Rent Control and Housing Maintenance

Abstract

Controls on the conditions of renting housing can take many different forms, with different consequences for the market. This paper contains analyses of the effects of different regulatory forms on, in particular, the maintenance decision. We review and extend previous approaches and find that not all of the familiar predictions of the basic neoclassical model can be generated by a more sophisticated model. Others have extended the basic model, focusing on the maintenance aspect, but we cannot agree entirely with their conclusions. A careful specification of the relationship between costs and quality is necessary to derive useful predictions about the effects of rent and eviction controls.