i have no idea how to get a rent controlled apartment. inherit it maybe? i dunno. for a while i have been obsessed with minimalism and efficient space usage and owning fewer and fewr (but nicer) things and i want to get a really really really tiny apartment just north of columbus circle. when i say small i mean the whole apartment is smaller than your bedroom. i would pay about 1500 i think.
Holy crap. My 1200sf apt in Mandeville is $1200 and to me that is outrageous. My house note in WF, complete with taxes and insurance was $1150.
Man, that's pretty wild. I could definitely do it for a little while. Not sure about long term. I lived in a 19 square meter (about 190 square foot) apartment in Paris for five months in college. You could throw a rock and hit the arc de triomphe. I was just off of the Champs Elysee. It was badass.
So Martin, some apartments are designated for rent control and you just have to get lucky and find one that is available?
Of course you apartment in Paris was badass. Location is all that matters. People ( and especially Americans) are way too obsessed with space. Space sucks it just stores crap you don't need. And again, I have no idea how you get rent controlled apartments. Like most government plans to help people, it is arbitrary and counterproductive and pointless.
Rent control is just not an issue for most people. I've never lived in a city with rent control. When I was renting, the control was how much squalor you were willing to put up with for low rent. I now own rental houses in a city with no rent control and I set my rates to get the kind of people I want as tenants. Right now it is about 15-20% below the average in the parish. If you set rates at the highest level, you get people who can pay it, but these people are looking to buy or they are mobile. They pay high rent for a few months, then abandon their deposit and leave, making me lose rent while the house is vacant and suffering increased insurance, clean-up and maintenance costs. But I've found a level that's high enough to keep out the riffraff, yet low enough to be affordable to the stable, long-term tenants that I want. I know even less than martin about rent control, but I assume it has something to do with population density in a few cities like NYC. If everything on Manhattan went to Dubai prices it would be disastrous. Nobody but the ultra-wealthy could live there, the middle class departs, and foreign workers living in dormitories do all the menial labor. It just would not work in a place as economically vital as New York. The commuting systems are maxed out already. The city couldn't provide enough transport if all of the middle class and lower income people had to commute from far away where housing is affordable. Commerce in NYC would suffer. The city had to have a reason for implementing rent control. Frankly, to most of us NYC prices and salaries are completely out of control and out of touch with America in general. NYC rules don't apply anywhere else.
This ties in nicely with the point I was making in the minimum wage thread about poverty and equilibrium being relative. Dude is paying 800 a month for 78-square feet. My house note in Morgan City is 500 a month for 1600 square feet, and I own it! But I will admit, sometimes I think a guy like that may have a pretty good deal in not being tied down by stuff. But 800 a month?
