Comment by WalterBright
6 hours ago
BTW, rentals can also remain unrented because if the landlord rents it at the current rental rate, rent control laws may force him to maintain that low rent for the long term.
Hence, it is less risky to just leave it vacant.
Rent control has all kinds of self-defeating consequences.
Or you just force people to rent out vacant flats. You have 60 days once a formal letter is received and you have to rent it to someone in that time, or you’ll be fined. That’s one way to force supply of a good that isn’t actually scarce but has artificial scarcity. Worked pretty well in some of the European metropolita and it works in New York now too. We have to stop treating housing like a simple commodity