[jeffbee]

The obvious solution is the one I've long advocated in this forum and elsewhere: a housing market where landlords can pick and choose tenants should not be permitted to exist. Build housing until the median number of applicants for a vacant home becomes 1 or 0. Make landlords desperate again.

[trashcan01]

If landlords aren’t allowed to pick tenants, then:

1. Bad tenants will have no incentive not to harm the property and the neighborhood.

2. Landlords will be forced to pay for insurance to cover all the bad things that tenants are now free to do.

3. Rents will rise to cover the costs of the insurance. Conscientious tenants will be penalized.

4. Even otherwise conscientious tenants will start to cut corners since they are having to pay for the insurance anyway and it’s clearly unfair.

What a nasty situation for conscientious tenants landlords and neighbors you are advocating.

Only the least conscientious people win.

[gpderetta]

You can make the exact symmetrical argument if tenants are not allowed to pick landlords (which is what happen in practice). Well, except about rent increase that happens anyways.

[gizmo686]

What market are you in where tenents can't pick landlords? With mom and pop landlords, it can be a crapshoot. But I have rented from coorporate landlords twice. Each time, I was able to research them, and I avoided several with bad reputations. I've never had problems with the landlords I did rent from.

[ericd]

Sounds like there should be some symmetrical landlord screening tools.

[kazinator]

Tenants cannot pick an arbitrary landlord L for a given, fixed rental unit U. They can pick a different rental unit with a different L.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Tenants pick what they can afford. Landlords charge what the market can bear.

The entirely predictable result is some very rich landlords and some very homeless people.

[kazinator]

In reality, stuff also happens such as: landlords working several jobs to cover the bills, unable to get rid of nonpaying tenants.

[adfgadfgaery]

I don't see how what you are saying makes any sense at all.

>1. Bad tenants will have no incentive not to harm the property and the neighborhood.

Of course they will: they may lose the security deposit, may be evicted, may be sued, and may even be arrested.

>2. Landlords will be forced to pay for insurance to cover all the bad things that tenants are now free to do.

They already pay for insurance.

>3. Rents will rise to cover the costs of the insurance. Conscientious tenants will be penalized.

Building more housing will make housing more expensive?

>4. Even otherwise conscientious tenants will start to cut corners since they are having to pay for the insurance anyway and it’s clearly unfair.

No, for the same reasons I gave before they still have an incentive to behave well.

[lupire]

None of this is a problem because everyone will own their own home.

[kazinator]

> a housing market where landlords can pick and choose tenants should not be permitted to exist

1. That implies that home owners would not be permitted to rent only to family members (or friends), because that constitutes picking and choosing tenants.

2. Not being able to pick and choose tenants literally means you cannot evict existing tenants for any reason, like years of non-payment of rent, or damage to the unit or whatever. Such a move can be interpreted as trying to replace tenants with a better choice of tenants; i.e. picking and choosing tenants.

3. Only a complete fool or someone desperate would rent their home out under such a rule. (Even in a housing market in which you can screen tenants, you can still get awful tenants. Imagine if you had tenants foisted upon you by some rules. Yikes!) The result would be fewer rental units on the market.

4. But, in this imaginary world, banks would likewise not be allowed to pick and choose to whom they give money to buy a house, so there would be a lot less renting.

[reedjosh]

> Build housing until the median number of applicants for a vacant home becomes 1 or 0. Make landlords desperate again

This is so silly.

Who's going to build these hypothetical housing units? So many that there are more houses than applicants.

[adfgadfgaery]

There are so many investors who want to build apartments that most cities have laws to keep them out.

[wan23]

You should expect that the market would build enough units that there were about as many homes as applicants in the absence of regulation. Getting to more than that should be doable with only minor incentives.

[reedjosh]

> You should expect that the market would build enough units that there were about as many homes as applicants in the absence of regulation.

While I sympathize with the logic, there is no reason to expect that.

[jeffbee]

Why don't you ask people in any nation where this is already national policy, such as Austria? Don't just imply that it is not possible, when there are existence proofs.

For that matter, just ask your parents. It was national policy of the U.S. to build an overabundance of housing for the 50 years after the Great Depression, which is why landlords' income as a fraction of the national economy hit an all-time low in the mid 1980s. It has since rebounded to all-time highs, which is why nobody can find a place to live.

[ChuckNorris89]

>Why don't you ask people in any nation where this is already national policy, such as Austria? Don't just imply that it is not possible, when there are existence proofs.

What? How? Real estate prices to income ratio in Austria is one of the worst in the EU. Few people can afford to buy without inheritance. Austrian real estate market is broken AF.

[kazinator]

The population of Austria has grown by around 38% in the past ... 100 years.

During this time, the world population has more than quadrupled.

[TheOtherHobbes]

I'm not following why you believe people in Austria should have their rent calculated based on the population of China and India.

Can you explain what you mean in more detail?

[kazinator]

How much more detail?

Growing by less than 40% in 100 years is slow. Austrians hardly had to scramble to provide housing for themselves.

(Now this line of reasoning is simplified quite a bit, because housing is area dependent. Even if the population in some country remains constant, say that everyone suddenly decides that a very tiny area of the country is the only worthwhile place to live. They all concentrate there and now there is a housing problem now. Well, not everywhere, just in that spot! In other spots there are empty, cheap houses.)

[throw10920]

I'm not seeing where kazinator said that "people in Austria should have their rent calculated based on the population of China and India."

Can you point out exactly where they said that?

[dagw]

Make being a landlord too onerous and people will stop being landlords. Take Sweden for example, landlords are selling off their rental apartments at an increased rate as the profits of renting are decreasing and the risks increasing. The end result is that there is almost nothing available to rent at any price and it can take 5-10 years of standing in line to get a halfway decent rental apartment.

Having a liquid supply of decent rental apartments on the market is important for a dynamic economy.

[Ekaros]

Wouldn't that increase the rents even further? Specially if we were go below 1 on long term. As the existing renters must also cover the building and maintenance cost for the empty units...

General prices would drop, but renters would end up paying for something they are not using or even have access to...

[IncRnd]

> The obvious solution is the one I've long advocated in this forum and elsewhere: a housing market where landlords can pick and choose tenants should not be permitted to exist.

Do you leave your domicile unlocked for anyone to visit, while you are elsewhere? No? A landlord doesn't want to do that, either.