[seanmcdirmid]

Ya, most rent control just rewards those that are there when it happens, if it applies to new renters, supply eventually seizes up.

I’m not sure what model parent thinks will work. Maybe rent control light where price increases are limited but the limit is highish? I can see that working out, limiting increases to 1.5-2X inflation might keep the market fluid and provide some stability to renters without locking new tenants out.

[malermeister]

The secret is for the government to make up for the decrease in private supply. Vienna showed how it's done - see this article for example: https://citymonitor.ai/environment/housing/red-vienna-how-au... There's a reason it's been #1 most livable city in the world on several rankings for years in a row now.

[seanmcdirmid]

You need to have some residency control for that to work. Otherwise, everyone would just flock to the most popular cities for their discounted apartment. This also works in Singapore, but only for qualified residents.

[malermeister]

What residency control does Vienna have?

[thisgoesnowhere]

Would you apply the same logic to how the market for real estate unfairly rewards previous entrants?

My parents have seen a 4x increase in the value of their house in 20 years, is that unfair?

[seanmcdirmid]

Yes! Buying your own home is the ultimate form of rent control, even though property taxes increase over time (and its even worse in CA with prop 13). Very unfair.

If we wanted to make the market fair, we would disallow home owners all together. This effectively happens for most people in some places in Europe. Also, I heard of some places in Europe where if you own your own home, you have to pay some extra tax vs. what you would have paid in rent. I think Switzerland? They also had some form of rent price control, although this just made it really hard to rent an apartment even if you were willing to pay more. These are fairly complex systems that all give advantages to existing residents (so moving to Europe for two years to do a post doc is much harder than it would be if you did that in the USA).

[thisgoesnowhere]

Finally someone who has thought through the problem and come out with the right solution. Great stuff