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Avenging the tenants: Regulating the middle man's rents

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  • Jan David Bakker
  • Nikhil Datta

Abstract

We explore the role of intermediaries in the rental market. Using novel UK data on fees letting agencies charged to both tenants and landlords, combined with a matched property-agency listings dataset, we study the effects of a policy that regulated the fees charged to tenants. We estimate pass-throughs of the tenant fee price cap to landlord fees and rental prices, explore demand responses, and entry and exit of both letting agents and landlords. Agents absorb 70% of the regulation and landlords the remaining 30%. Micro-BLP estimates imply a landlord-agency demand elasticity of -1.6 and a second-order elasticity of 9.7 suggesting a highly concave local demand response. Tenant demand is completely unresponsive to the tenant fee reduction. There is no market exit of landlords or agencies. Hence, the policy successfully reduced the cost of renting without any adverse effects. Our results are consistent with letting agents extracting rents from tenants due to tenants' inattention to fees.

Suggested Citation

  • Jan David Bakker & Nikhil Datta, 2024. "Avenging the tenants: Regulating the middle man's rents," CEP Discussion Papers dp2019, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp2019
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Joan Monràs & José Garcia Montalvo, 2021. "The effect of second generation rent controls: New evidence from Catalonia," Economics Working Papers 1836, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Apr 2022.
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    4. Mense, Andreas & Michelsen, Claus & Kholodilin, Konstantin A., 2023. "Rent Control, Market Segmentation, and Misallocation: Causal Evidence from a Large-Scale Policy Intervention," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    5. Rebecca Diamond & Tim McQuade & Franklin Qian, 2019. "The Effects of Rent Control Expansion on Tenants, Landlords, and Inequality: Evidence from San Francisco," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(9), pages 3365-3394, September.
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    Keywords

    housing policy; rental market; two-sided market;
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