> Because of rent control, nobody builds rental apartments because it isn't profitable.

I'd like to understand this better.

I live in a city of a quarter-million people in a US state that no one in tech cares about. There's no rent control here. I pay $400 plus utilities for a 1000-square-foot apartment in a decent location. Clearly my landlord is making a profit off of this and similar apartments at $400 a month. But I'm often told that, if my apartment was in New York, he'd be taking a loss even at $2000 a month. Why is that?

The only difference that has occurred to me so far is the initial cost of the land in a dense city, which could potentially be enough to tie up many years of profits. But that's still just a one-time cost. What am I missing?