[busterarm]

Or instead, how about I tell you about my time working for a real estate tax certiorari firm in NYC and how landlords with multiple properties will deliberately underutilize their buildings for tax advantages.

Occupancy maximums of 90% and one or multiple buildings deliberately at 0% occupancy (usually the primary residence of the landlords' extended family members for undeclared income) is the norm.

[bogomipz]

>"Or instead, how about I tell you about my time working for a real estate tax certiorari firm in NYC and how landlords with multiple properties will deliberately underutilize their buildings for tax advantages."

When in the 1980s? Was Ed Koch the mayor?

Market rate on a modest(500 sq foot plus) apartment is worth close to $3K a month or 36K a year. Please provide a citation this tax break which is worth more than 36K a year in 2018 for leaving a unit unoccupied?

[busterarm]

2000 and 2001.

[bogomipz]

So during the dot com boom when the city's economy was doing gang busters and the vacancy rate was less than 2%? I don't think so.

[busterarm]

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/pdf/NYC-comp-16....

Also, this data does not agree with you. Lowest vacancy rate of any borough was 2.3% in Queens in 2000 and between 3.1 and 4.2 in every other borough.

The economy is doing even better in NYC right now and the vacancy rate is over 11% right now. https://www.6sqft.com/nearly-250000-nyc-rental-apartments-si... Hrmmm....

[bogomipz]

Nice cherry picked data. That's a HUD report. Try checking the NYC Rent Guidelines Report for accurate data:

Manhattan 2.57 and Queens 2.11 [1]

That's from page 2. It also shows a -25% and -35% change for vacancy rates from 3 years prior for those two boroughs.

And you can't seem to produce any citation for your assertion about a piece of the tax code that allows landlords to make more money from empty apartments than renting them at market rate.

[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/rentguidelinesboard/pdf/hsr00.pd...

[busterarm]

As a lifelong NYC resident, I trust HUD a lot more than I trust the Rent Guidelines Board, appointed by the mayor and a total staff of like 9 people.

The Rent Guidelines Board has been an advocate for landlords for as long as I've lived here. Even now: https://ny.curbed.com/2018/4/13/17234694/nyc-rent-stabilizat...

[busterarm]

I can only tell you what I saw from the two seasons that I spent error-checking the tax returns they were sending to the IRS.