No no that's not my argument here at all. I'm not making any argument about whether the cap is enough or needed. The parent comment was arguing that because the law now says that rent couldn't increase by more than 7% they were now being advised to increase rent by that much every year (ostensibly because they are now planning to do this), and my response is that it's absurd to claim that anything in the law will change things so that you could make that sort of increase now if you couldn't already make that increase before the law existed.

Ah, gotcha I see what you are saying.

I think what OP was saying was that in an unrestricted market they have wider range (due to discretion) but given this shackle on hikes, they are going to max it out. Maxing it out means there will not be downward adjustments when warranted (economic trends) and will instead ride it out (not make it avail at lower price) because when the economy picks up they’ll more than make the loss up.

what you are arguing is the captured surplus under the supply curve. We can assume that demand is essentially inelastic for a relatively large price range (hence the introduction of rent control) so the extracted value is the area under a curve that changes rapidly over the short term, or a less volatile curve that shifts out 7% every year. I don't see how either of you can be confident in the expected future actuals.