Buried in the middle, a whole section on "won't landlords just pass costs into tenants" passed over with the weakest deflections. This is willful naivety.
Evidence is presented suggesting landlords don't lower rent when costs go down, and a hand-wavy claim is made by-symmetry that they won't raise rents when costs go up. It's nonsense, there's nothing to rebut.
I think i see the error in your thinking. You believe that rent is low-margin and cannot be sustained at a given level if costs rise.
That's never been true anywhere I've lived. Landlords generally charge the maximum the market will bear. In high-demand areas, letting is highly profitable. A London flat, say, will generally net five figures above the mortgage.
LVT is, definitionally, only high in those places.
No I don't. I believe landlords grab any excuse to price gouge. You're tilting at a strawman.
Edit 1: We agree rent is a problem, we disagree that your LVT "one weird trick" is effective, and I'm hostile to the trojan-horse-end-of-income-tax which gets this stuff on HN in the first place.
Edit 2: you'll win more hearts without the patronizing/smug rhetoric.
Apologies for the condescension. The position you've outlined makes no logical sense to me, so i discounted it. Let me ask in a spirit of enquiry: Why are they waiting for LVT?
They hike the rent ten percent and say it's because of LVT - if LVT didn't exist, they'd say it was because of the war on Iran, or interest rates, or mercury in retrograde.
mwkaufma · · focus · HN ↗
psd1 · · focus · HN ↗
mwkaufma · · focus · HN ↗
psd1 · · focus · HN ↗
That's never been true anywhere I've lived. Landlords generally charge the maximum the market will bear. In high-demand areas, letting is highly profitable. A London flat, say, will generally net five figures above the mortgage.
LVT is, definitionally, only high in those places.
Does this help you understand?
mwkaufma · · focus · HN ↗
Edit 1: We agree rent is a problem, we disagree that your LVT "one weird trick" is effective, and I'm hostile to the trojan-horse-end-of-income-tax which gets this stuff on HN in the first place.
Edit 2: you'll win more hearts without the patronizing/smug rhetoric.
psd1 · · focus · HN ↗
They hike the rent ten percent and say it's because of LVT - if LVT didn't exist, they'd say it was because of the war on Iran, or interest rates, or mercury in retrograde.