[colechristensen]

Just tax corporate owned vacancy. In a slump there will be apartment buildings that are mostly empty because they refuse to lower the rent as lowering rent triggers property re-valuation.

Office buildings sit mostly empty for the same reason.

Tax the owners to punish the bad bets and eternal growth expectations of banks to force them to use the space to the benefit of the community or be forced to sell when they run out of money. Use zoning laws to prevent the destruction of units to avoid taxes.

[taiwan_num1]

We already don't have enough housing and you want to increase the cost of entry to build? This would just reduce competition and new builds even further. Hard to see this kind of policy coming out ahead if any increased utilization of existing buildings is cancelled out by the lack of new ones.

[colechristensen]

No, I want to crash the price of real estate, bankrupt the incumbents, and realign incentives to be focused on resident quality of life.

Percentage return on investment has nothing to do with the basis. Investors will have to serve a lot more people to get the same absolute return. The percentage return won't change all that much for actually building and operating. The year over year growth in valuation and rent is what needs to go (buildings go through several sets of hands over the first decade or so anyway).