This is why you can’t build enough housing to reduce price it will never happen you pave paradise for nothing enjoy destroying what you love while the rich wait
Unoccupied does not mean unowned.
Yeah, that’s the problem.
What difference does it make. If no one’s in it, it’s not making money, yet real estate is still priced like every SFH can get 3k in rent.
That’s what occupancy taxes are for. If it is taxed for every month that it’s empty, it’ll get sold or rented.
Victoria has introduced a tax on vacant homes, but they’re finding it hard to enforce in practice (there’s really only a bunch of indirect indicators that you can rely on, stuff like census date, electricity use, etc), and it turns out that the bastards that would just leave a house empty have no issue with not declaring this.
Land Value Tax solves this problem.
One in twenty doesn’t seem too extreme. There will always be a churn rate. The more relevant question would be, if there is a large number of properties sitting empty for long periods.