Real estate investors, both individual and institutional, bought one-third of all single-family residential properties sold in the second quarter of 2025.
I like this idea. It would be good if two was a very slight increase because of buying and then having to sell. Also long ago having a vacation home was something obtainable by relatively common folk. Would like to see that again but wealth disparity would have to come way down for that to happen.
In my magical Christmasland hypothetical scenario, it would be something like $10 ^ [number of qualifying properties] per year, for each property.
Mom and pop have a vacation home, or a property on the market? $10 / year. No problem. Got 5 vacant homes? That’ll be an extra $500,000 per year. Get a tenant or sell.
Would need some sort of limit such that the tax ceased when homelessness reached, say, 0.01% of the population or less, because right now there’s about 26 vacant homes in the US per homeless person; the point is to reduce homelessness, not to bankrupt everyone, of course.
Nah, keep it going even when homelessness is low. If you own three vacant properties, you’re paying 3,000 a year. It would be cheaper to give one of your homes away to a poor person who only has one, so they get to have a vacation home too. The poor person only has to pay 10 dollars a year.
I like this idea. It would be good if two was a very slight increase because of buying and then having to sell. Also long ago having a vacation home was something obtainable by relatively common folk. Would like to see that again but wealth disparity would have to come way down for that to happen.
In my magical Christmasland hypothetical scenario, it would be something like $10 ^ [number of qualifying properties] per year, for each property.
Mom and pop have a vacation home, or a property on the market? $10 / year. No problem. Got 5 vacant homes? That’ll be an extra $500,000 per year. Get a tenant or sell.
Would need some sort of limit such that the tax ceased when homelessness reached, say, 0.01% of the population or less, because right now there’s about 26 vacant homes in the US per homeless person; the point is to reduce homelessness, not to bankrupt everyone, of course.
Nah, keep it going even when homelessness is low. If you own three vacant properties, you’re paying 3,000 a year. It would be cheaper to give one of your homes away to a poor person who only has one, so they get to have a vacation home too. The poor person only has to pay 10 dollars a year.