It doesn’t. The landlord captures increases in value from things like better public infrastructure or outside economic development in the same fashion. Tech workers in San Francisco, for example, have created massive amounts of wealth and value in the city, much of which has then been sucked up by landlords and developers who provide nothing even remotely comparable. They just profit from owning something other people do work in and build on top of.
I think it does change it somewhat though. For example Tokyo has seen a growth in population but no increase in rent. The zoning there allows construction whereas bay area zoning does not.
If car production was outlawed existing car owners would get a windfall. But that's not due to some intrinsic feature of being a car owner. Land is definitely more limited than cars. But it seems to me that land scarcity explains only a portion of the increase in prices in San Francisco.
The difference from ag land is that the builders in tokyo are doing real activity to provide the housing. Lots of businesses benefit from externalities, not just landlords.
The citizens of San Francisco have basically given the landlords a monopoly but not approving higher density zoning.
Only 43% of SF residents are homeowners, and many fewer are landlords, yet it is very rare for rezoning or higher density legislation to get passed. There are plenty of developers that want to develop in SF and create some competition for the existing landlords, forcing everyone to offer better services. Instead, we get laws like statewide rent control which reduce the potential long term value of new development, further reducing both supply and competition.
Companies capture external value all the time, that isn't the core problem. Improved infrastructure and more wealth in a city would normally attract more competition reducing the total amount of that value that each landlord could capture.
> They just profit from owning something other people do work and build on top of.
The same way people who own shares in a company that pays dividends profit from work other people do. Those landlords either built the apartment buildings themselves, or spent the capital investment to buy the building from a previous owner.
(to your comment below, HN isn't letting me respond)
So in the end, this isn't about the business model of landlords this is about fundamentally different views on the legitimacy of private property. That's a topic much broader than rent and real estate.
