apartments in my area are fairly expensive, but often come with special concessions for the first year of occupancy, often equivalent to a 15-20% discount. I notice that the lease is always very specific about stating the "actual rent" and the concession amount. I sometimes wonder what fraction of tenants is really paying the "actual rent", especially now that the offered me the first year concession again when I renewed my lease. is this a variant of the same finance strategy?
If you're in New York City, this may be related to rules on rent stabilization. Rent stabilized apartments can only raise their rent by a small percentage each year. These landlords likely want to be able to raise rents quickly if the rental market heats up, so they raise the "actual rent" by the maximum percentage each year but then give a concession so that they can actually find a renter.
it seems like unnecessary complexity. why not just advertise a market-clearing price for the units you need to move? they already have a different quote for each individual unit, which fluctuates a lot based on market conditions. they don't post a price for a currently occupied unit until the tenant has confirmed they will not be renewing, so quotes can't really be used for haggling. there are no rules about max yearly rent increases here either.
Sellers will advertise the lowest price they are willing to accept once they get desperate enough. But generally, for low volume, high value transactions, haggling is almost always worth it for the seller.
Hence car sales, land sales, leases, company mergers etc all have a bit of back and forth as opposed to produce at a store. However, in poorer countries, I’ve seen haggling over vegetables too, but that doesn’t happen in developed countries since it’s not worth anyone’s time.
