> First, that incentivizes treating property as an appreciating asset. The capital gain tax can't be both very high and very low and you seem to have agreed th

> First, that incentivizes treating property as an appreciating asset. The capital gain tax can't be both very high and very low and you seem to have agreed that very high is the wrong incentive. So what remains? A low capital gain has the benefit of making it easy to sell so more people will sell. Not perfect, perhaps, but an incentive to keep unused/unwanted properties on the market is better than pushing people to hold on to them forever which a high capital gain tax will do.