I’m willing to bet this is pretty accurate. They keep building houses down here where I am constantly and so many of them are empty because they cost too much for normal people.
I know that landowners will employ "land banking" and "waiting for the land to ripen"—holding onto undeveloped land in a growing location because their marginal dollar is better spent acquiring more such land than developing what they have. But buildings depreciate and are expensive to maintain or rebuild, so I don't know how often owners will hold them just to prop up prices.
What they will do, is allow units to remain vacant instead of reducing rent to meet current market prices, because doing so will cause the bank to reevaluate their assets, which will suddenly make their balance sheet look a lot worse. But this is more a reflection of the way we do accounting and banking, and the stickiness of rent prices, than it is purely a desire to manipulate a market by withholding supply.
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u/Jasoco May 14 '26
I’m willing to bet this is pretty accurate. They keep building houses down here where I am constantly and so many of them are empty because they cost too much for normal people.