[Ekaros]

They are not predatory. They are entirely market based. Why shouldn't companies be allowed to charge whatever is the market price? Or maybe in general we should start applying price controls to absolutely everything. Let's say only ever allow 5% net profit on any good or service.

[vasco]

Every economist knows price caps never worked and yet you're being downvoted for stating a plain fact. Price controls only make it so that nobody can buy the thing in the first place by exhausting supply. It's way better to let the thing be sold at whatever price it has than to just exhaust it. In this case it means property sits empty which is the worst possible outcome.

[kevingadd]

Or instead of market based they're set by an algorithm that pushes them as high as it possibly can: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-r...

“The beauty of YieldStar is that it pushes you to go places that you wouldn’t have gone if you weren’t using it,” said Kortney Balas, director of revenue management at JVM Realty, referring to RealPage’s software in a testimonial video on the company’s website.

The nation’s largest property management firm, Greystar, found that even in one downturn, its buildings using YieldStar “outperformed their markets by 4.8%,” a significant premium above competitors, RealPage said in materials on its website.

[Ekaros]

So they are fixing an inefficiency in market by actually charging what market can bear. Should be applauded for the work, as inefficient markets are bad. Now they genera more profit which they can invest in more property thus enabling possibly more units to be build.

[Arainach]

Moving all the money into the hands of landlords means that the population has no money to spend on anything else. This is massively detrimental to society.

[parineum]

Good thing nobody suggested that.

Allowing landlords to actually build would drive prices down but overregulation and zoning laws have broken the supply end of the market.

[orwin]

Landlords do not build. And often oppose new development that risk lowering the price of their investment.

[imtringued]

They don't build because local homeowners vote for more restrictive zoning. Private corporations benefit anyway because their property values go up.

[parineum]

And how do they oppose development?

Do they break the kneecaps of their potential new landlord rivals so they don't build new apartments and provide competition?

[sofixa]

> Now they genera more profit which they can invest in more property thus enabling possibly more units to be build.

Except that investing in new property might bring the revenues and profits of their current properties down, so there's a direct disincentive not to build more.