The Wall Street Journal’s Peter Grant and Will Parker explain how rent regulation in a number of states is causing investors to move to other markets.
Local governments in New York and states like California and Oregon have strengthened rent control or introduced new limits on annual rent increases for most properties over the last year. These efforts have pummeled sales and prices in New York City, where the dollar volume of rental-apartment building sales fell 51% in the third quarter, and have weighed on values and trading in other markets that have seen rent measures adopted or expanded.
But in markets where lawmakers are not enacting or pushing for rent rules, building prices have remained at peak levels even after more than a decade of steady price increases.
Nationwide, investors paid a record average of $158,296 per apartment in the third quarter of 2019, compared with $151,766 in all of 2018 and $106,074 in 2012, according to Marcus & Millichap.
Read more here.
