Another term is a vacant homes tax, something Vancouver and Toronto in Canada are using.

That's the thing, it's not a "property tax" that they want, it's for landlords to have to utilize the apartments for low income housing like they are supposed to. What's going to happen is that they are going to leave the apartments vacant for 5+ years and then say, "No one wants to live here, so I'm not making money. I have to renovate to draw in new tenants, so I'll have to increase the cost to cover my cost." This is just modern day blockbusting, and it's fucking terrible.

Owning a house that you don't inhabit is weirder.

Just make property taxes higher for empty buildings. Prorate per month. I thought some country was trying this?

For rentals in general, trying to solve a different problem, we should drastically increase property taxes and then give a discount for primary residence that puts it back to where it is now.

The owner of an apartment is always receiving income from it, either in the form of the rent check or whatever utility it provides for him to keep it to himself.

I don't like land taxes and other property taxes because I don't think there's a good way to apply those taxes progressively. Rather, if we just take the imputed rent of a given asset (land, building, car, etc.) and add that to the taxpayer's income, the the progressive income tax can just do its thing.

That's why San Francisco implemented a vacant storefront tax.

But getting commercial landlords to comply has been a struggle.

https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2023/06/01/few-retailers-respond-to-sfs-new-vacancy-tax-as-only-2-6-pay-up/

I disagree. Land value taxes are flat unlike a progressive income taxes. Therefore, a land value tax can be unfairly burdensome to people with low incomes who happen to own land. If imputed rent is taxed as income, then the tax burden is more fairly shared. It also creates more insentive to keep rents low and units occupied.

They also have relatively low amount of homelessness.

Based on the mean projection, 0.02% of the adult population is homeless in this country. The proportion in neighbouring Austria is 0.25%. In Germany, the share of homelessness is 0.41%, in France it is 0.22% and in Italy the share is 0.08%.

No outrage here. I'm using the word enjoy in an economic sense, as in possessing something and getting some benefit out of it. The concept is called "imputed rent" if you'd like to look it up.

So...who should own the land instead?

The solution is simply for landlords to keep their units occupied and they can increase occupancy rates by lowering rents, which will also have the effect of lowering their tax obligations. I'm not sure what you think the problem is.

I don't know about anywhere else but in Australia if you are using the unit you can't claim the expenses as a rental, so there's no advantage to keeping it empty.

Easiest solution would be to have 2 property tax brackets and manage it at a city council level.

Occupied/under maintenance or vacant. If you rent a house you show the city council the lease and they give you a form that says you're entitled to the lower rate for the term of the tenancy,or you go to them and inform them that the property is underrgoing maintenance and is expected to be that way for X months and again you're entitled to the lower rate. If you cant provide evidence or tenancy or maintenance/repairs for say... 75% of the year, you pay a higher rate. Not extortion levels of higher but a definite incentive.

Oh and absolutely ball breaking fines for anyone found to be doing dodgy shit.

This is for apartments only. For the most part I don’t believe corporations should own single family housing, with the exception of vacation homes and those numbers need to be booked up at least 50% of the year and there should be a cap on how many a corporation can own

I would do a tiered tax rate depending on vacancy for apartments.

Example 1% property tax if property is 95-100%

5% 80-94%

10% 60-79%

Etc etc

Absolutely punish the complexes that charge ridiculous rates while sitting at a 20% vacancy. I know plenty in my town that are doing exactly that. Charging $1500 for a small one bedroom apartment while all the units are sitting empty.

Reward the full ones with a low tax rate and punish the ones sitting on empty housing with a high rate.