Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
Rent control or no, I think the number of people looking to make a long-term bet on Chicago real estate isn't huge. People have understandable hesitation to buy property in the city given the trends in crime, taxes, schools, etc.
I don't know that rent control would shift people into condos - I think it's more likely we just get a lot of deadweight loss as people re-discover the suburbs or just never move to Chicago at all.
|
Chicago is great. It was adding college grads like crazy in the 90's, started adding them faster in the 2000's and it's adding them even faster now. I remember stories in Tribune in the early 2000's about "3,000 new apartments are coming online in the next couple years? Is that too many for Chicago? Will that many people move to the Loop?"
There are cranes all over the city and I think only Seattle and New York have more? People have been wringing their hands about schools, taxes and crime in every city in the U.S. for 80 years. It would be better if schools were better, crime was lower and taxes were optimized to maximize prosperity and well being. But Chicago is in a great situation and if I listened to people who said the same thing to me in '97, 2007 or 2017 and moved to some boring house with a big yard in front and no sidewalks, my life would be a lot worse.
Regardless, my claims about the effects of rent control are not my guesses but based upon analysis from other places that enacted rent control. Here's a good recent piece:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...ster-we-feared