Pretty sure there are plenty of houses sitting empty or as holiday rentals. Second homes, airbnbs, etc. Those could be simply banned or highly taxed and the shuffling of ownership would happen naturally.
That's an argument about land usage and not land ownership. There are plenty of short term rentals run by individuals, and if you banned corporate ownership of short term rentals and kept the other incentives the same, more individuals would just play in that space.
The other problem is this, if you banned short term rentals _entirely_, which NYC basically did, you have not changed the fundamental supply vs demand structure. You still have X people who want units and Y units. Rents did not go down _at all_. House prices did not go down _at all_. The primary change was that hotel prices went up because of lack of competition.
By banning short term rentals of residential properties, you move short term rental demand from residential to commercial market. Which does change the supply and demand for each market.
Seems like for NYC, it worked as expected with the increasing hotel prices. And didn’t work as expected for rentals. The next step now would be to ask why it didn’t work as expected for rentals while it worked as expected for hotels, not just concluding that the ban wouldn’t work.
I know there is data that if you compare short term rentals to houses on sale, the rentals are a very large percentage, like more than 30%, in big cities. More than enough to significantly influence house prices (to be higher). Which is why short term rentals and vacation properties should be relegated to commercial properties only.
The other problem is this, if you banned short term rentals _entirely_, which NYC basically did, you have not changed the fundamental supply vs demand structure. You still have X people who want units and Y units. Rents did not go down _at all_. House prices did not go down _at all_. The primary change was that hotel prices went up because of lack of competition.