It is? I mean, if you owned an apartment that could rent for $3000/mo, then keeping it empty is a direct reduction of your income by $3000/mo.
The problem seems to be that offering an apartment under a rent control regime creates an opportunity cost, so maybe the owner thinks it's worthwhile to "spend" $3k/mo to achieve a future return some other way.
If you've rented a rent-controlled apartment for a long time, even if it's huge (because you rented it when you had a large family), then it is not cripplingly expensive to hold on to it when your needs change.
It is cheaper, in fact, for you to hold on to your 6 bedroom apartment, though you use just one room, than it would be to swap it for a one bedroom apartment because you'd lose the rent control price. (See the example of Nat Sherman.)
If you move to another rent controlled Unit, there's very limited situations where the landlord can increase the rent beyond the limits.
A big problem is probably once you've implemented rent control, changing the system later becomes increasingly more difficult the longer it's been in place... as someone is always going to lose out.
If you move to another rent controlled Unit, there's very limited situations where the landlord can increase the rent beyond the limits.
In a city with rent controls, however, finding another unit that is the right size and has rent control is not easy (because everyone is hanging onto their units — and in some cases illegally subletting them). This becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, where there is a decreased supply of available units, which makes it less likely that people in rent-controlled units will dare to venture out and look for another unit that is a better fit in terms of size/location/etc.
If your monthly rent in the city is between 500$-2000$/mo, but you could feasibly rent 100$-500$/day, you might opt for the second. This would take the property off the long-term rental market.
That depends on the secondary capital effects of the reduction in supply. If you keep that and several other apartments empty in an area then you force up the rents and capital prices on the ones you do let out.
Just like De Beers drip feeding diamonds onto the market, or the Saudis drip feeding oil.
It's more likely that the tenants could potentially damage the property and will require maintenance to the owner, and the rent isn't worth it vs the property's natural capital gain. Esp. if the property was rent controlled.
Property prices (and thus rental prices) needs to float at a market rate - any artificial control will just distort it in such a way that it doesn't really make it more beneficial. If housing affordability is the issue, that's a matter of government policy problem (from zoning, to taxing capital gains too lax).
Not realizing potential profit is not the same as losing money. If I own an apartment that costs $0 to maintain, then not renting out that apartment costs me nothing. It's not "cripplingly expensive" just because I _could_ rent it out for $3000/mo. It actually has zero impact on my income, and I could stay like that forever.
The cost of keeping an apartment empty is only the amount it costs to maintain it.
So, while it is true that not renting would mean not getting that $3000 a month, it really comes out to chump change when you consider how the price of the property has rapidly risen.