and real estate prices are shooting up in these surrounding areas, pushing out the people already living here because our suburban/rural jobs don't bring in the cash the inner city jobs do. Everyone has to either apartment hop to find a cheap enough place to stay or stay in the house they've been owning since before the city people came in.
Also the intrest rates and cost of the house in general can affect the overall cost of rent. For example in my town the cheapest houses available for sale are $250,000. The buy that for a rental property you need about 25% down, so about $63,000. From there with interest at 8% on a 30 year fixed you end up with a mortgage of $1,320, Meaning that the owner needs to charge at least $2,000 to be able to make a $100-200 monthly profit while putting the rest away for repairs and updates, taxes, etc.
What they do is take a crappy little apartment, throw in a couple nice things, like counters or appliances and up the rents hundreds, some a thousand dollars more. It's an excuse for greed, they'd still definitely make their money. Sounds like a vid put out by the contractors that do this
We used to rent out the old family house's bottom floor until the rent laws put a cap (right around what we would rent to the ideal renter, that become impossible to find once rent laws are put in place) and then put more laws in that would make it extremely difficult, costly, and time consuming 3 months and sometimes up to 6 months for what is technically a lodger. Now, a small bedroom that we used to rent for a few hundred dollars that essentially came with its own living room, large storage, and bathroom, never gets rented out because all the renters around here that are floating around cost us money to rent to them, while the few perfect renters are hapily locked down with low rent and will rarely ever be available as other landlords know they are hard to come by now because of the laws. It's a little different than rent control but the result is similar. It also pushes real estate prices down while making number of available units less, even if the amount that exists is technically increasing. Heck, a lot of people won't even rent to their family members around here now. I'm in an area with a lot of single-family homes, but not enough for everyone and with somewhat new rent control and renter's protection laws. It is at least amusing how these laws make is harder for those people renting which is the opposite of what most of them think these laws do, or what the intent behind them usually is.
I own 2 house and rent one of them out. I also pay the mortgage’s on them. The one I live in is my primary residence and isn’t taxed like my rental to the tune of 300/month. To just cover the bills on the rental I need 900 to break even. All in all its risky business and easy to loss when you got bad tenants.
"Regulations BAD" is a blatant oversimplification of the problem. Yes, certain regulations are dogshit, but others are there for mostly safety reasons. Buildings of certain sizes must have double stairwells, outside fire escapes and a working elevator system. Other things like automatic fire suppression, earthquake stability and wind resistance/resistance to shearing are other considerations, though usually local. An example of a shitty regulation is non-flexible zoning laws. For example here in Cleveland, there are multiple main street plots of land that are zoned commercial with no flexibility to change. This is especially true in the flats where most of the land area is a Scooby Doo ghost-town and is all marks as commercial only; despite the area being deader than John Candy economically. Throw in the fact that "Demolish and bury" was standard city practice for decades and you have a renting crisis, despite the fact that Cleveland is shit and no sane person would live here if given the choice.
So, wait. I might be confused. I get how rent control can discourage businesses from making more places to live, which makes an uncompetitive market with high prices. But, what I don't get is, if there's rent control, why are the places that are for rent already allowed to be so expensive? Wouldn't that be illegal?
Usually rent control is applied to a set fraction of apartments in the complex. Those apartments become a lottery and the landlord raises the rent on the other ones to compensate. If all apartments were rent controlled then there would be no new apartments and the landlords would allow the existing ones to rot.
I see a common theme in your videos. They all come from an idealistic outlook on the world. Sure in theory if there was no rent control the prices would go down, but in reality what happens is the prices skyrocket, building owners make agreements with other building owners not to undercut each other, and any that refuse to play along are choked out of the business.
Historically cartels/monopolies have never existed without some form of coercion. It's incredibly easy for an entrepreneur to undercut existing market leaders if they're price fixing. Only in cases where the monopoly was providing tangible benefit such as low prices, as was the case with Standard Oil, can it survive. When Standard Oil was broken up it was still charging low prices, so it was never about protecting the consumer, rather it was about protecting business owners that wanted to compete but couldn't because Standard Oil was just that much better.
Hold on. Are the regulations we're talking about here truly useless? Would it really be of no consequence to remove them in order to bring renting prices down? Because whenever I hear people talking about removing regulations, I can't help but see it as a way to dangerously cut corners in the name of saving a few bucks. For example, Trump's gutting of the EPA. Yeah those regulations get in the way of profit but that shouldn't mean we should allow them to fuck over the natural world.
There are unfortunately many shitty regulations that exist for basically no reason, or just no good one. Don't know about cities in particular, but in the suburbs, you are required by law to have a large lawn, this is completely unnecessary for pretty obvious reasons. There are more but that's the one that's stuck with me the most, so it's the only one off the top of my head.😅 Go have read of the regulations for yourself, it would basically prove which side is right or wrong based on your current values.
@@rocketblaster8701 Some regulations also only exist for specific reasons, but are applied universally Take for example, in the suburbs, there are regulations that fences must be at least X feet away from the road, this exists because on street corners, a fence too close to the road blocks the view of cross traffic, so it's a perfectly valid regulation for safety purposes But most houses are not on street corners, so logically those houses should be exempt as there is no public benefit, but in most cities they aren't
This sounds great until you apply actual logic. Considering that rent control does not apply to all housing but only to a small percentage of it and that demand has not gone down you would think that supply would have increased by now. Especially since even in rent controlled buildings there is profit to be made. So despite the belief that supply in cities can magically increase to meet any demand seemingly in contradiction to the observable reality that there is a finite amount of real estate. Rent has not gone down. Keep in mind that no builder is required to make all of any building into rent controlled housing but only a very small percentage. The majority of housing in any city is not in fact rent controlled.
No sane business volunteers to be "rent controlled" it is *forced* upon you Skittles McStabbypants. And there is *NO PROFIT* left from "rent controlled" apartments.
Skittles in big cities, there are thousands of regulations. Its as simple as that. If potential profit is as abundant as you say, (and it should be becuase the demand for living spaces in big cities is literally insane) then greedy businessmen (and nongreedy ones) should be flocking to big cities and making tons of apartament complexes to try to reap as much profit as possible. The problem is that with such a high demand its still not profitable. Regulations literally increase the cost of apartments directly. Every single one does. Now thats not to say that they should just remove all of the regulations; however, the less regulations you have the higher the profit margin for businessmen and entrepreneurs. The risk of taking out a one hundred million dollar loan for an apartament has to have a large enough reward (potential profit) or its not ever going to happen- That is why rent is so high and that is why nobody is making more housing.
David Grover there’s no profit in rent controlled apartments? So landlords in New York City are just doing it for fun? Listen, I work for a property management company in California, we have some of the country’s stricter rental laws and rent control. I guarantee you that landlords, even the small ones are making very good money. But yeah, rent control is a terrible policy at the end of the day.
I think its private land owners that rent out houses at high prices that causes the money to raise from employment and not just that raises inflation because they do not produce any more houses and not just that it creates a scarcity in houses and that creates more inflation as the population grows. that's my thought.
Greed is constant and a terrible explanation for virtually any phenomenon in economics. Are people less greedy in Lincoln, NE than Kansas City, where rents are 5% higher? Are landlords more greedy in Manhattan than Brooklyn, where rents are 31% lower?
@@007kingifrit It isn't as much as a "calculation" (which is a way you can excuse greed, I guess) as it is somebody looking at the market and asking themselves "what can I get away with?" That is greed. They could be asking "What does our community need?" Which isn't greed. That is the decision based on need instead of want. But that doesn't happen 99% of the time. Imagine a property owner asking a buyer what they think would be a fair price would be, and accepting it. Normally, I wouldn't care. But this is housing, an essential human need. And people are forced to other places because of this wild behavior. And greed is ONE feature of human nature, but it is a CHOICE. And until we have system that punishes greed, people will continue to believe it is inevitable and join in.
Wait, im confused...if there are government controls that cap what rent can be, how does that drive rent above the cap? I get that profit for builders becomes an issue, so building them can become less common. But wouldnt a rent cap be universal to governed area? And couldnt that cap be set above cost, or at a level where rent doesnt take too long to surpass cost?
It's not I don't believe in private property but I don't think some asshole in California deserves to set the rate at which you can live in a building. I think city's need more control over their regions rather than hoping higher ups will help. Something to do rather than constant construction for 7 years to fix potholes
@@AngelSaintCloud "I don't think some asshole deserves to set the price at which he sells you pizza." "I don't think some asshole deserves to set the rate at which he let's you use his car." "I don't think some asshole deserves to set the price at which he sells you his kidney." I can keep going. If you don't see the ridiculousness of your authoritarian perspective yet, then I don't know what else to say. You're gonna have to explain why you think you are entitled to the product of another man's labor.
So, what you are saying is that the rights of those who want to rent property (their right to make money mostly) is MORE IMPORTANT than the right of myself or my parents to have an AFFORDABLE, INEXPENSIVE yet NICE place to live?
Neither of those things are accurate. Property rights do mean that the owner is free to decide the terms under which they would agree to rent their homes or apartments - just as they mean you have a right to decide how much you require before you're willing to part with your phone, laptop, car, or for which rates you are willing to accept a job. But nobody exists in a vacuum and (in free economies) prices are always a negotiation between buyers and sellers, both of whom usually have competition. An owner who charges a price so high that no one wants to rent their home doesn't make any money at all. They will be out bid by other owners who are willing to rent for just a bit less. Similarly, buyers who are too cheap will find nothing to purchase because they're not willing to give up enough for sellers to part with whatever they are selling. The key in both cases is competition - which is the one thing rent control doesn't allow.
And by the way, the more free the market for housing is (lower taxes, fewer licensing barriers, fewer zoning restrictions, less red tape, etc.), the more people are willing to build homes. The more homes there are, relative to demand, the cheaper they become because owners have to attract tenants. Rent control reduces supply, creating higher prices overall - even though a tiny minority benefit.
@@FEEonline There's no negotiation in rent, where the heck do you live? The point is, they can always find someone to rent, and if you can't afford it, tough. There is nothing in the free market system that provides housing to any but the wealthy. Being wealthy isn't a condition of citizenship, or the internationally recognized right to housing.
@@profquad the reason there is lower levels of competition is precisely because of the kinds of regulations we're talking about in this video. The market in housing - particularly in places like California - is very much *not* free. And that's the issue. Negotiation in price usually comes in the form of consumers' revealed preferences. Someone offers something to you for X price and you say no. The more competition there is in any market, the more opportunities to say yes or no there are. Housing is heavily restricted. So there are fewer opportunities to choose among alternatives, and this of course gives an advantage to the suppliers. And yes, by the way, the free market *does* provide all kinds of incentives to supply goods and services, including housing, to poorer people. In fact, it is really the only system that does this effectively. Heavily regulated economies certainly don't do this. The regulations themselves raise the cost of producing stuff such that prices have to be raised, or the business fails and the thing they would have made no longer exists at all (which also results in higher prices). More over, regulations are frequently created explicitly with the intent of reducing competition in the market. Any in-depth study of regulatory history and policy will reveal how incredibly common this is. This typically benefits well connected corporations and wealthy individuals at the expense of consumers and smaller businesses. The more free the market is, the more businesses are able to easily form, resulting in more competition among suppliers, which reduces prices and brings goods & services into a range that is actually affordable. If this didn't happen, Walmart and Costco would not exist. Housing isn't that competitive in a lot of places, unfortunately. And most of the reason why is bad policy.
I forget which city this happened in, but a disabled friend of mine was telling me a story
This city had wheelchair accessible cabs, but the cost of converting a cab, combined with the extra time and effort needed to help a wheelchair bound person in and out, resulted in a higher price, about 1.5x the normal cab faire, it sucks but that's just how business works
A group of disabled rights activists didn't like this, so that sued the company, and the courts ruled that they couldn't charge more than 1.25x the normal price
So now the cab company can't make a profit on them, so they stopped offering wheelchair accessible cabs, save for a few
So now wheelchair bound people can't get cabs in this city, all because they didn't want to pay for them
People can't bother spending a hour a day to study on economics
@@hardysingh5003 I've never understood the expression. Do people buy or bake cakes for decoration with no intention of eating it?
@@petelee2477 its because they want to be able to have the cake and look at it, as its generally a beautiful thing, but they want to eat it because its generally a delicious thing, but the eating of the cake deprives you of the having of the cake.
Course you can just take a picture of the cake these days.
@@petelee2477 some cakes are very decorative, ie wedding cakes. Most of us prefer a basic lump of chocolate flour.
> all because they didn't want to pay for them
This ignores that a lot of disabled people *can't* afford as much. Being disabled is already often expensive if you need to afford mobility aids, and the problem is further exacerbated by rather ridiculous restrictions on how much money disabled people can earn before they lose disability benefits.
I grew up in san diego and was homeless after high school because i couldnt afford rent on even a studio even with a full time job. This was over 15 years ago, i imagine its even worse now. Now i own a 3 bedroom home on 5 acres out in tn, and my mortgage is less than $800 a month. I could afford my home on minimum wage if i had to. Because my house was so affordable, i should be able to have it completely paid off within the next 5 years. I went from homeless to being able to have a house owned free and clear in under 10 years, just because i moved. Not only am i living more comfortably than i ever could in southern California, but since moving to the country, my health has improved greatly and i no longer suffer from anxiety and depression. Ill never live in a large city again and ill never understand why anyone would want to.
It's FAR worse now. I live in SD now and I pay $1850 for a two-bedroom that is below average inside and nice outside. If I had to set a price I'd say $650 MAX. Now I do believe in rent control for this very reason. This channel is billionaire-funded right-wing libertarian trash. I'm a civil libertarian but not an economic one. I'm an economic Socialist.
You are entirely correct though, for those who are able, moving to a rural area could be a wonderful solution- but it's not THE solution. But I am super happy for you that you found an affordable place to live- everybody should be able to, in the city or not.
@@Krill_all_health_insuranceCEOs lol you think California is bad, try an actual socialist country like Venezuela or a “social capitalist” country like Brazil where I’m from
@@_jp_0966 I don't know all that much about Brazil other than there are sharp class divisions and a lot of corruption. I was there once in 2003, only for a few days. You didn't vote for bolsonaro did you??
@@Krill_all_health_insuranceCEOs that's just the natural state of socialist policies dawg.
@@Interrobang212 you mean...
*Capitalist ;|
Zoning is way more influential in restricting building and driving up prices. Local property owners lobby city officials to shut down any new building in their neighborhoods, especially apartments. This is to protect their own property values.
They are everywhere the zoners, we should all find a remote jobs and work in Asia...
The problem we have in Utah. Also our neighbors. In nevad is the federal government owns most our land and won't let us have it or use it.
Local property owners typically don't do this, large multi-complex corporations do. Most local owners own maybe a building, maybe two, and are likely to live in it themselves, which is ideal for the renter(most the time). For similar reasons renter's laws and rent control laws hurt most renters they also hurt apartment owners that don't benefit from economies of scale, which requires a lot of units, far more than the majority of apartment building owners own. Housing works similar to any other market, in that small businesses typically want competition and those at the tippy top want to use government to create laws to squeeze out the competition.
@@SillyOmega Thank God for public land! Maybe Nevada shouldn't be a state at all.
William S Agreed 👏
I remember reading Henry Hazlit's "Economics in 1 lesson". All economic problems can be attributed to either of 2 things:
1; Special interest groups over the whole of society.
2; Short term plans applied for long terms.
The capital-owning class is the most powerful special interest group there is.
*first you turn the frogs gay and now this government*
This joke is old. That study was from msnbc or cnn.. I forget. But it showed the frogs changed behaviors when exposed to the chemical. Infowar posted about it and news articles acted like it was him being crazy. All he did was report the scientific studies
@@mobnowjoe6802 yes the media gets a small audio clip of someone saying something, and use it to build a narrative no matter how false it actually is.
@@mobnowjoe6802 woosh
@@mobnowjoe6802 Frogs are hermaphrodites, meaning they can change their sex based on the environment. When there are not enough females and too many males, some of the males will change into female in order to preserve the population. Birth control hormones and Industrial xenoestrogens from factory runoff can force the change in hermaphrodites which is the issue Alex Jones was bringing up, albeit explained rather poorly.,
The bastarda not the 🐸 frogs
Some big cities like NYC are already close to the limit, in terms of housing density. The solution is: *build more cities* - Convert existing suburbs into vibrant places where fun things actually happen. The free market will naturally do this, if we get rid of old oppressive zoning laws.
What about going to Asia where the rent is much much lower?
Isn't the reason why they don't stop these regulations because they are popular and get votes from people since most people choose to be ignorant and act on emotion (the policy sounds nice). Also, anybody who tries to remove them gets called a racist or some other buzzword, which is bad for PR and in a democratic vote popularity is what matters not the effectiveness of policies, morals or legitimacy?
Well you give that poor, minority, female, and/or anything but a straight white cis man some cheap housing of course they are going to vote for you. Funny how the left cries about how the right only cares about rich white men and won't help anyone else yet the left will refuse to help straight white men. I wish everyone would see that each political party picks is pawns to exploit for votes.
Yeah, of course, they all exploit the way humans think in order to win votes, they have to. Being honest and speaking the truth does not win elections it's that simple and when you have the majority of people straight up refusing to inform themselves on political issues it's way too easy to exploit them with their emotions and alliances in order to get them to vote for you.
A pure democracy (the US is a constitutional republic, not a pure democracy) will always become socialist and thus destroy itself as everybody votes for free stuff and how a utopia looks in their mind ignoring sustainability. We are traveling down a dangerous road paved by good intentions, ignorance and exploitation.
I'm a huge fan of yours, Spider-Man!
Wherever it's saving the world or cats from trees I'll be there, Thanks for the support :)
Spider-Man Nah, it's all about coruption here. The fun part of being a politician is that you get a loooot of bribe to put regulation on things so some big corporations can proffit. Coruption, coruption, coruption!!!
When myself and 2 friends tried to move in together rent control is what screwed us over. Almost every place that had a price we could afford was rent controlled and we made too much to qualify. When I say almost every place I mean 98% of apartment complexes in the area and even some houses. The places that were not rent controlled we too a bit too pricey for us to pay for and still live comfortable. Basically you had 3 guys with decent jobs that needed no government assistance yet we were being punished because we made too much money.
Backass logic. We the people really need to do something about it
assassinwarrior Not criticizing, just trying to help you out. If you're saying "x and I" or "x and me" the way you can be sure which to use, try saying the sentence without the "and." For example, your comment would be "When me tried to move in..." Does that sound right? I'm sure you'd say no. Give it a try, it will help you.
That's what my English teacher and I discussed a while back.
It's what made sense to my English teacher and me.
Cheers!
And yet people still vote for the socialist DemoRats........
Well "When I and 2 friends tried to move in..." also sounds wrong so I just changed it to myself lol.
It may sound wrong, but it's not. Repetition of doing it right will help make it sound right.
I love when people decry
_"Greedy Rich People"_
When
_"Greedy Government"_
Is also a thing
*BE AWARE PEOPLE!*
Sometimes they are both to blame, in London billionaire Russian, Middle Eastern and Chinese are buying property in London to lander their filthy money driving up housing
The left has been controlling the media since the beginning
Fair
That's the story of german rent prices right now. It's being made worse by speculation that is now possible, large funds or companies keeping houses they own empty to simply wait for rising prices to sell.
Another problem the US is facing is Chinese investors buying up entire neighborhoods and raising prices. A country should never let foreign entities own land outright.
Speculation and AirBNB Affect big cities as much or more than rent control at this point.
AirBNB is a huge issue, and is often illegal. But authorities overlook it for god knows what reason.
@Nevermind314
Same with London.
Ahhh. Supply and demand. A concept learned so early in life that everyone forgets about it
This would be a stronger argument if there weren't plenty of places that don't have rent control where companies have built plenty of new apartments and still not lowered what they charge for rent.
I agree that rent control is not the option to fix things but doing nothing is not the solution either. It's hard to imagine that its really a supply and demand issue when there are loads of empty houses. Its like saying the reason diamonds are still so expensive is because supply is low but the supply is artificially kept low to drive up prices not because so many ppl want them they have to charge more to discourage waste. Builing more houses sounds good but when they are bought by rich ppl and kept off the market it defeats the purpose and drives more waste.
instead of rent control the local/state government should build super dense high rises for people who cannot afford anything else
This is one of the many reasons I don't live anywhere close to a big ol' city
Didnt help us, zoning laws are so messed up here we're zoned and taxed like we live in the middle of the city that's around an hour way, we can't add on without submitting a crap load of paperwork that likely won't be approved because reasons.
Why? Because the landlords already in, want everyone else out of their business. That is how it works it is called “old money”.
Exactly, I know a land developer who has tried so hard to develop housing for California but he continues to develop housing for Texas, because California is just unprofitable to develop in despite how high rent is. The existing landlords lobby the government and band together to sue people who enter their land to maintain the monopoly over the land, what should be an illegal monopoly. There would never be a monopoly if the government wasn't there upholding it. the NIMBYism in San Fransisco is astronomical, at this point so many people have mortgages at the existing prices that you'd cause a collapse by actually trying to solve the problem, it's a lose-lose.
They are waging a war against middle class and poor people. They think nothing will happen until they get dragged out of their homes and shot in the back of the head.
@Hannibal El destripador
Woah there Lenin slow your revolution
Keep raising the prices on rent, food, gas, etc, etc and a recession will be here before we know it. And it will be more terrifying then the 2008 recession.
Been loving this series! It's so educational while also being incredibly entertaining, keep up the good work!
Matt the Nerd It’s propaganda, read “Economics: The Users Guide” by Ha-joon Chang.
Prague Uprising How’s it propaganda? It’s literally anti government.
@@pragueuprising560 read basic economics by Thomas sowell
@@stinkygot2387 What makes you think anti-government propaganda doesn’t exist?
@@quantumfrost9467 The only people I have ever heard say Thomas Sowell is great are right wing political pundits and random people online. I have never come across an actual economist who recommends his work. Probably because he is a partisan hack more interested in making pithy remarks than in actual economics.
Thomas Sowell has written like 800 pages of material on this
Read 800 pages or watch a 2 minute clip.... Hmm tough choice... lol PS I love Thomas Sowell.
Which book/video?
Give me that TS sauce recipie. Spread that shit on everything.
Of course lets overlook the renters themselves . I have a friend who rents out five homes . EVERY time a renter moves out he has to spend money to remodel the home because they were not taken care of . This leads to him always wanting more to rent it to the next people . I am not talking about normal wear and tear , I am talking fixing holes in the walls , replacing cabinet doors (if not the whole cabinets) replacing closet doors , replacing light fixtures , ect. ect . So yeah , lets hear about greedy landlords .
Seemor...I have rented for 30 years in several apartments. I always leave my apartment in the same condition I got it. Landlords need to do a better job at figuring out good tenants from bad tenants. I can read people so easily. I now watch small claims court tv and predict who's going to lose the case at over 80% accuracy, before either party opens their mouth. A coin toss equals 50% accuracy. The camera is on each litigant as they enter court. I watch ever physical appearance detail as well as the way they walk and their facial expressions as the case is read to viewers. In under 60 seconds of each litigants responses, my adjusted guess who will win goes up to around 90%. Each case takes about an average of 15 minutes, not including commercials. There's so many good tenants out there. Do you think your friend is possibly making mistakes in choosing tenants. He only needs one good tenant, not 50.
@@jusayenso8186 That's discrimination and not legal.
Here in the UK we literally had a tower block of people burn to death, because those who installed the insulation cheaped out.
You can always argue for less regulation, but certain regulations need to be in place.
You're not wrong; I like my food (relatively) insect-free and my buildings well-constructed. That said, I've seen restrictive regulations just in my own relatively small 'ol city.
One man a few blocks from me wanted to put up a privacy fence. He mis-read the regulations, and put it 3 feet too close to the street. The city made him tear it down.
Now, the purpose of requiring privacy fences to be back from the street is so motorists can see around corners clearly. But he doesn't live on a corner... not even *close* to one. Ergo, the very purpose of the regulation has no bearing whatsoever on this particular fence.
The city has the ability to grant waivers to whosoever it chooses. It *could* have given the guy a break. But, they didn't. Now, the fact that they didn't that wouldn't bother me too much... IF that same city then hadn't turned around and granted a waiver to an incoming business to put in a privacy fence *10* feet from the road... including at a street corner.
I can only imagine how much worse things are in even bigger cities.
Grant Johnson Exactly.
Long ago I used to work for my rent, expenses and savings, now I work for my rent, expenses and my landlord's savings.
This is the story of Boston for the past 5 years and now we've past San Francisco in rent price
Rents are high, because of greed.
We have to move to a cheaper state or country, especially if retired.
I propose all retirees move to somewhere significantly cheaper to balance this alleged "supply and demand" 😂😂🤣 don't be spending all your hard earned retirement money and Social Security in these price gouging areas
just finished building a new 3,500 sqft house... high end down to the engineered quartz countertop... cost $140k including the well, septic, off grid electric & 20 acres of land. The mortgage is about 1k... city people must know something I don't... lol
Good ol' Seamus.
Kamiyouni Absolutely.
OR it could also be true that landlords make up whatever they can until somebody bites, and regulations are actually not as prevalent because politics tend to help the lobby.
You don't understand economics do you?
that explains a big city, I live in a small town in a very rural part of the country, at least 100 miles from any large city and the rent is high here also. There are several houses and apartments that are empty yet they still ask a high price for rent. So demand isn't that high here, yet they ask anywhere from 700 to a 1000 a month for a two bedroom place. Thankfully I bought my place long ago, but younger people who are trying to stay here can't afford there own place unless they have roommates. I know this happens in a high population area, but, shouldn't be happening in the area I live in. I think most of it is just people being greedy
It is, this video is propaganda to prevent rent control laws from passing.
Because your landlords get to choose what to set their rent at. If they can keep the prices high until someone bites, they won't want to lower.
This sounds like someone trying to sell you something explaining why you want the extra fees. The problem is just not this simple. I live in an area with absolutely no rent control and all of the housing around here is way over priced and keeps going up by more than 100 dollars each year for even the cheapest apartments. And there doesn't seem to be any supply and demand issues out here. But one thing I can definitely say is it seems like all of the rental housing is owned by just a few companies. Even the rent houses out here are rented through just a few different managing companies.
No. It's someone explaining basic economics, which has long been supported by empirical data, but which a lot of people don't want to hear because it seems easier to just impose price controls with no regard to long term consequences.
@@FEEonline Ok cool. Why is my rent still going up if there is no rent control in my area? Why are the cheapest apartments in my area still basically unaffordable to anyone making less than 50k a year? Is it maybe because rent control is not the only factor here? That was simply my point. It's not just dumb laws that are making prices sky rocket. I suspect there is a fair amount of greed there and an oligopoly on the market. To call the real reason your rent is so high is "because of rent control" is narrow minded and seems to have the intent to sow distrust in any legislation that is trying to help the consumer. And yeah I would agree that often the government makes the whole situation worse. But I do know virtually all "entrepreneurs" do not have their consumers best interest in mind. No I would say money comes first and the interest of the consumer is only acknowledged to the benefit of the entrepreneur.
@@baine3388 no one ever said rent control was the only factor. Your rent is going up because, at a fundamental level, there is more demand than supply of housing. I don't know where you live, but typically, this is very often a result of policies that make it difficult and expensive to build new homes and apartments.
Restrictive zoning, complicated and slow permitting processes, mandates that require the use of more expensive construction materials, and in our current moment a year and a half of governments shutting down productive businesses and international trade that's created massive problems with supply chains and wrecked the ability of people to get goods and raw materials affordably.
To give you a better sense of why your specific area is facing high costs, I'd need to take a deeper dive into the issues facing your area specifically.
What I *can* say with certainty is that if your area had rent control, it would be worse.
Wherever those rules exist, a tiny percentage of people benefit (literally having to win lotteries in some cases to get into the rent controlled buildings) and meanwhile those buildings don't get renovated or improved, people don't move out of them when they actually probably should, and few developers will build new buildings risking being forced into taking a significant loss on rent.
Rent control policies only make the supply and demand gap wider.
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/15/comeback-rent-control-just-time-make-housing-shortages-worse/
fee.org/articles/the-case-against-rent-control/
www.cato.org/commentary/rent-control-old-bad-idea-wont-go-away
catalyst.independent.org/2019/09/18/rent-control-a-bad-idea-has-spread-again/
@@baine3388 on a separate note, you should meet more successful entrepreneurs. I've met a ton, and almost every one of them cares deeply about improving the lives of their customers, which is a major part of why they're successful.
@@baine3388 They didn't say that the reason rent was so high was "because of rent control."
They said that rent is so high because the supply is insufficient to meet the demand. They then pointed out that rent control is *one* of the factors that can artificially reduce the supply while demand stays the same or even increases.
Even in places where there is no rent control, various local regulations may keep suppliers from producing housing, whether that housing is single-family or multi-family in nature, because they don't believe they'll be able to get sufficient return on their investment.
Urban Growth Boundaries also play into this as it makes real estate scarce and thereby drives up demand. I think another factor, specifically with high rent prices for rental houses, is the, "Get rich quick," real estate investor that buys houses using mortgages, then charges rent that is higher than the mortgage payment. But the only way that works is if rent prices are artificially driven up by artificially created scarcity.
Im actually from a city with sky high rent *and* a rapidly expanding housing supply with both phenomena lasting over a decade.
I had initially expected that the four simultanously completed new apartment towers visible from my door would have to lower their unprecedented asking prices with hundreds of new units coming on line at once in one corner of one neighborhood.
Not a single one did. Instead they managed to get by just fine only filling a majority of their units at the high price and deciding to sit on the empty units to squeeze supply until demand reached their new threshold, for years on end.
Any of them could have lowered their prices by even 10% and filled all their units in an instant, making more money overall than the other three, but they and most of the high density housing owners throughout the city have determined that lower profit in the short term is survivable and preferable to allowing any market correction to take effect. So they've implemented an artificial scarcity on their commodity.
Meanwhile single family homes with yards, usually owned by individuals or smaller scale companies can't use the same tactic so effectively and have started reach similar prices to one bedroom apartments even though so relatively few units exist compared to high density.
Your rented out mother in law or even 2nd home isnt the issue, and you're not the Greedy Landlords being spoken of.
Large property management groups are.
Another angle of it is... why do you want to live in "big ol' city"? A lot of them have this "draw" for people who want to live there for... well... no good reason. They _only_ have a "dream" or "feeling" and just make it harder for folks who *need* to live there because they work there, or were born there and can't afford to move away. XP I'm not saying to prohibit people from moving to these places, it is just as someone who doesn't like cities with more than 100,000 population, it all confuses me. XD
Well, there is a certain draw to the idea of living in the city. I'd love to live in a big city. Wake up, not have to drive and be able to walk anywhere I want to go. I could work 4 blocks away from where I live an my commute could be all of ten healthy minutes of a walk. Have tons of time left to go do things I like and again walk there. Lots of people so it would be easy to make friends, lots of niche shops, and something would always be going on.
Or at least that's what alot of us imagine it as. And for some people that is just kinda idealistic. But, of course theres real problems and cost of living and all that. But you can't blame people for being attracted to what they feel would be idealistic.
Remember, I said "big ol' city" city. If I was *not* quoting the video, I goofed!
We aren't just talking about _any_ city, but places like New York City. Living within walking distance of where you work is about living within walking distance of where you work; small towns can do that same thing... and if your machinery is near enough your house and you don't count driving said machinery to the fields, it is true of farming as well. ;)
As for walking everywhere... again, that seems more applicable to small town living than "big ol' city" life. You'll have fewer options in the small town, but you aren't *really* walking everywhere in a big ol' city. Places like NYC are just too *big* for that. A small city? Sure. Which probably has lower rent unless there's another factor to consider. :)
Personally don't see the appeal in living in an area that is over populated, more people means more crime.
@Jonathan Williams jobs are everywhere, transportation is only a problem if you can't manage money properly.
@@KamisamanoOtaku actually small towns and medium sized cities have massive issues with that. Because the pand is so cheap, it's really easy to spread thing out. And developers love this, they call it fill in. So what you end up with is alot of super spread out stuff. When I lived in a small town, everything was at least a half hour drive. Groceries, school, you name it. You needed milk, your afternoon was gone.
And again I'm not saying that's the reality of city life, I'm just saying that's the ideal vision that brings some people to live in the city.
Rent = Slavery. Equity = Freedom.
We need more houses that people can afford to qualify to own. If you don't own it, somebody else does. He who has the Gold, makes the Rules. Over time, as we are living in it, there are less home owners now then ever. Somehow (I know how) we ended Slavery, but really, its just a new System. Slavery has never Ended.
This leaves out a lot of factors. Appartments do not only compete with other apartments for the ground.
Other big ground consumers are office buildings. Office space has in recent years been a better investment for buildersdriving up the prices of other ground users like Apparments.
There are many other factors that i have not mentioned but dont bring this big issue down to a single cause when there are many.
it also doesn't factor in the cost of mortgages and how many buildings are literal edifices for laundering money which artificially increase prices
Still easing zoning laws would allow prices to drop
@@gloobark How do they do that?
Is anyone else watching this and disgusted? I call bullshit, because I feel that if we had more regulation on how high rent could be charged, the demand would be the same. However, the landlords would have tennants that stay longer because they can afford the rent. $1,000 is already a ridiculous amount to pay for anything more than a fully furnished home with utilities. $500 should be the average rent price. I'm furious that there is no regulation for this system.
That isn't AT ALL what would - or does - happen rent rent prices are controlled.
What actually happens is that landlords disappear, people stop building (or maintaining) rental properties and the supply of available housing dries up. In the cities where there is a significant degree of rent control, there is a shortage of housing.
Economists have studied this extensively.
From the Brookings Institution:
"A substantial body of economic research has used theoretical arguments to highlight the potential negative efficiency consequences to keeping rents below market rates, going back to Friedman and Stigler (1946). They argued that a cap on rents would lead landlords to sell their rental properties to owner occupants so that landlords could still earn the market price for their real estate. Rent control can also lead to “mis-match” between tenants and rental units. Once a tenant has secured a rent-controlled apartment, he may not choose to move in the future and give up his rent control, even if his housing needs change (Suen 1980, Glaeser and Luttmer 2003, Sims 2011, Bulow and Klemperer 2012). This mis-allocation can lead to empty-nest households living in family-sized apartments and young families crammed into small studios, clearly an inefficient allocation. Similarly, if rental rates are below market rates, renters may choose to consume excessive quantities of housing (Olsen 1972, Gyourko and Linneman 1989). Rent control can also lead to decay of the rental housing stock; landlords may not invest in maintenance because they can’t recoup these investment by raising rents. (Downs 1988, Sims 2007)."
www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/
Now... It is true that people would not move as frequently because they would be worried about losing an artificially low cost apartment, but it's not actually obvious that this is a good thing. It creates other incentives for people not to move when they actually should... For example they may turn down a better job or an opportunity to find a better school for their kids, etc. because they don't want to leave a rent controlled building.
Of course, that's in the world we live in now where only some buildings in some cities are controlled. If all buildings everywhere were so controlled, frankly, the most likely result would simply be that no one would build rental properties at all. Instead, we'd see higher priced condos and single family homes for *sale* instead of rent (as we see in cities with rent control), because building rental properties would only result in the owners taking a loss.
This would not create the results you think it would in any sense.
We'd end up with much fewer and more expensive housing options, not more affordable housing for anyone.
Lastly, not to be flippant, but your feelings aren't a very good guide of what is true or false.
I agree. I think this was made to defeat prop 10 back in November. It was a proposition in California to allow city to implement rent control, specifically, to repeal Costa-Hawkins, a 1995 law that allowed landlords to raise the rent on certain properties any amount they wished at any time. The California Apartment Association threw $83 million into a PAC to defeat this widely popular proposition. They made a bunch of propaganda like this.
1:46 "The Jews just isn't worth the squeeze." Seamus alt-right confirmed!
They are not the childen of the book :)
"The Juice just isn't worth the squeeze." Thats what he said.
@@thunderfist25 Don't look up, you may see the joke soaring over your head.
Internet word of advice: don't comment on a dead thread unless you have something worth contributing, and if you're going to contribute, you should insure that you're correct in what you're about to say.
1:55 Because we don’t want people living in horrible living conditions, and we want to prevent buildings from collapsing and the like.
We have building codes to prevent cities from turning into Kowloon Walled City. I know that there were some special circumstance behind Kowloon, but many of the problems are indicative of no regulation. However, I do agree that many city codes are too strict particularly about minutia.
Also, American zoning is too strict too.
Yeah... prices of houses went 2x more up in last 10 years, while did rents went 2x ... so not really bright future for tenants ... thank good I lived in one room until my 30, saved money to buy a flat, paid it in 10 years and now buying another one while renting ther first one ... of course I would not do that without support of family... but ... thats our family we do care about our next genrations and thats why I will be able to payback this help to my future generation ...
You guys are connected to freedom toons huh?
They have same animator, yes.
and writer!
And voices?
KaiserXionTV for this one, yes
@@FreedomToons shutup nobody asked you.
Landlords are bastards. If competition results in anything being cheaper, it would already be happening.
The entire _point_ of this video was to show why government interference is preventing competition, and therefore, preventing the effect. The only way you couldn't have seen that is if you just didn't watch the video seriously.
Moral of life: Dont involve someone who doesn't know anything about the situation into a situation
In other words, I'll be called crazy for talking to myself.
In other words, don't let people vote if they don't manage a business or never went to war, never let ONGs influence policy, and ban political parties members from government.
@@CvnDqnrU, not really. A vote is a choice of who you think will do best managing these things. I don't think there's a person inexperienced with choosing. Honestly, political parties are the worst things about America, that's why Washington condemned them
@@Doublemonk0506 Why did they vote for Trump instead of Ron Paul? Even without political parties, people would be tricked into demagogy and populism, because as you said, they don't know.
I see alot of ppl saying that there are too many government regulations in construction. Trust me, as a guy that has been on plenty construction sites, you want those building codes, permit requirements, inspections, laws in place. Just look on this site at other countries that have so many issues with construction. We have our government regulations in place for a higher quality of living. And I rather have a peace of mind when living in a new house or building.
these people have no experience. this video is paid for by landlords
@@profquad Ah yes, all the landlords in the US came together and hatched a plan to create misinformation?
@@monke204ah just the ones with the most investments. They spent a record amount in california to defeat rent control. No one has ever spent more on a prop campaign than the CAA (California Apartment Association, which is just a bunch of landlords)
Why? Because they don’t care about you or your quality of life. On the flip you didn’t mention the rampant greed some owners have
They forgot something in this video, no land to build on. My city is located in a valley that is already full. The result is that average income is 40k per year while average home price is 375k, 560k for new construction. Who buys the properties? Rich retirees from out of town who rent at high prices. In a town of 60k peoole, average rent for a 2bd apartment is $1500, $2000 if its a house. The whole town is run by slum lords.
Alot of your points for these videos seem to follow the same system. high demand = high cost = conpetition = lower pricesbut that dosent really work if competers work togther to ensure prices stay high which we do see today with big bussiness. In theory this is a great idea but whats to stop landloards talking to each other and deciding that they will never drop rent bellow 2k?
I'm guessing the idea that because landlords are individuals and most of the time not company's that getting all of them to agree on any deal would be exceedingly difficult when a new one shows up lower than all the rest of them
That only happens if there’s a oligopoly, so if there 5 landlords.... then yes in theory they can do plot to keep prices high....but if there’s 100 then it’s harder for them to assemble
@@talesfromthecreeps4688 not really since in my experience (and im the uk not america so i could be wrong here) but most landlords work through a letting or tenancy agency and so all prices become fixed right now where i am all student house is around £1500 a month for a standard 4 bedroom house. the capitalist idea seems to fall apart when put into practise due to people trying to control the markets.
Thomaslawlet not all landlords work with tenancy agency....I haven’t heard of that actual. I use to work for a lawyer who had me managing his properties here in NY and a huge House in Maryland. His rent was based around the quarterly taxes and his mortgage. Which actually was reasonably priced. There’s definitely things that can bring property prices higher which obviously make rent higher or high demands, meaning that you could raise prices for the higher bidder. The fixed rent idea is exactly what this video is talking against
@@talesfromthecreeps4688 i fully understand that, but my point is that in order to maintain high prices and drive out competition all landlords have to do is work together or go through an agency which maintains high prices which in my experience always ends up happening. i don't disagree with the point of the video just that it is idealistic and these issues ruin it. im also living in the uk so some of the things i say may not apply fully.
Housing isn't in low supply because it isn't being provided by capitalists who would love to provide it if only the mean ol' government would let them evict poor families to charge higher rent. It's in low supply because other greedy people buy empty lots as investments and choose to do nothing with those empty lots because doing nothing with empty prime real estate makes that real estate rapidly increase in prices.
Real estate companies know this. They will intentionally keep half of their holdings off the market to artificially raise the price of the other half.
I don't think you should be able to claim ownership over something just because you placed a fence around it... you'd own the fence, not the land inside. Unless you distinguishably transform something from it's natural state, then you should be the owner until you die, or until you sell/gift it. I would bet many of your gripes with capitalism are in fact issues with state coercion and authoritarianism.
I wish more people watched this channel
just need to get the word out and stop the greedy landlords
1:30 "so the people who get rent capped places will be happy with their low cost places but those who dont will still be forced to deal with high costs" but if the government has set a rent cap on an area all places will be like that within that area. So no? There will just be finite space forcing people to spread out or look for room sharing possibilities. Which is what they'd do anyways just rent isn't suddenly crazy when theres a sudden population move to an area like what's happening in Oregon.
jesse eastman There's so much you can share from a small level apartement.Unless the amount of places increased the price will stay the same,especially in big cities where demand is high.
Always click on a new Seamus video as soon as I see it!
Dear Seamus, do me a favor and check out the Vancouver rental prices. The reason rent is so expensive is due to foreign investors buying up property en masse. Hell a lot of the houses sit empty, it's only now they are putting laws in place to charge home owners extra if the home isn't being inhabitated.
The main reason housing is usually so expensive is the endless regulations including zoning ordinances, building codes, etc. Most areas of the United States and Europe have kilotons of regulations and beaurocracy, each dwelling is required to be at least a certain size, there's restrictions on how tall a building can be and how many floors it can have, how many units are allowed per lot in a given zoning district, how the building must look\ what architectural styles are allowed, people usually being strictly prohibited from running home based businesses to more easily afford the rent, people not being allowed to grow food in the city limits, mandatory maximum occupancy of only two people per bedroom, etc. In most areas of the US and Europe, alternative housing structures are prohibited including tiny houses, yurts, tents ( even very nice ones ), trailers, earth sheltered homes, motorhomes\RVs, and houses built of certain materials or certain architectural styles. Also, you are required to get government permission to build on land you own. Bigger cities usually have the tightest of regulations and for some reason, city dwellers often advocate bigger government.
One thing that confused me, if the government mandates a price cap, then how could that make prices go up for other people? I could understand if the inevitable result was people running out of places to rent, but the prices going up doesn't really make sense, since it's illegal.
it doesn't make sense. this is a propaganda video made during election season in California where rent control was on the table.
When rent prices are capped but the cost to build is still as expensive you won't be able to turn a profit on building a house. That in turn leads to less supply. And since it is made illegal to charge more even though there is barely any supply, you will have people stop buying real estate in that city and moving somewhere else. So basically they would just kill the entire housing market.
Because not everything is price-capped. And if everything WAS price-capped, congratulations, no new housing
Ok since everyone under you explained it like they were a monkey on a keyboard I will explain. NOT ALL places in a rent controlled area are rent controlled. So lets say you place 10% of the market under rent control. Well what will happen? There is less interest in making new units since they will then risk becoming rent controlled (which is often a fair bit below market rate even before rent control). So now there are fewer new units but demand is still the same for new units. What happens when demand outpaces supply? Well that is simple prices go UP AND UP. Which sadly often spirals as it pushes fools to increase the rent control. Which then reduces supply which increases prices. Which then pushes more rent control. And so on and so forth. Eventually you have lots of demand but effectively no supply.
In the end rent control is great for those who get in early. But for those outside it? Yeah they are screwed as the demand doesn't go away. Instead it pushes up into the not rent controlled higher priced markets. Which means the more expensive apartments are now even more expensive as there is more demand for them. Which then tends to even further spiral. Now they increase the price of apartments that will be rent controlled. So now its not just the lower end but the middle which goes right back into the spiral. And onward the cycle continues.
TLDR it reduces supply without reducing demand.
But isnt there the problem that there is just not enough free land in the cities to build housing on?
That would be case in the real world. Hardcore libertarians (and I emphasize “hardcore”) don’t live in the real world.
Negative Zero
And hardcore leftist do?
dude, we are all living in the world so how is their not enough land for us in the world? Also, of course, the city owns the land but you should be able to buy land and build your house on it with minimal regulations. Also if there isn't enough land in the city you can expand the city limits or build up. If more people want to live in the city that there is space then not everybody who wants to live in the city will be able to only those who can afford to buy the land or rent it
allright find me a barren piece of land in Manhattan.
and expanding the city limits is useless when the city borders are more than 50km away from the center.
Building up isnt that easy either. For the most part the buildings would need to be teared down for a new and higher one to be build.
And dont forget that most owners of these buildings wouldnt be to keen with tearing them down or even selling them bc of high land value.
And if not everyone can live in a city thats generally a bad thing you know...
he wasnt implying that the left is in anyway better than libertarianism just so you know....
Doesn't this ignore the fact we have limited space in desired location. Wouldn't there come a time when the free market model no longer works as there won't be a way to expand supply of houses.
To be fair i wouldnt want to live in a house which doesnt comply with the safety regulations. See china and how all the buildings are falling apart because they were made with cardboard instead of plaster or concrete.
I don't think land use regulations have any relation to safety regulations.
@@giovannirosado5606 They actually do. Imagine residential houses being next to a factory, skyscraper, power plant, etc. We need land use regulations for many reasons.
I work in construction and even though it can be frustrating waiting in line to pull a permit, I can understand why there are alot of safety regulations and building codes. So many ppl would literally skip on building correctly to save a lil money or build structures where they shouldn't be built.
basic safety standards are good. but if you know anything about US law is that for every 1 useful regulation we have about 10 more that get in the way. our legal code grows by tens of thousands of pages each year
Regulatory burdens are nececary to make city livable. Do you really expect contractors to regulate themselves? I used to work with few NYC contractors, and they are as predatory as they can get. Regulations is what keeps them in check; otherwise buildings would be so dense, tall and with streets so narrow you would have to pay to see the sun.
I thought the price of something depended on what people agree on it. I don't remember there being a massive demand for the piece of modern art in your other video. And the supply of the items that made up that piece of morden art are readily and cheaply available. So which is it? Do people arbitrarily apply value to something or is it determined by supply and demand? Make up yo mind.
Doc Holliday he pretends he knows economics like every other RUclips professor.
Why not both? Gucci sells stupid clothing and people take the bait. Demand is high, availability is low therefore sales are certainly high due to the demand as well. They correlate with each other.
@@jasonmurphy6253 And don't act like you have an economics degree.
Παναγιωτης Τσαραφλης I don’t. It’s why I don’t make RUclips videos pretending I do.
@@jasonmurphy6253 understandable
Seems like we could get around this whole problem if we treated housing as a guaranteed right instead of a commodity.
That is what caused the problem though. People thought that they were entitled to cheap housing, and then this happened. Housing was treated as some kind of right, and then it just got more expensive. Doubling down on that mentality would only worsen the problem further.
@@whatisupmyfellowamericans8808 you are entitled to housing, it's a basic human right.
@@profquad There are some things that a person is entitled to. Housing is not one of them. You have the right to be born and given the chance to survive. You do not have the right to survive. Your only real rights are the ones that involve you working to expand your capabilites. Housing does not fall under that context. You are not born with housing, you have to earn it by building it and/or by trading someone for it.
People throw the word "right" around far too much. It's lost all meaning. That is, unless you're joking. In which case, sorry.
@@whatisupmyfellowamericans8808 I heard you use the word "right" in terms of working to expand your capapbilites. I have heard of the right to housing in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Ever read it? It doesn't have the made up right you mentioned, which, if I had to guess, I'd say is some libertarian jargon to basically mean "property" and/or "money".
Or you're joking.
@@profquad So, you accept your definition of "rights" from a document that never actually defines what "rights" means and is from one of the single most biased and single least effective bodies on the planet? Forgive me for raining on that parade. This "Declaration" is just one, among many thousands, of legal documents that throws the word "right" around without ever bothering to clarify what it means by "right." Like social services, such as universal healthcare, which are one of this document's so-called "rights." That alone shows why the document is untrustworthy, and that is just one article. What I'm getting at here is that the UN is a terrible place to be getting your universal mandates from.
And at that, the "made up" rights I made mention of are the rights to life, liberty, and property, which are all part of self-ownership. They're even mentioned in the document that _you_ accept and that _I_ oppose. Articles 3, 4, and 17 specifically, because they are arbitrarily spread out for some reason. So I'll ask you your own question, did _you_ read it?
Say what you will about the libertarian perspective, but at least it's logically consistent from first principles, as opposed to being rooted in a human organization, made with all of the illogical flaws that people bring. One is far, far more consistent than the other.
They can make plenty of profit without price gouging, even with rent control there's plenty of incentive for companies to build in busy areas with high demand.
Opportunity cost is a real thing. Example: Why spend $100k for a measly $10k in profit, when there are other industries where you get $50k in profit? You also fail to address what gives some random politicians authority over someones else's property.
Ummm, idk I used to live in a small town and the majority of the buildings in the inner city were owned by a tiny group of rich people from the capital who drove up the prices
I don't buy what they're selling in this vid either. Can see with my own two eyes what's happening.
Seamus is a badass. Great video!
Aren't a lot of those regulations important? We can't use asbestos, or lead-based paint in housing because of their negative health effects. I'm convinced they shouldn't be regulating the price of housing, but removing regulations for safety and health seems silly
When did he say that safety and health regulations are bad?
My only concern is on the other side of the wall is letting big business take over all of the housing, and not putting in regulations to prevent monopolization and abuse of the consumers. Obviously the guy charging 10k rent for a lot that he got for free from his daddy is going to be rolling in the dough, and since he's the only one making that dough, he's also the only one who can afford the expensive price tags of the other lots.
There's no decrease in prices from this. He can just deny anyone who can't meet the price tag and leave the rooms empty! This happens in big cities too! That's why big buildings seem to sit abandoned, it's because no one can afford the extreme rent price and the person who owns it refuses to budge on their price.
The scenario you set up can also work against your own argument as the people forced to pay these ridiculous prices don't do so because they want to, but because in order to have their 'dream job' they have to, and it essentially makes them poverty stricken workers. o n o I think regulations are required to prevent abuse and monopolies. Monopolies do not equal better business. It makes only 1 guy richer and everyone else around him poorer. It's called being a "slumlord"(it's a real thing, look it up), and I think it should have the horrible name, because abuse of the working class is sickening. Not to mention this will in turn just raise the minimum wage in order to afford these ridiculous prices and thus drive the value of the dollar even lower than it already is. (To put in perspective the hostage situation this creates.) The businesses need workers, the workers need a house, and the business needs consumers. If no one can work because the rent is too high, this forces the business owner to pay more to their workers, but have less workers. This drives supply down for consumers as there isn't enough workers to make the supply of goods they may want, so those consumers go elsewhere. The only guy profiting in this town is the greedy slumlord, while the local businesses and workers bleed income until they either go out of business or leave. Effectively killing a town or leaving the people living there poverty stricken.
Supply and demand is great, but holding the supply hostage, in my opinion is cruel, and by U.S. law illegal.
Love the videos! It helps to get a quick refresher on something i learned a long time ago and just forgot about it. The unfortunate part is that there is no magic answer for rent. Somebody is going to get screwed when it comes to housing in major metropolitan areas. I live in an area that wasn't considered a major metro area roughly 10 years ago. Now, we have such a high influx of out of state people coming here to escape the cost of living in places like California, Washington, etc. There is a consequence to that though, the cost of living here has now gone up to the point where locals can no longer afford to live here. Kinda feels like they brought their problems with them.
I think I know why rant control is high in big cities, when people are complaning about the cost of living, many people will turn to goverment to fix the problem, even thou its goverment that made things cost so high, so people will call to emotion appeal first and reason second.
Just a thought.
needs an update, with the amount of new housing being built that is being left empty and dont forget all the houses and apartments, ect left vacant and rotting. Yes its been talked about but again NY city is a wasteland.
Why indeed
mostly safety and environmental regulations
This video alone is the best reason why you shouldn’t give your government too much power and why you should keep your government out of economics...........for the most part.
Don't forget about section 8. The government tends to overpay and artificially raise market prices.
Many cities will actively look for builders to intentionally build luxury apartments in cities where industry has been removed in order to gain higher tax revenue. Section 8 laws only support those who provide food or sanitary services for those rich tennats or subleasIng property managers. Section 8 is a tool that allows builders to make money and cities to promote growth in a market that no one in the city asked for. It is the opposite of supply and demand.
6 years ago huh? Seems pretty timely to me.
solution make housing a right. it was with the homestead act from 1866-1976!
Yes!
In some cities like new york, the demand is in essence unlimited. In addition, space is limited and the margins are better for luxury appartments, which most people cant afford. Worse yet, these luxury apartments are often purchased or even rented by out of town billionaires who dont live there full time. As a result local business can struggle since there are neighborhoods with fancy owned apartments but not enough people.
There aren't enough billionaires in the world to make this a common problem.
The billionaires of NYC live in a handful of penthouses along Central Park or in the Financial Distric... They aren't buying up whole blocks of Williamsburg as summer homes they never actually live in.
Yes, Manhattan is dense, and that eventually pushes prices up. But there are a lot of ways around that - including moving outward into the borroughs, and building new buildings.
What's more, those new fancy building may not be affordable for a lot of people (I lived in NYC and mamy wouldn't have been for me), but they take some competitive pressure off of the other buildings those wealthier people would have lived in had they not been built.
That keeps prices down, even if they are still rising in general due to higher demand.
The other thing you should keep in mind is that prices are signals that convey information and create incentives for people to change their behavior. As a result, people who might be thinking about moving to NYC may decide to move elsewhere.
I no longer live in NYC, and I would really never consider moving back because of the cost vs. the standard of living you actually get for the money. It just isn't worth it to me.
There's no magic here.
I am not claiming its magic. The billionaire problem is more of one in Tel Aviv than NYC, though it certainly contributes in NYC.
There is and remains a massive demand to live in NYC and that does push prices up fast enough that especially low income houses disappear and are not built fast enough. Part of that is that low income housing isnt economical, since again space is very finite. Even in the outer boroughs. Williamsberg and much of queens is just as expensive as much of Manhattan these days. The Bronx is all thats really left, and even that is gentrifying.
Sure we can say that not EVERYONE in the world wants to live in NYC, but more than enough do that the demand is for all intents and purposes endless. Will it meet an equilibrium? Maybe. Maybe not. But to say that the demand is technically finite does nothing really to keep prices down.
In a closed system, your argument is very valid. I am not pretending that price controls are the answer. I am saying that its more complicated than the closed system example you gave. Largely because the demand is essentially limitless. There is no doubt that rent control disincentives construction of new units, and maintenance of old ones. Its a price control, which are almost universally bad. But unfettered competition I am not sure is a wise answer either.
PS If I am talking with Seamus then I am a huge fan of yours and its my pleasure to discuss this with you!
"Regulatory burdens" You mean not allowing people to build houses with lead piles and cardboard walls?
No, like not allowing anyone to build a building taller than 3 floors, making it impossible to profit off of the development because it won’t offset the cost of purchasing the land. There are tons of examples of prohibitive regulations that have nothing to do with health or safety.
PaleBear facts hit the nail on the head.
@@Centurion-ph7gk Then *some* regulatory burdens should be reconsidered, but grouping them all together and saying they're all bad is an overstatement
Paper Clip when did ever state this once how about read my comment agian maybe a little slower this time.
I should've tagged PaleBear too. The point I thought the two of you were making was that the majority of housing regulations were needlessly constructed for no reason - that if regulations didn't have a connection with health or safety, they were pointless. I think the opposite - that the vast majority of those regulations came about by some need and should be looked at carefully before we push for their removal. Using PaleBear's example about building heights, those restrictions are often in place to match what emergency services can protect (which isn't as high for more rural places), and/or to preserve the aesthetic of communities - which isn't a survival issue but it's still important, to a degree - and in many densely populated areas there are actually minimum building heights. These regulations aren't born out of a vaccum, or created by assholes who only think about money
That's why so many people are fleeing NYC for eastern PA and North/Central Jersey. Now rent and real estate prices are shooting up in these surrounding areas, pushing out the people already living here because our suburban/rural jobs don't bring in the cash the inner city jobs do. Everyone has to either apartment hop to find a cheap enough place to stay or stay in the house they've been owning since before the city people came in.
Agreed. So much cash for so little.
Why you think the suburban areas are way better to live!
@@ChillstoneBlakeBlast don't they cost more as well?
@@bustergundo516 the initial cost, but then all you have to pay after the housing is electricity, water and other services
@@ChillstoneBlakeBlast I see...
It also doesn't help that the Fed insists on intervening in the market to keep "property values up" (i.e., the cost of housing high).
if rent was 300 a month most people could live comfortably
and property taxes: $750/ month!
Also the intrest rates and cost of the house in general can affect the overall cost of rent. For example in my town the cheapest houses available for sale are $250,000. The buy that for a rental property you need about 25% down, so about $63,000. From there with interest at 8% on a 30 year fixed you end up with a mortgage of $1,320, Meaning that the owner needs to charge at least $2,000 to be able to make a $100-200 monthly profit while putting the rest away for repairs and updates, taxes, etc.
What they do is take a crappy little apartment, throw in a couple nice things, like counters or appliances and up the rents hundreds, some a thousand dollars more. It's an excuse for greed, they'd still definitely make their money. Sounds like a vid put out by the contractors that do this
Rent control is messed up!😮
Sorry I usually agree with the majority of you're reasoning but this is a very complex issue and this is a grosse simplification
How is it simplified? More specifically, what aspect do you think he ignored, that you deem important?
We used to rent out the old family house's bottom floor until the rent laws put a cap (right around what we would rent to the ideal renter, that become impossible to find once rent laws are put in place) and then put more laws in that would make it extremely difficult, costly, and time consuming 3 months and sometimes up to 6 months for what is technically a lodger. Now, a small bedroom that we used to rent for a few hundred dollars that essentially came with its own living room, large storage, and bathroom, never gets rented out because all the renters around here that are floating around cost us money to rent to them, while the few perfect renters are hapily locked down with low rent and will rarely ever be available as other landlords know they are hard to come by now because of the laws. It's a little different than rent control but the result is similar. It also pushes real estate prices down while making number of available units less, even if the amount that exists is technically increasing. Heck, a lot of people won't even rent to their family members around here now. I'm in an area with a lot of single-family homes, but not enough for everyone and with somewhat new rent control and renter's protection laws.
It is at least amusing how these laws make is harder for those people renting which is the opposite of what most of them think these laws do, or what the intent behind them usually is.
More daddy Shamus
I own 2 house and rent one of them out. I also pay the mortgage’s on them. The one I live in is my primary residence and isn’t taxed like my rental to the tune of 300/month. To just cover the bills on the rental I need 900 to break even. All in all its risky business and easy to loss when you got bad tenants.
I'm sorry, but this is WAY over simplifying the reasons for CA's skyrocketing numbers
I explained it effortlessly.
@@npc2153 Sooo... this is the show creator's alt account then?
@@FurlowT Lol no. I'm not Seamus. What i can offer if the truth nothing more.
@@FurlowT this is for high rent in general, not special/not so special cases in CA....
Wow,. An incredibly simplistic take on a complex issue.
Brought to you by billionaires who want less taxes for them
was anything the video wrong? you didn't start or contribute to the conversation at all
"Regulations BAD" is a blatant oversimplification of the problem. Yes, certain regulations are dogshit, but others are there for mostly safety reasons. Buildings of certain sizes must have double stairwells, outside fire escapes and a working elevator system. Other things like automatic fire suppression, earthquake stability and wind resistance/resistance to shearing are other considerations, though usually local.
An example of a shitty regulation is non-flexible zoning laws. For example here in Cleveland, there are multiple main street plots of land that are zoned commercial with no flexibility to change. This is especially true in the flats where most of the land area is a Scooby Doo ghost-town and is all marks as commercial only; despite the area being deader than John Candy economically. Throw in the fact that "Demolish and bury" was standard city practice for decades and you have a renting crisis, despite the fact that Cleveland is shit and no sane person would live here if given the choice.
Why can't someone decide whether or not they want to live in a building with no elevator?
So, wait. I might be confused. I get how rent control can discourage businesses from making more places to live, which makes an uncompetitive market with high prices. But, what I don't get is, if there's rent control, why are the places that are for rent already allowed to be so expensive? Wouldn't that be illegal?
Usually rent control is applied to a set fraction of apartments in the complex. Those apartments become a lottery and the landlord raises the rent on the other ones to compensate. If all apartments were rent controlled then there would be no new apartments and the landlords would allow the existing ones to rot.
I see a common theme in your videos. They all come from an idealistic outlook on the world. Sure in theory if there was no rent control the prices would go down, but in reality what happens is the prices skyrocket, building owners make agreements with other building owners not to undercut each other, and any that refuse to play along are choked out of the business.
Historically cartels/monopolies have never existed without some form of coercion. It's incredibly easy for an entrepreneur to undercut existing market leaders if they're price fixing. Only in cases where the monopoly was providing tangible benefit such as low prices, as was the case with Standard Oil, can it survive. When Standard Oil was broken up it was still charging low prices, so it was never about protecting the consumer, rather it was about protecting business owners that wanted to compete but couldn't because Standard Oil was just that much better.
Hold on. Are the regulations we're talking about here truly useless? Would it really be of no consequence to remove them in order to bring renting prices down?
Because whenever I hear people talking about removing regulations, I can't help but see it as a way to dangerously cut corners in the name of saving a few bucks. For example, Trump's gutting of the EPA. Yeah those regulations get in the way of profit but that shouldn't mean we should allow them to fuck over the natural world.
There are unfortunately many shitty regulations that exist for basically no reason, or just no good one. Don't know about cities in particular, but in the suburbs, you are required by law to have a large lawn, this is completely unnecessary for pretty obvious reasons.
There are more but that's the one that's stuck with me the most, so it's the only one off the top of my head.😅
Go have read of the regulations for yourself, it would basically prove which side is right or wrong based on your current values.
@@rocketblaster8701 Some regulations also only exist for specific reasons, but are applied universally
Take for example, in the suburbs, there are regulations that fences must be at least X feet away from the road, this exists because on street corners, a fence too close to the road blocks the view of cross traffic, so it's a perfectly valid regulation for safety purposes
But most houses are not on street corners, so logically those houses should be exempt as there is no public benefit, but in most cities they aren't
Unrelated to this, but what's your opinion on UBI my dude?
this is partly true but there is too much foreign investment in our property in cities
This sounds great until you apply actual logic. Considering that rent control does not apply to all housing but only to a small percentage of it and that demand has not gone down you would think that supply would have increased by now. Especially since even in rent controlled buildings there is profit to be made. So despite the belief that supply in cities can magically increase to meet any demand seemingly in contradiction to the observable reality that there is a finite amount of real estate. Rent has not gone down. Keep in mind that no builder is required to make all of any building into rent controlled housing but only a very small percentage. The majority of housing in any city is not in fact rent controlled.
"Especially since even in rent controlled buildings there is profit to be made."
Prove it.
No sane business volunteers to be "rent controlled" it is *forced* upon you Skittles McStabbypants.
And there is *NO PROFIT* left from "rent controlled" apartments.
Skittles McStabbypants but muh Econ 101
Skittles in big cities, there are thousands of regulations. Its as simple as that. If potential profit is as abundant as you say, (and it should be becuase the demand for living spaces in big cities is literally insane) then greedy businessmen (and nongreedy ones) should be flocking to big cities and making tons of apartament complexes to try to reap as much profit as possible. The problem is that with such a high demand its still not profitable. Regulations literally increase the cost of apartments directly. Every single one does. Now thats not to say that they should just remove all of the regulations; however, the less regulations you have the higher the profit margin for businessmen and entrepreneurs. The risk of taking out a one hundred million dollar loan for an apartament has to have a large enough reward (potential profit) or its not ever going to happen- That is why rent is so high and that is why nobody is making more housing.
David Grover there’s no profit in rent controlled apartments? So landlords in New York City are just doing it for fun? Listen, I work for a property management company in California, we have some of the country’s stricter rental laws and rent control. I guarantee you that landlords, even the small ones are making very good money. But yeah, rent control is a terrible policy at the end of the day.
I think its private land owners that rent out houses at high prices that causes the money to raise from employment and not just that raises inflation because they do not produce any more houses and not just that it creates a scarcity in houses and that creates more inflation as the population grows. that's my thought.
Rent is high because we let humans dictate the price arbitrarily. So of course greed will win and the prices will stay high.
Greed is constant and a terrible explanation for virtually any phenomenon in economics.
Are people less greedy in Lincoln, NE than Kansas City, where rents are 5% higher?
Are landlords more greedy in Manhattan than Brooklyn, where rents are 31% lower?
its not arbitrary, its a market calculation based on need and availability
greed is human nature, you can't have any system ever without greed
@@kelpermoon23 No, but greed still is prevalent, as in people there will sell as high as possible in their context.
@@007kingifrit It isn't as much as a "calculation" (which is a way you can excuse greed, I guess) as it is somebody looking at the market and asking themselves "what can I get away with?" That is greed. They could be asking "What does our community need?" Which isn't greed. That is the decision based on need instead of want. But that doesn't happen 99% of the time. Imagine a property owner asking a buyer what they think would be a fair price would be, and accepting it.
Normally, I wouldn't care. But this is housing, an essential human need. And people are forced to other places because of this wild behavior.
And greed is ONE feature of human nature, but it is a CHOICE. And until we have system that punishes greed, people will continue to believe it is inevitable and join in.
Wait, im confused...if there are government controls that cap what rent can be, how does that drive rent above the cap? I get that profit for builders becomes an issue, so building them can become less common. But wouldnt a rent cap be universal to governed area? And couldnt that cap be set above cost, or at a level where rent doesnt take too long to surpass cost?
Rent control is great. This is a libertarian think tank funded video to defeat legislation opening up rent control.
I feel like ownership of apartments should be owned by the city and there should be more incentive to build more houses and apartments
It's not I don't believe in private property but I don't think some asshole in California deserves to set the rate at which you can live in a building. I think city's need more control over their regions rather than hoping higher ups will help. Something to do rather than constant construction for 7 years to fix potholes
@@AngelSaintCloud "I don't think some asshole deserves to set the price at which he sells you pizza."
"I don't think some asshole deserves to set the rate at which he let's you use his car."
"I don't think some asshole deserves to set the price at which he sells you his kidney."
I can keep going. If you don't see the ridiculousness of your authoritarian perspective yet, then I don't know what else to say. You're gonna have to explain why you think you are entitled to the product of another man's labor.
So, what you are saying is that the rights of those who want to rent property (their right to make money mostly) is MORE IMPORTANT than the right of myself or my parents to have an AFFORDABLE, INEXPENSIVE yet NICE place to live?
Neither of those things are accurate.
Property rights do mean that the owner is free to decide the terms under which they would agree to rent their homes or apartments - just as they mean you have a right to decide how much you require before you're willing to part with your phone, laptop, car, or for which rates you are willing to accept a job.
But nobody exists in a vacuum and (in free economies) prices are always a negotiation between buyers and sellers, both of whom usually have competition.
An owner who charges a price so high that no one wants to rent their home doesn't make any money at all. They will be out bid by other owners who are willing to rent for just a bit less. Similarly, buyers who are too cheap will find nothing to purchase because they're not willing to give up enough for sellers to part with whatever they are selling.
The key in both cases is competition - which is the one thing rent control doesn't allow.
And by the way, the more free the market for housing is (lower taxes, fewer licensing barriers, fewer zoning restrictions, less red tape, etc.), the more people are willing to build homes. The more homes there are, relative to demand, the cheaper they become because owners have to attract tenants.
Rent control reduces supply, creating higher prices overall - even though a tiny minority benefit.
@@FEEonline There's no negotiation in rent, where the heck do you live? The point is, they can always find someone to rent, and if you can't afford it, tough. There is nothing in the free market system that provides housing to any but the wealthy. Being wealthy isn't a condition of citizenship, or the internationally recognized right to housing.
@@profquad the reason there is lower levels of competition is precisely because of the kinds of regulations we're talking about in this video. The market in housing - particularly in places like California - is very much *not* free. And that's the issue.
Negotiation in price usually comes in the form of consumers' revealed preferences. Someone offers something to you for X price and you say no. The more competition there is in any market, the more opportunities to say yes or no there are.
Housing is heavily restricted. So there are fewer opportunities to choose among alternatives, and this of course gives an advantage to the suppliers.
And yes, by the way, the free market *does* provide all kinds of incentives to supply goods and services, including housing, to poorer people. In fact, it is really the only system that does this effectively.
Heavily regulated economies certainly don't do this. The regulations themselves raise the cost of producing stuff such that prices have to be raised, or the business fails and the thing they would have made no longer exists at all (which also results in higher prices).
More over, regulations are frequently created explicitly with the intent of reducing competition in the market. Any in-depth study of regulatory history and policy will reveal how incredibly common this is.
This typically benefits well connected corporations and wealthy individuals at the expense of consumers and smaller businesses.
The more free the market is, the more businesses are able to easily form, resulting in more competition among suppliers, which reduces prices and brings goods & services into a range that is actually affordable.
If this didn't happen, Walmart and Costco would not exist.
Housing isn't that competitive in a lot of places, unfortunately. And most of the reason why is bad policy.
This video is lacking a lot of details.
Fewer people would watch a 2 hour cartoon on the topic of housing economics.
What is millions of empty homes and apartments creating artificial scarcity