To me this is, to the extent it means anything at all, a pretty strong argument that short supply is not the problem. Which kind of makes sense. The problem is predatory corporate landlords. Build more units, the predatory landlords say “oh sweet” and use some of their Scrooge McDuck pile of money to buy them all up and rent them at inflated prices because they’re “luxury” as new construction. That seems a more likely to me than the other way.
What the fuck is this linear fit lol
To me this is, to the extent it means anything at all, a pretty strong argument that short supply is not the problem. Which kind of makes sense. The problem is predatory corporate landlords. Build more units, the predatory landlords say “oh sweet” and use some of their Scrooge McDuck pile of money to buy them all up and rent them at inflated prices because they’re “luxury” as new construction. That seems a more likely to me than the other way.
Yeah the graph doesn’t even reference housing construction, right? And even Austin saw a rent increase, just less than other cities.
Not having the axis at 0 on both to distract from rents being artificially higher