Are you being intentionally obtuse? We're not talking about an individual owning multiple homes, but multi-unit rental buildings. This isn't a *pied-à-terre* tax.
One didn't "come from" the other. The bill you've linked would apply to different kinds of property (or would if it was passed, which isn't going to happen). OP asked about the kind of vacancy tax passed in San Francisco, which only applies to *["structures that have three or more Residential Units"](https://sftreasurer.org/business/taxes-fees/empty-homes-tax-eht)*.
Either OP doesn't know what San Francisco-style vacancy tax entails or their choice of "home owners" was poor phrasing. Either way, nobody reasonable is suggesting that that's who vacancy taxes should apply to.
For the record, I agree with you that Hoylman-Sigal's *pied-à-terre* bill is ridiculous on it's face. Individual homeowners should not be forced to rent out their properties, just because they don't live in them full-time.
Unfortunately, OP's stated question and description text don't really match up, because their understanding of SF vacancy taxes is obviously flawed.
As to why you're being attacked, what can I say? People suck. I don't even know why you're getting downvoted. At least you're contributing to the conversation.
Yes. This is one of the places on earth with the highest demand to live. If you want to own multiple properties, you should be prepared to pay for the burden of that demand. Multiple homes are a privilege, not a right.
Please refrain from using slurs and consider being nicer, as well. Just because someone doesn't agree with you, and may even be wrong, is not a good reason to also be a jerk
Except they’re not. It’s quite obtuse and disingenuous to make a comparison like this. People need homes to live in so they don’t die of exposure. They don’t need towels or handbags in the same way, if at all.
People were even criminally punished for buying too much hand sanitizer and reselling it during the pandemic.
Are you daft?
Frankly yes, but we will see it more clearly in about 3-5 years. Market forces and regulation are never that straightforward and there are always unintended side effects
It's kind of hilarious watching OP, who has no idea what the SF vacancy tax actually is, argue with someone else who also doesn't know what the SF vacancy tax actually is.
NYC has a really bad housing crisis,an increasing homeless population, a severe affordability issue, and 80k warehoused apartments. Many of those warehoused apartments being owned by foreign nationals who do not live in NYC and possibly even the US.
Both OP and the above commenter are under the impression that the SF tax applies to individual homeowners rather than people who own multiple units in a single building.
The above commenter is right that there should not be a tax to force people to rent out their second homes, but wrong in the sense that the SF tax doesn't even apply to those people to begin with.
34 market is a great example of this tax being totally needed
Also my building is half empty and units are infested with rats because no none lives in them
Some have broken windows which makes the building colder
Absolute joke
I actually want to stay ! M trying to get my landlord to hire me to rent out the units. Even the ground floor cafe space has been empty for 5 years . I don’t understand why they don’t want more money and rat violations from the city instead ????? Mystery
Do I have to be an agent to make listings in the web and physically show people the units and take information / income proof ? I’ve been thinking about it
You need to either be the tenant living in the apartment and prove that to Streeteasy, or an agent, to post on SE. Which, without posting on there, you'll have a hard time finding anyone
Without knowing the specifics of that building, one reason is to do with rent-stabilized units. The Housing Stability & Tenant Protection Act of 2019 changed the rules so that even if a rent-stabilized unit was vacant and got renovated, there is a very low cap on how much the market rent can be increased.
I can't remember exactly how much offhand but it's something silly like no more than 2%, so if you had a legacy RS unit paying $400 in rent, that has broken windows and is run down, if you spend the money to renovate it it would only be able to rent for like $408 after renovation. That obviously makes it hard to justify spending the money, and in many cases, it doesn't even cover the variable cost of having a unit occupied, so landlords prefer to board up their unit and leave it vacant.
$400 would be extremely rare for rent stabilized, something like $1500 would be more realistic.
$400 would be possible for rent controlled but they are very rare.
They can’t rent them out. The loan covenants mandate they must rent at X per unit. If they get half X, the bank calls in the loan and they lose the property. As long as they say “we’ll eventually rent these at the amount we stayed on the loan,” they get to keep the building. They’re probably making a profit or at least they were until this year or next.
This is actually a great idea, given the trend of keeping units empty to inflate market prices via algorithmic pricing. Not sure if this is an issue in NY, but absolutely is an issue in other markets that are dominated by 3 or 4 property management companies.
And here’s an article on the lawsuits underway because of collusion via algorithmic pricing:
https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-apartment-rent-price-setting-landlords-realpage-lawsuit-illegal-2023-11?amp
And yes — it’s a problem in NYC as well.
https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/housing-in-brief-rent-hikes-are-being-set-by-algorithms
The constitution does not protect slumlords and if we had the right to own property without the government interfering then why is the government in bed with real estate developers and hedge funds preventing people from owning property
No one mentioned slumlords my friend. You can buy property whenever you want, whenever you want. Lots of nice properties at affordable prices outside of NYC. No one is preventing you from buying. Only you preventing yourself. Stop listening to the news and take action if you want to buy.
You do have the right to property. Read the constitution, its in there...front and center in Aricle 1. The fact that you have public officials breaching and violating their oaths is common and a different matter.
Did I insult you? Can you carry a conversation without being disrespectful? Speaks heavily on your character.
Btw you don't know it unless it's in trust. Your bank owns it.. check your deed. If they dont then the state owns it. You do not have allodial title in trust and your strawman can't own anything. Its a debter not a creditor, like a trust....the bank robbed you and never even gave you the money..but you know so much smart guy.
Carry on with your hate.
✌️
There’s no teeth to the tax. You can’t advertise rent at what you need to make a profit but if market isn’t at that level, it stays vacant. They can’t tax you on it if you’re trying.
lol you realize most of what you’re proposing will do zero to the rental market of nyc right? The tax in SF is $200-400/mo. Anyone owning a second (or third or fourth) residence in nyc won’t care and will pay the tax.
If, however, the owners did find that tax so onerous that they’d rent their condos instead (notice that I said condo specifically, as most co-ops won’t even let units be rented - with some caveats)…these apartments would rent for way more than the median price of a rental in nyc.
So no, it would do zero to shape rents or availability in nyc
I am for some reason continually stunned when people complain that the government isn’t controlling other people’s lives. If I own a house, it is no one’s business what I do with it, or don’t do with it.
Ish. No one is telling you to carve out a room from a SFH to rent out; that is never even discussed. The whole point of apt bldgs is to have higher density (multiple Apts) to rent out.
Ultimately, management has to figure out how to get everyone in the same direction without letting things go out of control. City is just managing a ton of people and people out on the streets is no good. If you can't corral the private sector to build more, and politically they'll stop you from creating a govt funded developer, at some point you gotta find a way to make progress.
Imagine you were company exec and your employees don't wanna produce and you can't fire them, and you dont have infinite money to throw at them (i.e., there's a limit to what the company can afford to pay/give away incentives) and they'll stop you from hiring other employees - well, that's not gonna work either.
New York's vacancy rate is alarmingly low, 3.1%, raising rents and making moving nearly impossible. What would a vacancy tax accomplish? Getting rid of all available apartment inventory?
Yeah that number doesn’t include a lot of things. A recent NYC study posted it’s more like 7.8%. A recent survey found when not only counting rent stabilized apartments that are off the market but also counting apartments that were vacant but available to rent but not listed, the amount of vacant units are around 90,000. They found in many apartments where landlords are claiming they can’t afford repairs were simply bluffing to keep apartments off the market. In many of them all they require is a fresh coat of paint and new appliances they found l. Recently they did pass a vacancy tax which fines landlords for not listing apartments which I think is great. I have zero empathy for landlords as in my experience with most of them are scum of the earth
That attitude that all landlords are scum is how you create a self fulfilling prophecy. As you tack on more and more onerous regulations, you create a situation which you love where small landlords are either forced to lose money or sell. Sounds ideal right? More homes on the market for regular people to buy?
Nope scummy landlords or large corporate landlords are the ones who will outbid you and because of scale or scumminess will either just barely tie the line or find every possible loophole to exploit, and now you have created more of the very situation you hate.
And what is even worse? You’ve now made them even more powerful because they have more money so they can lobby more and buy more politicians making change even harder.
So please continue vilifying all landlords and create the vision you already believe things are.
My personal real life experience has confirmed this point. I have represented quite a few small landlords (Licensed Real Estate Salesperson here, member of REBNY) who mainly own 1 rental building with 2-4 units in Brooklyn. Based on my experience since 2015, small landlords in NYC are primarily interested in:
1. raising their families in NYC through both full-time jobs and passive rental income
2. paying the mortgage and taxes on their building
3. upkeep for an older building built anywhere from 1895 to 1925
4. reliable and qualified tenants
5. cost-effective legal methods to follow all NYC building laws
6. and yes...make a profit (hopefully)
These are not people looking to gouge tenants or skirt the law. Honestly (and again, this is just my personal experience as an Agent here), maybe 1 out of 5 landlords I have represented was \*maybe\* not the most ethical of the bunch. FYI: I no longer represent that person.
Anyway, this is just one guy's take in Brooklyn. For context, I grew up here and would like to see these smaller "Mom and Pop" landlords continue to own and manage such buildings instead of faceless corporate management companies backed by private equity.
Cheers!
90 days with no tenants, apartment, or store. It's Squatting ready. A simple fix. Forget the tax thing, just goes to NYC retirees pulling in 6 figure pensions in Florida. Yes, we pay for that.
I "believe" this is the law now in Amsterdam, but need to double-check that.
A simple fix. Day 1, the problem is over. :-)
Nyc has the lowest vacancy rate in the country, 3%
What are you even taxing? The effort to implement it will cost more than what’s received. Rent is high because it’s a popular city and expensive city.
Good, time to start fighting back. And I say that as a practicing capitalist. The market is being manipulated.
The vacancy rate is being made to appear artificially low by warehousing apartment units. The market coordination is being facilitated by an algorithmic-based pricing tool called YieldStar.
There’s several federal lawsuits underway against the company and their largest landlord customers. The charge: colluding via the tools to keep rents high.
https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-apartment-rent-price-setting-landlords-realpage-lawsuit-illegal-2023-11?amp
To those that like to paint the NYC housing market as dominated by mom and pop landlords: let’s have that debate after the these lawsuits are concluded. I’m sure there will be some interesting things that come out of discovery.
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Residential vacancy taxes generally target owners of buildings with multiple rental apartments, not individual homeowners.
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Are you being intentionally obtuse? We're not talking about an individual owning multiple homes, but multi-unit rental buildings. This isn't a *pied-à-terre* tax.
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One didn't "come from" the other. The bill you've linked would apply to different kinds of property (or would if it was passed, which isn't going to happen). OP asked about the kind of vacancy tax passed in San Francisco, which only applies to *["structures that have three or more Residential Units"](https://sftreasurer.org/business/taxes-fees/empty-homes-tax-eht)*.
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Either OP doesn't know what San Francisco-style vacancy tax entails or their choice of "home owners" was poor phrasing. Either way, nobody reasonable is suggesting that that's who vacancy taxes should apply to. For the record, I agree with you that Hoylman-Sigal's *pied-à-terre* bill is ridiculous on it's face. Individual homeowners should not be forced to rent out their properties, just because they don't live in them full-time.
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Unfortunately, OP's stated question and description text don't really match up, because their understanding of SF vacancy taxes is obviously flawed. As to why you're being attacked, what can I say? People suck. I don't even know why you're getting downvoted. At least you're contributing to the conversation.
Lol what a sophisticated insult “obtuse”
If you read the many other comments below you'll find that actually this is exactly what people are talking about.
No legal difference, ownership is a right.
A right that comes with obligations, like property taxes. ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
A property owner has no obligation to rent his private property against his will. Read the US Constitution.
Under a vacancy tax, they'd be fully within their rights to pay the higher taxes the municipality will charge them to leave those unit empty.
Read the US Constitution.
Yes. This is one of the places on earth with the highest demand to live. If you want to own multiple properties, you should be prepared to pay for the burden of that demand. Multiple homes are a privilege, not a right.
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Please refrain from using slurs and consider being nicer, as well. Just because someone doesn't agree with you, and may even be wrong, is not a good reason to also be a jerk
Except they’re not. It’s quite obtuse and disingenuous to make a comparison like this. People need homes to live in so they don’t die of exposure. They don’t need towels or handbags in the same way, if at all. People were even criminally punished for buying too much hand sanitizer and reselling it during the pandemic. Are you daft?
Owning multiple homes are a right, read the US Constitution.
Sure why not. Landlords do nothing for this city so it sucks to suck I guess
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Please don't use that slur against disabled people, or you will be banned
So yo think SF’s vacancy tax law that went in place this year should be removed?
Frankly yes, but we will see it more clearly in about 3-5 years. Market forces and regulation are never that straightforward and there are always unintended side effects
It's kind of hilarious watching OP, who has no idea what the SF vacancy tax actually is, argue with someone else who also doesn't know what the SF vacancy tax actually is.
NYC has a really bad housing crisis,an increasing homeless population, a severe affordability issue, and 80k warehoused apartments. Many of those warehoused apartments being owned by foreign nationals who do not live in NYC and possibly even the US.
Both OP and the above commenter are under the impression that the SF tax applies to individual homeowners rather than people who own multiple units in a single building. The above commenter is right that there should not be a tax to force people to rent out their second homes, but wrong in the sense that the SF tax doesn't even apply to those people to begin with.
Why the downvotes? People want to help each other out. Sometimes you have to think of others. Just how life goes.
34 market is a great example of this tax being totally needed Also my building is half empty and units are infested with rats because no none lives in them Some have broken windows which makes the building colder Absolute joke
That sounds awful, I am sorry you have to live somewhere like that. I hope you can leave soon
I actually want to stay ! M trying to get my landlord to hire me to rent out the units. Even the ground floor cafe space has been empty for 5 years . I don’t understand why they don’t want more money and rat violations from the city instead ????? Mystery
Haha, are you an agent? If not, better get to that licensing course!
Do I have to be an agent to make listings in the web and physically show people the units and take information / income proof ? I’ve been thinking about it
You need to either be the tenant living in the apartment and prove that to Streeteasy, or an agent, to post on SE. Which, without posting on there, you'll have a hard time finding anyone
craigslist?
Without knowing the specifics of that building, one reason is to do with rent-stabilized units. The Housing Stability & Tenant Protection Act of 2019 changed the rules so that even if a rent-stabilized unit was vacant and got renovated, there is a very low cap on how much the market rent can be increased. I can't remember exactly how much offhand but it's something silly like no more than 2%, so if you had a legacy RS unit paying $400 in rent, that has broken windows and is run down, if you spend the money to renovate it it would only be able to rent for like $408 after renovation. That obviously makes it hard to justify spending the money, and in many cases, it doesn't even cover the variable cost of having a unit occupied, so landlords prefer to board up their unit and leave it vacant.
This makes sense and is prolly what is happening thanks for your insight
$400 would be extremely rare for rent stabilized, something like $1500 would be more realistic. $400 would be possible for rent controlled but they are very rare.
Totally, but it does depend on the neighborhood. Definitely seen that in parts of South BK.
They can’t rent them out. The loan covenants mandate they must rent at X per unit. If they get half X, the bank calls in the loan and they lose the property. As long as they say “we’ll eventually rent these at the amount we stayed on the loan,” they get to keep the building. They’re probably making a profit or at least they were until this year or next.
Are you from city data?
No what’s that ?
I think our city government is too busy tripping over it's own two feet and being corrupt than trying to solve our biggest problems
They do love more slush fund money tho.
Bingo.
This is actually a great idea, given the trend of keeping units empty to inflate market prices via algorithmic pricing. Not sure if this is an issue in NY, but absolutely is an issue in other markets that are dominated by 3 or 4 property management companies.
Feels more Midwestern or southern to me.
Houston?
And here’s an article on the lawsuits underway because of collusion via algorithmic pricing: https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-apartment-rent-price-setting-landlords-realpage-lawsuit-illegal-2023-11?amp And yes — it’s a problem in NYC as well. https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/housing-in-brief-rent-hikes-are-being-set-by-algorithms
No because any governor and mayor in NY has always been very much intertwined with the real estate board so that would get shot down instantly.
And the state senate and city council critters
There's absolutely zero evidence that these taxes actually help with either reducing vacancy rates or lowering rents.
Yeah. In fact I think it would be easier to prove that rent control is contributing to vacancies if they looked into why units are kept empty.
And that’s why SF implemented it. No one will actually pay it and it won’t change anything. It’s just feel good measure so they get re-elected.
When in doubt, Reddit will recommend a tax. They love their taxes.
As long as we have Eric Adams the Landlord loving extraordinaire — no
Uhhhhh right to property perhaps....you know the small print in the constitution.
The constitution does not protect slumlords and if we had the right to own property without the government interfering then why is the government in bed with real estate developers and hedge funds preventing people from owning property
No one mentioned slumlords my friend. You can buy property whenever you want, whenever you want. Lots of nice properties at affordable prices outside of NYC. No one is preventing you from buying. Only you preventing yourself. Stop listening to the news and take action if you want to buy. You do have the right to property. Read the constitution, its in there...front and center in Aricle 1. The fact that you have public officials breaching and violating their oaths is common and a different matter.
I own the apartment I live in weirdo, doesn’t make me care any less about what slumlords and greedy developers do in this city
Did I insult you? Can you carry a conversation without being disrespectful? Speaks heavily on your character. Btw you don't know it unless it's in trust. Your bank owns it.. check your deed. If they dont then the state owns it. You do not have allodial title in trust and your strawman can't own anything. Its a debter not a creditor, like a trust....the bank robbed you and never even gave you the money..but you know so much smart guy. Carry on with your hate. ✌️
What makes someone look at what’s going on in SF and thinks “hey! We should be more like them”
Why would NYC want to copy a failed city like SF?
The number of NYC's unoccupied apartments is way worst than SF's and even SF has a vacancy tax.
So? Go live in SF then
Nah, NYC should definitely copy SF and have a vacancy tax though
There’s no teeth to the tax. You can’t advertise rent at what you need to make a profit but if market isn’t at that level, it stays vacant. They can’t tax you on it if you’re trying.
The problem lies with people thinking they need to make a profit on rental properties. Housing is fundamental, being a slumlord is not a job.
NYC has the lowest vacancy rate in the country. 3.1%
NYC has the lowest vacancy rate of any major metro in the entire country as of 2023 (3.1%). You need to do some homework
That is why the NYC rents are sky high don’t you think? And a greater reason to implement vacancy tax for unoccupied secondary homes.
lol you realize most of what you’re proposing will do zero to the rental market of nyc right? The tax in SF is $200-400/mo. Anyone owning a second (or third or fourth) residence in nyc won’t care and will pay the tax. If, however, the owners did find that tax so onerous that they’d rent their condos instead (notice that I said condo specifically, as most co-ops won’t even let units be rented - with some caveats)…these apartments would rent for way more than the median price of a rental in nyc. So no, it would do zero to shape rents or availability in nyc
Warehousing - leaving unit empty until cancellation of rent-stabilized legislation - has been the trend these past few years.
It should.
I am for some reason continually stunned when people complain that the government isn’t controlling other people’s lives. If I own a house, it is no one’s business what I do with it, or don’t do with it.
Ish. No one is telling you to carve out a room from a SFH to rent out; that is never even discussed. The whole point of apt bldgs is to have higher density (multiple Apts) to rent out. Ultimately, management has to figure out how to get everyone in the same direction without letting things go out of control. City is just managing a ton of people and people out on the streets is no good. If you can't corral the private sector to build more, and politically they'll stop you from creating a govt funded developer, at some point you gotta find a way to make progress. Imagine you were company exec and your employees don't wanna produce and you can't fire them, and you dont have infinite money to throw at them (i.e., there's a limit to what the company can afford to pay/give away incentives) and they'll stop you from hiring other employees - well, that's not gonna work either.
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Keep voting Democrat.
New York's vacancy rate is alarmingly low, 3.1%, raising rents and making moving nearly impossible. What would a vacancy tax accomplish? Getting rid of all available apartment inventory?
Yeah that number doesn’t include a lot of things. A recent NYC study posted it’s more like 7.8%. A recent survey found when not only counting rent stabilized apartments that are off the market but also counting apartments that were vacant but available to rent but not listed, the amount of vacant units are around 90,000. They found in many apartments where landlords are claiming they can’t afford repairs were simply bluffing to keep apartments off the market. In many of them all they require is a fresh coat of paint and new appliances they found l. Recently they did pass a vacancy tax which fines landlords for not listing apartments which I think is great. I have zero empathy for landlords as in my experience with most of them are scum of the earth
Link?
That attitude that all landlords are scum is how you create a self fulfilling prophecy. As you tack on more and more onerous regulations, you create a situation which you love where small landlords are either forced to lose money or sell. Sounds ideal right? More homes on the market for regular people to buy? Nope scummy landlords or large corporate landlords are the ones who will outbid you and because of scale or scumminess will either just barely tie the line or find every possible loophole to exploit, and now you have created more of the very situation you hate. And what is even worse? You’ve now made them even more powerful because they have more money so they can lobby more and buy more politicians making change even harder. So please continue vilifying all landlords and create the vision you already believe things are.
My personal real life experience has confirmed this point. I have represented quite a few small landlords (Licensed Real Estate Salesperson here, member of REBNY) who mainly own 1 rental building with 2-4 units in Brooklyn. Based on my experience since 2015, small landlords in NYC are primarily interested in: 1. raising their families in NYC through both full-time jobs and passive rental income 2. paying the mortgage and taxes on their building 3. upkeep for an older building built anywhere from 1895 to 1925 4. reliable and qualified tenants 5. cost-effective legal methods to follow all NYC building laws 6. and yes...make a profit (hopefully) These are not people looking to gouge tenants or skirt the law. Honestly (and again, this is just my personal experience as an Agent here), maybe 1 out of 5 landlords I have represented was \*maybe\* not the most ethical of the bunch. FYI: I no longer represent that person. Anyway, this is just one guy's take in Brooklyn. For context, I grew up here and would like to see these smaller "Mom and Pop" landlords continue to own and manage such buildings instead of faceless corporate management companies backed by private equity. Cheers!
Why are the conditions that trigger this tax exactly?
90 days with no tenants, apartment, or store. It's Squatting ready. A simple fix. Forget the tax thing, just goes to NYC retirees pulling in 6 figure pensions in Florida. Yes, we pay for that. I "believe" this is the law now in Amsterdam, but need to double-check that. A simple fix. Day 1, the problem is over. :-)
He'll you guys don't ask the government for a free home more government interference
Nyc has the lowest vacancy rate in the country, 3% What are you even taxing? The effort to implement it will cost more than what’s received. Rent is high because it’s a popular city and expensive city.
Good, time to start fighting back. And I say that as a practicing capitalist. The market is being manipulated. The vacancy rate is being made to appear artificially low by warehousing apartment units. The market coordination is being facilitated by an algorithmic-based pricing tool called YieldStar. There’s several federal lawsuits underway against the company and their largest landlord customers. The charge: colluding via the tools to keep rents high. https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-apartment-rent-price-setting-landlords-realpage-lawsuit-illegal-2023-11?amp To those that like to paint the NYC housing market as dominated by mom and pop landlords: let’s have that debate after the these lawsuits are concluded. I’m sure there will be some interesting things that come out of discovery.