A new report from Metropolitan Insight (MetroSight) says housing laws might be hurting the very population they aim to help. The report addresses a critical question: Do rental housing regulations lead to higher rents? Their analysis finds that, on average, they do, particularly for lower-income renters and residents of small multifamily properties. There’s a lot of detailed data in here so grab some coffee beforehand.
This study comes amid an affordability crisis that is being felt nationwide, one driven by an insufficient supply of new housing and exacerbated by restrictive zoning and permitting policies.
We examined four categories of regulation: source-of-income protections, resident screening restrictions, rules governing evictions, and state preemption laws.
For each, we analyzed the impact on rents using two distinct and separate datasets. One, from CoStar Group, contains market-level rent data from 391 U.S. metros between 2000 and 2024. The other, from the American Community Survey, tracks rental data from 307 metros between 2005 and 2023.
This study reinforces the conclusion of our earlier work: certain rental housing policies can raise the cost of providing rental housing, which we show leads to higher rents, especially for lower-income households. While they offer critical safeguards for residents, they also raise the cost of providing rental housing, which we show leads to higher rents, especially for affordable units.
Click here to read the full report.
