The estimate is there are 100,000 empty homes in the SF area.[1]
I’ve seen an estimate of 20,000 for SF proper.
This [2] report to SF Planning states the number of empty units has doubled over time.
[1]https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/An-estimated-100-0... [2]http://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/CR_Final_2.3.19.pdf
Even if that was added to the vacancy rate, that would still leave SF with around the national average (~7%) vacancy rate, and that's without counting the off-the-market housing anywhere else in the average (and not double counting actual on-the-market vacancies everywhere else, either.) Anyway you cut it, SF has a low vacancy rate/rate of empty homes.
Not saying it would solve the housing crisis, but adding another 20,000+ units onto the market would certainly help.
This may or may not be true, but that is the idea.
But I don't think it's fair to say that expensive housing, full stop, is a product of regulation.
There are desirably places to live that have housing that goes up at a good enough rate to be considered an investment. As long as there are people of sufficient means, some of them will add property to their portfolio of assets. A home that sits unused on prime real estate is, frankly, more of a drain on that community than $100,000 in cash sitting under a mattress going unused.
It's not perfect, and it IS a regulation, but penalizing people for hoovering up housing stock and then not using it, can benefit society.
What if someone’s on vacation or has mail being delivered there etc. or comes in once in a while or Airbnb’s it’s much harder to impliment I think than it sounds.
The real problem is we're not taxing these properties at the true value they could provide to society, so a massive market inefficiency exists.
You hint at the easier solution: repeal prop 14 and increase property taxes. A lot. Problem solved.
(If you want to be a bit more sophisticated, look into land value taxes.)
The real issue is that there is no central authority at the CA State or even Bay Area level planning growth holistically.
A company can hire 5,000 people tomorrow and they'll all just move here and look for a place to live, regardless of whether the city their employer is based in has any housing or not. That drives up rent. It creates the absurd traffic that we now get to enjoy every day of the week. It drives up the costs of goods and services.
Bay Area leadership and California leadership need to sit down and have a discussion with employers and cities about how to effectively and responsibly grow, and then move towards developing new infrastructure to support the plan that comes out of those discussions.
If the fact that allowing landlords race-based leasing won the vote isn't enough to convince you that direct democracy is a stupid idea I don't know what is.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_California_Proposition_...
But you do you.
Your landlord may be able to evict one building’s worth of people, but your goal is to evict many more than that.
Your landlord is harmless by comparison.
But ignoring that absurdity - property taxes are usually 2% of the property value. So you'd need to what... Not pay any property tax at all for 100+ years for that scenario to play out?
But let's say we allowed that to happen, and we're somehow sympathetic to that owner. You still don't evict anyone over property taxes. The next buyer will just have to work it out. See Detroit and its $1 homes with $20k in back taxes.
I guess the problem here is I don't see housing as something anyone should expect a guaranteed profit from. I view it just like anything else - there's real risk, and if you're going to privatize the profit, you damn sure better privatize the risk, too.
Just like any other asset you can pay too much, buy something unsuitable, or mis-predict market forces.
Are you against private ownership of property outright?
Do you favor being taxed on the value of other things you own, how about your laptop, stove, etc?
Edit: just to appeal to authority: every single legitimate economist agrees with me on this as well.
Other states may do this, but many other countries do not.
Why shouldn’t you be taxed on the assessed value of your laptop and car each year too? How about your savings account? Shouldn’t that be taxed?
If you're putting the place up on AirBnB more often than not, the unit is not your primary residence and shouldn't be afforded benefits as such. If the goal of a vacancy tax is to increase rental supply, AirBnB does pretty much the opposite.
In California, and most of the US, property assessments are done by elected officials on an annual basis. In California the rate of increase is severely capped, but you're free to apply for a reduction if the value of your property decreases. If you're legitimately on vacation (or whatever), apply for an exemption. It's not that complex.
Also, if you take your reasoning to the extreme then an empty apartment building has a negative value.
It also opens it up to people who want to buy the building and move in.
I was talking with a real estate agent in SF and he said it’s not unusual for landlords looking to sell their rent controlled building to just let units sit empty.
Why? Because it can increase the value of the building by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Losing out on $24k worth of rent each year is easy if you know it comes with an extra $300k in your pocket when you sell.