This is why ‘competition lowers prices’ is a load of bullshit.
Ya’ll ever seen Walgreens and CVS? Same prices, right next to each other.
What about 2 gas station on opposite sides of the street, charging the exact same price for their fuel?
It’s a gentleman’s agreement at best, and a cartel at worst. Either way, no business is going to start an ‘undercut war’ because they don’t want their opponents to do the same thing.
Here’s another fine example: Nvidia and AMD. AMD releases worse GPUs, then just piggybacks off of Nvidia’s ridiculous prices.
It’s all a game to funnel as much money as possible to as few people as possible.
While true, there are some markets where these properties are fighting for a very finite supply of tenants. If they see they are lagging behind in their leasing, they really don’t have any other choice than to lower their prices to make sure they don’t have any vacant units. The industry term is called “vacancy loss” and it’s the one thing the upper management money men actually fear. A unit without someone inside it is literally bleeding money from them so they’ll do nearly anything to fill it.
Hopefully soon they won’t be able to share their prices as easily and they’ll have to fight for their lives by lowering prices to fill vacancies before another property snaps them up.
You’re right, except in 99.9% of these situations they don’t ACTUALLY lower prices. They just offer a “signing bonus” like 1 month free rent, then charge just as much as everyone else for the other 11 months.
That signing bonus doesn’t appear in this tool, so prices don’t actually go down.
I had one landlord offer me $200 off my security deposit if I would clean the two-foot-high mound of actual dogshit from the kitchen before moving in. Like, not even a break on the actual rent, just a lowering of the deposit and she thought I’d be too stupid to know the difference. TBF she probably never returned anybody’s deposit so in a sense she really would have been saving me money.
This is why ‘competition lowers prices’ is a load of bullshit.
Ya’ll ever seen Walgreens and CVS? Same prices, right next to each other.
What about 2 gas station on opposite sides of the street, charging the exact same price for their fuel?
It’s a gentleman’s agreement at best, and a cartel at worst. Either way, no business is going to start an ‘undercut war’ because they don’t want their opponents to do the same thing.
Here’s another fine example: Nvidia and AMD. AMD releases worse GPUs, then just piggybacks off of Nvidia’s ridiculous prices.
It’s all a game to funnel as much money as possible to as few people as possible.
competition only lowers prices if supply isn’t limited sadly. And due to how the housing system works, that would virtually never happen.
It could. If something causes housing to be less in demand. Like negative population growth.
A duopoly is not a competitive market. It’s only when you have lots of suppliers and lots of purchasers that a market is actually competitive.
While true, there are some markets where these properties are fighting for a very finite supply of tenants. If they see they are lagging behind in their leasing, they really don’t have any other choice than to lower their prices to make sure they don’t have any vacant units. The industry term is called “vacancy loss” and it’s the one thing the upper management money men actually fear. A unit without someone inside it is literally bleeding money from them so they’ll do nearly anything to fill it.
Hopefully soon they won’t be able to share their prices as easily and they’ll have to fight for their lives by lowering prices to fill vacancies before another property snaps them up.
You’re right, except in 99.9% of these situations they don’t ACTUALLY lower prices. They just offer a “signing bonus” like 1 month free rent, then charge just as much as everyone else for the other 11 months.
That signing bonus doesn’t appear in this tool, so prices don’t actually go down.
I had one landlord offer me $200 off my security deposit if I would clean the two-foot-high mound of actual dogshit from the kitchen before moving in. Like, not even a break on the actual rent, just a lowering of the deposit and she thought I’d be too stupid to know the difference. TBF she probably never returned anybody’s deposit so in a sense she really would have been saving me money.
True, but these aren’t usually the markets in major cities. It’s why rent is actually affordable outside of them.