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Two indicators for lowering the rent

6/10/202618 min

One specific type of affordable housing used to be popular in American cities, kept rents low, then nearly vanished. Is it time to reconsider boarding houses and single room occupancy units? If they lowered rents in cities, why did they go away? We have the history.

Then, let’s talk about corporate landlords. They’re blamed for driving up rents. Studies show they do the opposite. When corporate landlords come to town, they do buy up homes, which can raise the price to buy, but at the same time lower rents. We’ll parse the impact as we consider a Trump administration plan to restrict corporate home ownership.

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The original episodes of the Indicator were hosted by Darian Woods and Wailin Wong. They were produced by Julia Ritchey, Cooper Katz McKim and Corey Bridges with engineering by Travis Hagan and Robert Rodriguez. They were fact checked by Vito Emanuel and Sierra Juarez. Kate Concannon edits the show. This episode of Planet Money was produced by James Sneed with help from Emma Murphy. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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Clips

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Transcript preview

First 90 seconds

  1. Speaker 10:00

    This message comes from Avalara. What's it like running a business with Avalara? No thinking about tax and compliance. It's handled. Calculating, filing, validating accurately and audit defensively. Avalara, agentic tax and compliance with confidence.

  2. Amanda Cantrell· Soundbite0:16

    This is Planet Money from NPR.

  3. Darian Woods· Host0:20

    A few years ago, Amanda Cantrell was looking for a new house to live with her boyfriend and a friend. She wanted to rent a home with a large garage that would take pets.

  4. Amanda Cantrell· Soundbite0:32

    I have a rescue dog. His name is Digby.

  5. Whelan Wong· Host0:34

    Amanda was searching in one suburb in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and she noticed a lot of the houses were owned or managed by big corporations.

  6. Amanda Cantrell· Soundbite0:43

    It seems that those companies own all of those houses in that suburb. I, I didn't see one private landlord when I was looking.

  7. Darian Woods· Host0:49

    This made Amanda a little concerned for when she becomes a buyer.

  8. Amanda Cantrell· Soundbite0:53

    We would like to buy a home in the future, and the fact that corporate investors can take all of them feels unfair.

  9. Whelan Wong· Host1:00

    This feeling of unfairness crosses the political spectrum. The 21st Century Road to Housing Act is a bill aimed at improving housing affordability. It was passed in a bipartisan sweep, and this bill restricts large institutional investors from owning too many single-family houses.

  10. Darian Woods· Host1:18

    There are pockets in the country where institutional investors account for a higher share of homeowners, but across the country, it's tiny, less than 1%. So we wanted to know, could banning

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