- Buenos Aires is seeing apartment rents down 40% and supply up over 170%, the WSJ reported this week.
- That comes after Argentina scrapped long-standing rent controls.
- The controls limited annual rent increases, causing landlords to leave units empty or hike up initial lease prices.
Buenos Aires is seeing a rental market boom.
Since last October, rents have fallen 40% and supply has skyrocketed over 170%, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The increasing affordability comes after Argentina did away with restrictions on year-to-year rent increases, which sent initial lease prices soaring and locked up some of the city's available supply.
Under former President Alberto Fernández, the country employed rent controls to minimize rent hikes starting in 2020. The law required a minimum of a three-year lease contract, and dictated that prices could only increase year-to-year at a set rate from the central bank.
But since they could only raise prices once a year, landlords eager to avoid inflationary losses hiked up initial rent prices for new leases, making the market unaffordable for many renters.
Other landlords left apartments vacant or turned them into vacation rentals, with tourists paying for the accommodations in a more stable currency.
Amid little supply and high prices, a housing affordability crisis ensued, with rents soaring double-digit percentages. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment skyrocketed to 27 times that of 2019, a Zonaprop report found.
Prices are now easing as Javier Milei, the country's recently elected president, is working to get rid of strict price controls on everything from rent to food to clothing.
Those controls are leftovers from Fernández's left-wing policies and Fair Prices initiative.
Milei's move marks a bid to invigorate the country's sluggish economy, which has a record-high annual inflation rate of 237%. That marks a decline since March, when the annual inflation rate hit 287%.
Some of the country's inhabitants have gotten creative in a weak economy, with one province creating its own currency to deal with budget shortfalls and the peso's decline in value.
Milei won his campaign last year with calls for the potential adoption of the US dollar as the official currency and promises to curb inflation with aggressive economic reform, which he warned would cause a painful economic shock before the positive benefits are felt.
