https://reason.com/2020/01/27/totally-predictable-consequences-of-new-yorks-rent-regulations/New York's Progressive Rent Regulations Having the Exact Same Negative Consequence That Skeptics PredictedBloomberg reported this morning that sales of apartment buildings in the Big Apple fell by 36 percent in 2019, and that the money spent on those sales fell by 40 percent. The prices investors were paying for rent-stabilized units—where allowable rent increases are set by the government and usually capped at around 1 or 2 percent per year—fell by 7 percent.
"The fact that there's no correlation between the amount you put into a building and the amount of rent you can charge has completely shifted investment interest in rent-stabilized buildings," Shimon Shkury, president of the brokerage Ariel Property Advisors, told Bloomberg.
Shkury was referring to provisions of the state's 2019 rent regulations that make it much more difficult to pass along the costs of apartment renovations (such as adding a new oven) and major capital improvements (such as adding a new roof) to tenants.
Government prevents landlords from recouping the costs of renovation, and landlords don't do those renovations. Who could have foreseen that? Guess what? The condition of rental housing in NYC will decline, too. Because landlords as a sub-species are too greedy to spend the money from the money-printer they have in their rectums on improving their properties. Or something.
