The Impact of a New Rent Control Law on Tenants and Owners
Summary Quote: To summarize our main results, we find that the introduction of rent control caused property values in St. Paul to decline by about 6%, on average, over the following three months. Rental properties declined by about 12%. This loss in value is driven by lower future rents, which benefits current renters. Using the losses in property value as a measure of the transfer of wealth from owners to renters, we find that the transfers were largest in neighborhoods where renters had higher incomes and owners had lower incomes, opposite of the law’s goal of benefiting lower-income neighborhoods.