patrick.net

In San Francisco, a vacancy tax could be a solution in search of a problem, said Richard Green, director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California. “If this were really a problem you would see high vacancies, and we see very low vacancies in the Bay Area,” he said. “San Francisco’s principal housing problem is not that its housing stock is not being fully used.” The real problem: “You need more of it.”

This is the truth. SF supervisors want it both ways. They want to have rent control, where it is almost impossible to evict someone without buying them out for 80K to 150K, and at the same time, tax these property owners for leaving their units vacant. Can you blame owner's who want to keep their property vacant?

No, taxing vacancy properties is not a solution.

However, I do see benefits to eliminating all tax deduction benefits for rental property and second home.