Comment by doctorpangloss
6 hours ago
Nobody said commercial real estate was risk free free money in some abstract financial product, other than the doofus who wrote this long "note." The hard fact is these are real buildings in real places that aren't really fungible at all. So it seems kind of ridiculous that CRE investors should be insulated from every possible externality. Obviously the right thing to do is to tax vacant properties, and then we shall see how many stay vacant and how many foreclosures there are (hint: owners suddenly find capital and are able to pay the tax or rent things out and nothing ever gets foreclosed in every one of these scenarios where it actually happens).
What you’re proposing is a brand new tax just because you don’t like people who play by the rules as written.
Well done. Way to encourage people to not do things.
The specific proposal is not great but changing the rules is in fact the correct solution of the current rules lead to systematically bad outcomes.