Comment by ethbr1
Or, accounting and tax law makes it less painful to keep units vacant than reprice them at lower rents.
Which is a thing we could change via something like Vancouver's vacancy tax.
Make it more in landlords' interest to reprice units lower, if the market has excess inventory.
The market will dictate lower prices if there's excess inventory. If landlords are hoarding units and keeping them empty instead of lowering rental prices, that indicates a lack of available inventory.