I moved out of a $3k/month apartment in Harlem in 2015, and I kept an eye on it. They replaced the cabinets and listed it for $4k/month, and then spent a year and a half adjusting the listing up or down $100. It finally rented at the end of 2016 for $3400
But is that a problem with perverse incentives that can be fixed with regulation or a problem with a bad business person that can't really be fixed?
They weren't making money while they mispriced the rental, though.
Obviously just an anecdote, but my old landlords were very willing to eat ≈40k in unpaid rent on the off chance someone would paid pay $4k/month for that place.
and FWIW, when I moved in in 2011 the rent was $2400/month
But they weren't refusing to rent it. They were just trying to find a renter willing to pay more. That is different.
Were they actually happy to eat that cost? Or were they just failing at setting the price properly? They’re not profiting off of vacancy here - they’re just being bad at business.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to rent in NYC but an apartment at all in line with the market is leased within days, not weeks. Letting this place sit that long was absolutely a choice
But a bad one, they're not profiting from it, they're just either dumb or willing to lose money. I think everyone agrees such places exist, but I don't think it's because the people are greedy (or at least not rationally greedy).
I do wonder if they have some theory of price collusion (if we can all agree to keep our rents high, even if it means empty homes, we can make more profit), but if they do, it isn't working, because the housing market is too fragmented.
I mean are you familiar with RealPage? It’s happening and it’s working newjerseymonitor.com/2025/04/23/n...
Yes, but not to the extent that it is as much of a problem as a general shortage of housing (which isn't to say it isn't a problem, and it's illegal and shitty). And it still requires people to actually rent the apartments (at the elevated rates) to make money.
have had the same thing happen to me in NYC.
But what is the winning business strategy here? The argument is that landlords do this because it makes them more money not that sometimes landlords are bad at their jobs and lose money because of it.
The winning business strategy is if you can convince some rube to pay an inflated price, that influences the price history in the neighborhood and pushes all values up. If you own a lot of units in the area and can afford it, it’s a big upside
The housing market isn't the art market or a meme coin.
this is what i saw last time i was on the market in nyc too. it's not leaving things vacant for years, it's marking up a unit way above the norm for the neighborhood and waiting a couple months until someone who doesn't know better is willing to pay it.