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Collusion among landlords can only work in a housing shortage. With an abundance of rental units, individual landlords would "defect" (in a game theory sense) and lower rents in order to fill their vacant units at the market price.




Don't we have a housing shortage? Also, many (institutional?) landlords are happy to leave units vacant and/or evict tenants spuriously for higher profits.

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Yes we do. The OP's point is that _if_ there is collusion, building housing will help solve the collusion problem _and_ solve the housing shortage.

Spending effort on theoretical collusion which may or may not be happening is a diversion from the real problem, which is lack of housing supply.

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Explain the economics of keeping units vacant in the face of increasing supply.

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Maybe read the referenced article?

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