Abstract
Recent years have seen a great upsurge in the number and types of laws that control the relationship between landlords and tenants. Particularly important among such laws are those which extend the warranty of habitability, often referred to as habitability laws. They award tenants new powers by substituting for the doctrine of caveat emptor the doctrine of caveat venditor. This paper examines the effects which habitability laws have had on the stock of substandard rental housing. Substandard housing is defined in four different ways, and for each a separate equation is estimated for the period 1960 to 1974-75. The most stringent of such laws - receivership laws - are found to have a statistically significant effect on the reduction of substandard housing in SMSAs. Specifically, between 1960 and 1974-75 in the presence of receivership laws the stock of substandard rental housing was found to have decreased on the average between 1.4 and 4.6 per cent, depending on how substandard is defined.
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