"Undercutting the market" isn't really how it works when it comes to rent, because you're not actually making a product. You're talking about buying a property from a current owner and then letting people stay there at a discounted rate, which means that the whale who you bought the property from already got compensated. They won't care that you're undercutting them because for each person you offer discounted rent, you have to do business with them first. Meanwhile you're competing against a bunch of people who have zero qualms about charging full rent and squeezing as much as possible from their tenants, and they're going to make more money from their properties and expand more quickly.
That said, I'm not saying it can't work - for the same reason that undercutting the market isn't really a threat to landlords, other landlords expanding more quickly isn't going to "put you out of business" or anything. We are propagandized to think that landlords are the same as business owners and that there is no difference between land and manufactured goods, but the truth is that they have very different economic properties. If I make shoes and someone finds a more profitable business model for shoes and undercuts me, then I won't be able to sell any shoes anymore. But if I have real estate then I can sit back and collect income from it no matter what a competitor does. Even saying that landlords are competitors to other landlords isn't really accurate. When you undercut a business by manufacturing goods, you force other business to lower their prices to match yours. But when dealing with land, where your supply is limited and the only way to get more of it is by buying from the people you're hoping to undercut, you don't force prices down, you're just doing a favor to the first lucky person to snatch up the deal. Which, you know, cool, but it's not substantially different from just finding a random person on the street and handing them a check.
This makes sense, but I don't know if you could convince other landlords that is how it worked. If the co-op got large enough, or even if other landlords got wind of the idea, I can almost guarantee they would work to undermine it. But that is true of all leftist projects, in general
Here are the issues I see with the idea:
"Undercutting the market" isn't really how it works when it comes to rent, because you're not actually making a product. You're talking about buying a property from a current owner and then letting people stay there at a discounted rate, which means that the whale who you bought the property from already got compensated. They won't care that you're undercutting them because for each person you offer discounted rent, you have to do business with them first. Meanwhile you're competing against a bunch of people who have zero qualms about charging full rent and squeezing as much as possible from their tenants, and they're going to make more money from their properties and expand more quickly.
That said, I'm not saying it can't work - for the same reason that undercutting the market isn't really a threat to landlords, other landlords expanding more quickly isn't going to "put you out of business" or anything. We are propagandized to think that landlords are the same as business owners and that there is no difference between land and manufactured goods, but the truth is that they have very different economic properties. If I make shoes and someone finds a more profitable business model for shoes and undercuts me, then I won't be able to sell any shoes anymore. But if I have real estate then I can sit back and collect income from it no matter what a competitor does. Even saying that landlords are competitors to other landlords isn't really accurate. When you undercut a business by manufacturing goods, you force other business to lower their prices to match yours. But when dealing with land, where your supply is limited and the only way to get more of it is by buying from the people you're hoping to undercut, you don't force prices down, you're just doing a favor to the first lucky person to snatch up the deal. Which, you know, cool, but it's not substantially different from just finding a random person on the street and handing them a check.
This makes sense, but I don't know if you could convince other landlords that is how it worked. If the co-op got large enough, or even if other landlords got wind of the idea, I can almost guarantee they would work to undermine it. But that is true of all leftist projects, in general