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It would be vastly cheaper for us as a society to not do the vacancy tax at all and just build an extra X units where X equals the number of vacant units. Socie

It would be vastly cheaper for us as a society to not do the vacancy tax at all and just build an extra X units where X equals the number of vacant units. Society would get to continue collecting the millions of dollars in annual property taxes on the vacant units without providing any city services because no one lives there. It's free money. Separately, the enforcement cost of your idea makes it untenable. The law would have so many loopholes, it would be and stay toothless for decades. Even if we assume for the sake of argument that it actually worked and the rate of empty units went to nearly 0%, it would warp the real estate market so much it would eliminate all benefit: because there would be fewer people looking for apartments (because they are housed in the previous vacant units), fewer new buildings get built. After a decade prices would be back to where they are now except that now it would be more of a headache to find an apartment because the vacancy rate is 0%.

runnerup 4y ago
I'd be fine also just doing a flat increase of property tax (preferably something slightly more towards a land-value tax). There should be more pressure to make sure real estate assets are being re-invested into the economy rather than hoarded for passive deflationary gains. As mentioned, we also need to make it easier to build lots of new high-quality units.
ashwagary 4y ago
>It would be vastly cheaper for us as a society to not do the vacancy tax at all and just build Could be a good idea to use the vacancy tax to build.
- Atheros 4y ago
  Advocates of the vacancy tax imply that their goal is to eliminate vacancies thus freeing up more housing. If our goal is, instead, to maximize tax revenue in order to build permanently-affordable housing then that is a much different (and better!) conversation. That's a long-term good. But if that's our conversation then everybody needs to be prepared for the possible answer to be that the vacancy tax should be negative.

runnerup 4y ago

I'd be fine also just doing a flat increase of property tax (preferably something slightly more towards a land-value tax). There should be more pressure to make sure real estate assets are being re-invested into the economy rather than hoarded for passive deflationary gains. As mentioned, we also need to make it easier to build lots of new high-quality units.

ashwagary 4y ago

>It would be vastly cheaper for us as a society to not do the vacancy tax at all and just build Could be a good idea to use the vacancy tax to build.

Atheros 4y ago
Advocates of the vacancy tax imply that their goal is to eliminate vacancies thus freeing up more housing. If our goal is, instead, to maximize tax revenue in order to build permanently-affordable housing then that is a much different (and better!) conversation. That's a long-term good. But if that's our conversation then everybody needs to be prepared for the possible answer to be that the vacancy tax should be negative.