One of the big housing stories of this year was that Austin has built a lot of new apartments and it is now causing rents to fall precipitously — by as much as 22%. The market is working.

But as we also talk about on this blog, the benefits of new "luxury" housing don't just apply to those who can afford it. Since real estate development happens on the margin — in other words, it's based on the feasibility of the next unit of housing supply, not an average for the market — new market-rate housing typically needs to cater to the top end of the market. Otherwise, it wouldn't be economically feasible to build it.

However, study after study also shows that the delivery of any new housing in a city broadly tempers rents, including in a city's oldest housing stock. This is true in virtually all cities:

The above chart is from this recent Bloomberg article, talking about how "luxury apartments are bringing rents down." But if you look closely, there is one city on this chart that appears to be an outlier: Miami.

Despite adding a respectable number of homes, rents have not fallen as much as you might expect given the figures for the other cities on this list. The intuitive explanation is likely that Miami is in the midst of experiencing an extraordinary wealth transfer.

For the five-year period through to 2022, it was estimated that some 30,000 New Yorkers with combined annual incomes of $9.2 billion moved to Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. It's also an important capital safe haven for Latin America.

I vividly remember looking at condo listings in Miami in 2008 and thinking, "Damn, this is cheap!" I even tried to find a job there after grad school, but at that time, it was no place for a new real estate developer. My best bet would have been something in loan workouts.

Who could have predicted such an incredible transformation? It isn't the third most important global city in the US according to the numbers, but it certainly has a lot of momentum right now. In this instance, new supply does not appear to be more than offsetting demand.

Cover photo by Valeriia Neganova on Unsplash

One of the basic principles behind rent control policies is that you're trying to make housing more affordable for some, while at the same time more expensive for others. Economics is the study of choice, and this is a choice, whether it gets talked about or not. Previously, we spoke about a memo from Howard Marks where he describes the impact of rent control in New York City. In economic terms, that impact looks like this:

• Some people who couldn't afford to live in New York City if rents were set by the free market get the opportunity to live in the city (their housing is more affordable)

• Other people who would like to live in New York City and could afford higher rents can't because there are no available apartments (rent controls reduce housing supply)

• And lastly, landlords with unregulated apartments can command higher rents than would be the case if new housing supply were not being discouraged (their housing is more expensive)

Today, let's talk about a recent research paper (June 2025) published in the Journal of Housing Economics called, "Rent control and the supply of affordable housing." What the authors discovered was the following:

• Restrictive rent control reforms are associated with a 10% reduction in the total number of rental units available in a city

• Restrictive rent control reforms led to an increase in the availability of units affordable to extremely low-income households

• This was offset by a decline in the availability of units to other income groups, particularly those at slightly higher affordability thresholds

Once again, we see the economic trade-offs inherent in supply-side interventions like rent control. It's better for some and worse for others. However, governments tend to favor it because it's "free" to them; the costs are borne by landlords and renters at higher affordability thresholds. I'll let all of you comment on whether you think this is good or bad, but regardless, I think it's crucial that we acknowledge the trade-offs being made.

Cover photo by Benjamin Ashton on Unsplash

It's fun to examine projects that I could never underwrite or build in Toronto. Here's another one from Tokyo — a 10-storey, single-stair apartment building on a busy street, next to a metro station.

The site itself is only 59.49 m2 (~640 ft2), and the building footprint is 47.97 m2 (~516 sf), for a total of 388.28 m2 (~4,179 ft2). There's retail on the first and second floors, one home per floor on levels 3 through 8, and then a two-storey home on levels 9 and 10. All of this is serviced by a single elevator, and a single open-air egress stair off the back.

The building itself uses a simple structural system involving 6 columns (which you can see evenly placed on the plans). According to the architect's notes, they started with a simple 4-column design, but apparently the columns were too large and compromised the suite layouts.

Tokyo is a unique city and this kind of housing wouldn't work everywhere. But there's a universal lesson here: removing barriers and allowing small infill projects is a good thing for cities. Until these projects are feasible, we won't know exactly what the market actually wants and could support.

Photos from Hiroyuki Ito Architects