I think there’s an interesting question of why housing has outpaced inflation, but I’m not sure you can just pin it on “landlords.”
A small, individual landlord has no pricing power. They’re competing in a market against all others. You’d have to control a substantial fraction of a local market to be able to raise prices above the going rates and still rent your units.
I think the most likely answer is a combination of several factors.
1) Not enough new housing being built in desirable areas (supply), cause by some combination of drastic increase in cost of labor and materials, and NIMBY regulations.
2) Actual collusion to fix prices. There have been a few recent court cases about collusion mediated by price setting software (RealPage Yield Star).
3) The appearance of “mega landlords” that control a meaningful share of supply in a metro.
At the end of the day, having the option to rent instead of own is one I think we want to have in our society, for reasons of mobility, risk aversion, etc. That necessitates the existence of either public housing, or landlords.
We can argue about the lesser of two evils, but in my mind it’s probably landlords, hopefully with some substantial regulation reform to eliminate opportunities for price fixing.
>A small, individual landlord has no pricing power. They’re competing in a market against all others.
Unless there is a deficit of housing, then they don't have to compete because you pay their price or you live on the street.
With a housing crisis as in the UK the cost of housing rises to soak up everyone's income after other essentials (food, water, energy). Rents are higher than mortgages because you pay the landlord's mortgage, then pay the costs of leasing (such as the landlord's insurance and their property managers fees) and the landlord's profits. Very few want to rent, but most can't afford a mortgage (because 'I'm paying way more than that in rent' isn't proof you can pay a mortgage, apparently).
A small, individual landlord has no pricing power. They’re competing in a market against all others. You’d have to control a substantial fraction of a local market to be able to raise prices above the going rates and still rent your units.
I think the most likely answer is a combination of several factors.
1) Not enough new housing being built in desirable areas (supply), cause by some combination of drastic increase in cost of labor and materials, and NIMBY regulations.
2) Actual collusion to fix prices. There have been a few recent court cases about collusion mediated by price setting software (RealPage Yield Star).
3) The appearance of “mega landlords” that control a meaningful share of supply in a metro.
At the end of the day, having the option to rent instead of own is one I think we want to have in our society, for reasons of mobility, risk aversion, etc. That necessitates the existence of either public housing, or landlords.
We can argue about the lesser of two evils, but in my mind it’s probably landlords, hopefully with some substantial regulation reform to eliminate opportunities for price fixing.