A microsimulation model of distributional and dynamic effects of a rent control lift in Sweden

What stirs most people against rent control laws in the United States and elsewhere are stories of people who have held apartments for many years and now pay absurdly low rents for them. There are important reasons for removing rent controls, but the shock value of a low rent is not one of them. Basu and Emerson construct a model of second-generation rent control, describing a regime that does not permit rent increases for sitting tenants - or their eviction. When an apartment becomes vacant, however, the landlord is free to negotiate a new contract with a higher rent. They argue that this stylized system is a good (though polar) approximation of rent control regimes that exist in many cities in India, the United States, and elsewhere. Under such a regime, if inflation exists, landlords prefer to rent to tenants who plan to stay only a short time. The authors assume that there are different types of tenants (where type refers to the amount of time tenants stay in an apartment) and that landlords are unable to determine types before they rent to a tenant. Contracts contingent on departure date are forbidden, so a problem of adverse selection arises. Short stayers are harmed by rent control while long-term tenants benefit. In addition, the equilibrium is Pareto inefficient. Basu and Emerson show that when tenant types are determined endogenously (when a tenant decides how long to stay in one place based on market signals) in the presence of rent control, there may be multiple equilibria, with one equilibrium Pareto-dominated by another. In other words, many lifestyle choices are made based on conditions in the rental housing market. One thing rent control may do is decrease the mobility of the labor force, because tenants may choose to remain in a city where they occupy rent-controlled apartments rather than accept a higher-paying job in another city. Basu and Emerson show that abolishing the rent control regime can do two things: Shift the equilibrium to a better outcome and result in lower rents, across the board. A version of this paper - a product of the Office of the Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, Development Economics - was presented at an Applied Microeconomics Workshop at Cornell University.

The state of development of rental markets as a genuine alternative to home-ownership stands out as a particularly relevant institutional factor shaping the outcome of the housing market and playing a balancing role and alleviating house price pressures. This is especially the case when it proves to be an affordable platform for young and low-income households, providing them with a viable alternative to a hasty first step into the property ladder. In order to help policymakers develop a sizeable private rental market acting as an attenuating factor of housing prices volatility, it is important to depict the relevant dimensions of the rental market regulation and assess their likely impact on the aggregate housing market. Against this background, this paper first develops a two-dimensional indicator on rental market regulation, covering for rent controls and the tenant-landlord relationship. The resulting indices are put to the test by assessing their impact on housing prices. According to this analysis, an efficient, fair and swift judicial system appears as a necessary step towards unlocking rental markets full potential. Moreover, rent controls appear to have a significant destabilizing impact on the aggregate housing market, increasing the volatility of house prices when confronted with different shocks. Finally, qualitative aspects of the tenancy contract negotiation do not have a first-hand impact on housing market dynamics.

Rent control is still an important type of government regulation of housing markets in many countries and numerous researchers have studied its implications for allocation, welfare and investments in housing. The present paper aims to improve our understanding of the effect of second-generation rent control when it is applied only to one sector of the rental market. It is diagrammatically shown that the welfare effects are very different between a universal and a limited application of rent control. Studying the Danish case of second-generation rent control, lower rents are found in controlled sectors and a minor increase of the rent in the uncontrolled sector. Using the area of living space in the dwelling as a measure for housing consumption, evidence is also produced of both overallocation and underallocation of housing in the rent-controlled sectors; as envisaged by economic theory.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of Swedish rent controls on observed vacancy rates for rental housing.Design/methodology/approachHousing vacancy rates are unevenly distributed among Swedish municipalities. In large expansive municipalities, such as Malmö, Göteborg and Stockholm, vacancy rates are very low, while in declining or smaller municipalities such as those in the northern and interior parts of Sweden, vacancy rates are considerably higher. This implies welfare losses not only in growing municipalities with queues for rental apartments but also in municipalities that are shrinking since the controlled rents there are higher than market rents and cause higher vacancy rates than with market rents. The authors estimate the influences of various determining factors, such as population growth, population size, rent levels, construction, demolition and market orientation of rents, on the observed vacancy rates.FindingsThe authors find that that these factors affect the vacancy rates differently depending on whether a municipality is large or small, growing or shrinking. Population growth, in percent per year, plays an important role in explaining the observed vacancy rates in declining regions.Research limitations/implicationsA research task that remains to be done is to calculate the welfare losses due to rent higher than the market rent for municipalities in contraction.Practical implicationsTo reduce the welfare losses of rent control, both in expanding and contracting municipalities, economists' straightforward recommendation to deregulate the rent control should, in principle, be carried out.Originality/valueIn many countries, rent control regulations are limited to cities, such as New York City. The paper shows that the Swedish rent control system however, applies nationwide, except for annual rent increases, which are set locally through negotiation.

CONTENTS I. Introduction II. Recent Developments III. The Takings Clause A. Fifth Amendment 1. Background Principles 2. Fractional Property B. Possessory Takings 1. General Rule 2. Rent Control C. Regulatory Takings 1. Economic Impact 2. Substantially Advancing Prong D. Unconstitutional Conditions 1. Discretionary Benefits and Relinquished Rights 2. Exactions 3. Individual Adjudicative Discretionary Actions E. Temporary vs Permanent Takings 1. Doctrinal Origins 2. Regulatory Delay IV. Due Process Clause A. The Theory of 1. Modern Standard for Confiscation 2. Particular Problems in Confiscation B. Preference for Takings Analysis V. Conclusion I. INTRODUCTION Housing is one of the necessities of life. (1) It also comprises a large share of most Americans' disposable income. Unlike other consumables, competition in supply and demand does not result in effective market restrictions on price. First, there is a limited supply of housing. The limit is both natural (there is a finite amount of land) and artificial (zoning restrictions limit housing supply). Second, consumers of rental housing do not have the same market power as do consumers of other goods. This is principally because substituting one product or brand for another, say at lease renewal time, exacts a high transaction cost--the considerable expense and inconvenience of relocating. Since rental housing is not fungible, each landlord is a demi-monopolist. (2) This is not meant as a pejorative, only to describe the owner's market power. The absence of a free market in rental housing (at least in an idealized sense) often leads to exploitation by housing providers. This is especially true in times of economic stress, when the nation's resources are devoted to more pressing needs (e.g., wartime), or during periods of high inflation and real estate speculation. It is during these times that government policy makers often consider restrictions on rent increases and other forms of tenant protection. (3) Of course, there are other means to overcome market inefficiencies in housing. Tax and cash subsidies can encourage housing production or assist with rent payments. Zoning incentives can do likewise. But federal and state governments are not as concerned with housing as they once were; the issue is currently perceived as one of local concern. As a result, municipalities are left holding the bag, so to speak, with a dwindling arsenal of regulatory means available to them in addressing housing shortages. Rent control is one of those still-remaining means. Rent controls were first enacted in the United States during World War I. Since then, the Supreme Court has considered the constitutionality of rent control at least a dozen times, upholding the challenged law on every occasion save one. (4) It is somewhat remarkable that even during periods of extraordinary judicial protection of property rights, rent control laws have nonetheless survived. This was true in the Lochner era, (5) as well as during the modern resurgence of property rights activism, at least at the Supreme Court. Despite long-standing judicial acceptance of rent regulation, the attack on rent control has been unrelenting. For some reason, rent control triggers greater emotional and ideological opposition than do most other forms of economic regulation. Virtually every constitutional theory has been tried. Most challenges are based on the takings and due process clauses, but the contracts clause (6) and even the first (7) and thirteenth amendments (8) and equal protection (9) have made their way into the opinions. Creative statutory claims have also been mounted, such as the argument that rent control is an illegal form of price fixing. …

During the past decade, over 200 cities in the United States have imposed rent control [Baird, t980, pp. 54-7]. Although most likely a response to the accelerating inflation of the 1970's, this second generation of rent control has been justified on the grounds of the existence of a housing crisis. In different locales the crises are described variously as arising from a housing shortage, low vacancy rates, rent increases, tenant hardship, housing deterioration, lack of new construction, or environmental necessity [Baar and Keating, 1975, p. 490]. Invariably, newly enacted rent control ordinances are presented as temporary measures. Presumably, policymakers view the imposition of rent control and its concomitant effects as reversible after the housing crisis, however defined, has passed. But is this assumption correct? Does decontrol restore market rents, maintenance levels, optimal crowding, and tenant mobility? Or are housing units permanently altered by virtue of their having been under rent controls? These are important issues in evaluating rent control as a feature of local housing policy. Surprisingly little empirical work has been done on the relationship between rent control and housing quality, crowding, and tenant turnover. Furthermore, the authors have found no empirical studies dealing with decontrol. The purpose of this paper is to make a modest contribution to understanding the efficacy of decontrol by exploring the effects of selective decontrol in New York City (NYC). The data used in this study are taken from the 1968 Special NYC Housing

Housing and Labor Market Distortions in Poland: Linkages and Policy Implications

The country is currently experiencing a severe crisis in rental housing, characterized by chronic shortages of units that are available at prices affordable to most renters. Rapidly rising rents, declining construction of new units, and conversion of existing units to nonrental uses are all indicators of this crisis. In this paper we explore three approaches to the problem, finding difficulties with each. Rent control, advocated by tenant groups, is at best a stop-gap measure that eliminates large increases in rents; it fails, however, to provide additional housing. Public sector programs, including both housing allowances and public housing, are especially costly during inflationary periods and therefore are being severely curtailed. Finally, the private sector approach-summed up as "build more housing"-is examined in detail, in light of data obtainedfrom 115 self-contained U.S. housing markets in 1970. It is found that contrary to the predictions of supply-side theorists, housing markets characterized by a large amount of new rental housing construction do not have lower rents. Nor is vacancy rate, another indicator of relative supply, found to be associated with rent levels. These findings seriously question the wisdom of housing policies that callfor an end to local land-use and building regulations, under the false belief that such regulations are responsible for artificially restricted supply and hence higher prices and rents. We conclude with some policy suggestions of our own, including the development of such nonmarketplace alternatives to rental housing as limited-equity cooperatives and public utility housing.

The private rented sector of the British housing market has been in decline since the beginning of the present century; that decline has continued apace since the end of the Second World War. A proposed solution for the stemming of this demise is the removal of present rent controls and the substitution of free market conditions so that rents find their own market levels. This, so it is argued, would enable landlords to obtain a proper return on their housing investments and lead therefore to an increase in supply and an ending to the present disinvestment from this housing sector.This article disputes this thesis. In the first place it is argued that “market rent” is a problematic concept and raises complex issues of distributive justice and social policy — which its advocates ignore. Secondly, it is argued that a free market solution is ahistorical in that it takes no account of the past failure in Britain of privately rented housing; and similarly it ignores the complex web of historical circumstances behind its decline — attributing the decline to the single causal factor of rent control. Thirdly, it is suggested that a market solution is sociologically misconceived because it ignores the characteristics and needs of those social groups dependent upon this sector. Finally, on grounds of practicability it is proposed that a free market in rented housing may be quite inappropriate for the rump of housing stock remaining in the private rented sector; and that, given the current social and economic constraints operating in the housing market as a whole, any revival of this sector is unlikely even with enhanced rental inducements.It is thus concluded that a free market solution is misconceived and would merely serve to impose an ideological straightjacket upon the provision of a basic human need.

Following geographically concentrated changes in housing markets, real estate prices have skyrocketed in many cities and metropolitan areas across Germany. These developments have not only shifted the macro-level distribution of asset wealth among homeowners but have also resulted in price spikes in rental markets, which in turn have intensified social and economic risks among renters. This preregistered study aims to provide a theoretical rationale for, and first-time insights into, the determinants of individual preferences for rent control. It argues that policy preferences are shaped by individuals’ economic and geographic positions in the housing market. It not only explores differences between homeowners and renters but also considers how heterogeneity in exposure to the burden of rental costs—structured by local rents and disposable income—explains differences within the group of renters. The results reveal the precedence of egotropic considerations over geotropic effects of common market exposures. Homeowners oppose rent control far more strongly than renters do, whose support for rent control is primarily a function of income. Market rents, in contrast, only heighten support for rent control among low-income renters. These findings deepen our understanding of the politicization of housing policy in Germany and advance important debates on political reactions to housing markets.

George A. Kondor (1995) has recently developed a model that combines the imposition of third-degree price discrimination and rent control on a competitive housing market and found that such a regulatory regime might increase landlords' profits and cause the supply of rental housing to increase. As Kondor has pointed out, conventional analysis concludes that rent control leads to reductions in the quantity of housing and a redistribution of wealth from landlords to housing consumers. Most economists agree that old-fashioned rent control that freezes rents in nominal terms redistributes wealth, deters new construction, causes abandonment of housing units, reduces maintenance and mobility, creates mismatches between tenants and housing units, causes rental units to be converted to owner-occupied housing, and stimulates black markets and other methods (such as key money) for getting around the controls. However, one prominent urban economist (Arnott 1995) has a mildly dissenting view. Arnott believes that a well-designed version of newer forms of rent control (with exemptions for new construction, rent adjustments for inflation and verifiable increases in expenses, and regulations regarding maintenance) can be beneficial. For example, in a housing market that can be characterized by heterogeneous housing units, asymmetric information, and search costs, a moderate rent-control program can restrict the ability of landlords to use their market power. Problems caused by decreases in real rents do not arise with newer forms of rent control. Arnott further points out that, under such a system, an increase in the demand for housing leads to a greater increase in the quantity of housing supplied than with an uncontrolled market. With an uncontrolled market, an increase

We propose a novel housing market model to explore the effectiveness of rent control. Our model reveals that the expectation formation and learning behavior of boundedly rational homebuyers, switching between extrapolative and regressive expectation rules subject to their past forecasting accuracy, may create endogenous housing market dynamics. We show that policymakers may use rent control to reduce the rent level, although such policies may have undesirable effects on the house price and the housing stock. However, we are also able to prove that well-designed rent control may help policymakers to stabilize housing market dynamics, even without creating housing market distortions.

Summary Advocates of rent control often argue that rent control aids the mixing of rich and poor, and perhaps of the races as well. Economic theory does not necessarily predict that rent control will reduce segregation. The best case for rent control as an aid to integration is that it creates pockets of low rent (and low quality) apartments in expensive cities. However, by creating an excess of demand over supply, rent control ensures that apartments will be allocated on the basis of landlord preferences, which may in fact be segregationist. Furthermore, when rent control induces poor renters to live in rich cities, those poor renters are generally older, long term renters, who are less likely to have young children living at home and are less likely to benefit most from integration. Empirically, rent control seems to have allowed some poorer (and older) tenants to live in expensive Manhattan, but rent control in the declining cities of New Jersey seems to have increased the isolation of the poor. Rent control is a very socially costly means of occasionally getting integration, and housing vouchers or supply-side policies seem likely to be much more effective.

Intertenancy rent decontrol (referred to in Ontario as vacancy decontrol) forms the headstone of the Ontario rent-control system. The transition from a relatively rigid rent-control regime to intertenancy decontrol created distortions in the rental market, the most significant being the creation of a two-tier rent system with rent on decontrolled units above the rent that would have existed in the absence of controls. As an intertenancy system matures, maturation diminishes these distortions and recontrol provisions provide protection for long duration tenants. Alternative options for terminating intertenancy decontrol while retaining rent control all entail significant economic costs compared to the mature decontrol regime presently in Ontario.

We exploit quasi-experimental variation in assignment of rent control to study its impacts on tenants, landlords, and the overall rental market. Leveraging new data tracking individuals’ migration, we find rent control increased renters’ probabilities of staying at their addresses by nearly 20%. Landlords treated by rent control reduced rental housing supply by 15%, causing a 5.1% city-wide rent increase. Using a dynamic, neighborhood choice model, we find rent control offered large benefits to covered tenants. Welfare losses from decreased housing supply could be mitigated if insurance against rent increases were provided as government social insurance, instead of a regulated landlord mandate.