Re:Speech by Chair Powell on monetary policy and price stabi...
by BirdieNZ on Tuesday August 30, 2022 @07:23AM
(#32648984)
The theory sounds good, but in practice we can see that rents stay quite stable as a ratio of income, and not as a ratio of interest rates, or house prices, or anything else that would be a landlord cost. Check out the rent to income ratio in your own municipality and compare to, say, rent-to-interest rate, or rent-to-property-price. Landlord costs only get passed down when there is significant room to increase rents in the tenants income and there is insufficient supply to handle the number of potential tenants.
> ...individual landlords may charge less than what individual tenants can bear...
I lived in a supply-constrained city once and my landlord, a nationwide public company, could have charged me significantly more without prompting me to move. I am one individual though and you called out that exception.
However, had I been priced out of the unit in which I lived I would have found a smaller and/or less desirable unit at lower cost. Rental units vary in size and quality.
The existence of individuals who can pay more and the non-fungibilty of rental stock makes me suspect that such taxes will simply be passed on.