The immediate effect of rents set below where they would be set by supply and demand is that more people seek to rent apartments for themselves, now that apartments are cheaper. But, without any more apartments being built, this means that many other people cannot find vacant apartments. Moreover, long before existing buildings wear out, auxiliary services like maintenance and repair decline, since a housing shortage means that landlords are no longer under the same competitive pressures to spend money on such things in order to attract tenants, when there are more applicants than apartments
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