The government heavily interferes in the housing industry. Hence, the higher costs. It's the same for everything the government interferes with - such as education and health care.
For examples:
1. there are 57,000 unoccupied apartments in NYC because city regulations on rents make them unprofitable to rent out.
2. the glacial pace of issuing building permits for burned out homes in LA.
3. the sudden influx of many millions of immigrants pushes up the demand for housing, resulting in higher prices
> And the reasons why they are vacant is much more complex "because city regulations on rents make them unprofitable to rent out".
Is it actually more complex than that? If the regulation that makes it unprofitable to rent them out is rent control, that's still an accurate statement of why they're not being rented out.
> there are 57,000 unoccupied apartments in NYC
That's about 2.4% of the total number of rented apartments, and about 1.5% of the total housing stock.
How long do you think those apartments are unoccupied, on average?
What portion of the stock do you think would normally be healthy to have on the market?
google prompt: "how many unoccupied apartments in nyc"
Scroll down a bit and read the section: "Key Causes of Vacancies"
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I genuinely can not understand how anyone with basic knowledge of economics could believe that government intervention is not responsible for the majority of rent price increases
The market, left to its own, will keep building because someone will see the prices people are willing to pay and think “I want in on that” but then the government comes in and blocks them from building. No building = supply lower than demand which always equals higher costs
Further, It would only have taken you one 5 second search to see the ways government regulations can cause unoccupied apartments
https://www.google.com/search?q=in+what+ways+can+government+...
That's because you inserted the word "all" which was quite absent from what I wrote.
Please try again.
P.S. google "how many unoccupied apartments in nyc"
> all unoccupied apartments in a market
Which market are you thinking of?
Let's assume I'm talking about the same market as the person I responded to.
> the same market as the person I responded to
Los Angeles? Where the homeowner vacancy rate is 0.7% and rental vacancy 4%?
If you literally weren't thinking of anywhere when your responded, where did you get the notion from?
[1] https://api.census.gov/data/missing_key.html +/- one percent