Question

Why do you think governments frequently attempt to control apartment rents but not house prices?

Answer 1

Rented houses are typically demanded by low and middle income groups who do not have much purchasing power when compared with owners of houses. So when landlords increase the rent, the tenants gets exploited this would make difficult for tenants to cope up with increase in prices, whereas the owners of houses would be able to bear the increase in cost. Hence in order to protect low income people the government intervenes through rent control as a measure of price controlling mechanism which is termed as price ceiling.