Regulation of the residential real estate market is in general enacted to provide social benefits to the tenant, who is perceived to be the weaker partner in the landlord-tenant relationship. Academic literature has been able to document and quantify economic gains for the tenants. An alternative way of looking at this is offered by applying the growing body of ethical reasoning literature. This provides us with a better sense of the pros and cons of the regulation beyond pure economic gains. Two types of regulation in three different countries (Germany, the Netherlands, and the USA) will be analyzed using this methodology. The two types of regulation are Rent Control and Housing Quality Standards. The outcome of the analysis results in a new way of evaluating Rent Control and Housing Quality Standards and this will lead to recommendations regarding their usefulness in the three aforementioned countries.