Those landlords don't try to sell that small kitchen, they DO sell that small kitchen. When I was shopping for an apartment in SF 2 years ago there was no spot that did not have at least 2 other parties looking at it. There was no room for negotiation or to even take a day to think it over, if you walked away from it, there were 2 people right behind you to take it.
> There was no room for negotiation or to even take a day to think it over, if you walked away from it, there were 2 people right behind you to take it.
Naive question maybe, but if demand is that high, why don't prices rise even higher to balance it out a bit? Presumably most landlords would prefer another hundred or two a month at the cost of a few extra days on the market?
They do. At some point the landlord makes the decision that this is good enough and accepts an offer using whatever factors are in play, maybe some personal circumstances like needing the money sooner rather than later or just liking one of the applicants more, but the next landlord is now informed by what his neighbors charged a month or two ago for a similar space and uses that as the floor for what they should ask for. On and on it goes and suddenly prices trend up and a space that went for $X two years ago now goes for $X+$500 today, or as we see in the original article, $X-$1K versus a year ago.
It is better to rent to an interested party today than wait a month for someone who might pay $200 more per month. When the rent is $3500 a month, it will take 1.5 years to make up that difference.
Yes this: in real estate investing this is called the vacancy rate and it eats into profits, sometimes significantly. Too much vacancy and you can’t cover the mortgage.
Then they don't sell the kitchen per se, they're selling a very in-demand housing unit. People take it in spite of its kitchen, not because of its kitchen.
