[JohnSz]

Montreal has rent control. The result is that its financially inadvisable to renovate. Part of the rent control is you can raise the rent $31/year per $1,000 of renovation. That's a 30 YEAR payback. You can be replacing a roof the second time before you've recovered the costs for the first time, even forgetting about inflation and opportunity costs.

Other provisions of the rent controls are just as restrictive.

The result is rental buildings here are in poor shape, as owners let their buildings degrade and then sell them. Few are being built.

Well ... there are more rental voters than landlord voters.

[ConfuciusSay]

But in Montreal, as in SF, if the tenant leaves you can adjust the rent back to "market rates", which does benefit a landlord who renovates. Also, a good percentage of the new "condo" towers going up are specifically rental only.

The more perverse side effect of rent control shows up in the cases where rental tenants on a 30 year old lease, paying peanuts per month is posting their apartment (or multiple apartments) on AirBnB at market rates. All the while, the property gets much more wear and tear, increasing maintenance costs.