I think it’s worth investigating later, but for now I’m inclined to say it is probably a little of column A and a little of column B.
If I hadn’t personally observed apartments renovated to remove features try and pass it off as a 1 bedroom prior to the pandemic, I might have considered that angle initially, but for now it is still coloring my view of what I saw in September. I think this is becoming more of a norm, and they were the norm as far as what was available at the time, but this could also have been that units with kitchens were getting filled faster at the same time I was making my observations.
What infuriated me personally wasn’t that there were so many, but that the asking prices were about the same as the asking price for an equivalent unit with a full kitchen. It’s a seller’s market, that’s what I’ve been more or less communicating all up and down the thread, but damned if that doesn’t peeve me.
When we moved out of Santa Monica, our craptastic unit was re-rented inside the 30 day window and occupied two days after we left. Why? Because it had a tiny sliver of outdoor space, which suddenly mattered a lot. I imagine that all of the tiny condos in the area are staying on the market longer because the idea of WFH from less than 500sq ft. sounds awful to pretty much everyone now.