[proxyon]

This is a conspiracy theory that financially illiterate people love to parrot. There is no benefit to keeping a property vacant on purpose. It incurs opportunity cost, which is the cost of rent. The only reasons a property may remain vacant is either due to regulations, incompetent management or maybe money laundering (an actual crime) in which case collecting rent would impose a burden on the money laundering operation. By no means is this common, it is an extreme exception and bringing it up in these conversations is a goofy platitude by people who know nothing about real estate. It'd be like talking about the supply of automobiles and bringing up "but what about cars destroyed at monster truck rallies or used on movie sets? it's limiting the supply of automobiles!"