Argentina Ended Rent Control While The Netherlands Expanded It: Guess Which One Now Has A Housing Crisis

This year, two countries have made opposite moves on rent control. Argentina was under tight rent control that reduced supply and made finding an apartment "mission impossible". After removing rent control, housing supply doubled, and Buenos Aires saw an increase in available units of 195%. Meanwhile, pricing also stabilized as the market opened up.

By contrast, the Netherlands expanded rent caps to cover 96% of the rental market this year. The results: owners of rental properties are selling their buildings and getting out of the rental housing market, while the tenants of those units are being forced to try and find one of the few remaining market-rate units or purchase a home in the Netherlands' hot housing market.

These natural laboratories show us that extreme rent control hurts the very people it's supposed to help: tenants.