The U.S. Treasury Department will soon propose a rule that would effectively end anonymous luxury-home purchases, closing a loophole that the agency says allows corrupt oligarchs, terrorists and other criminals to hide ill-gotten gains.
San Francisco had ~61,000 vacant homes as of late last year.
Only a third of those are in the ‘other vacant’ category that represents housing that’s not being used for any purpose. The other two-thirds are currently for rent or sale, have completed that transaction and are awaiting actual occupation, or are seasonally used.
I wouldn’t be opposed to a tax on season homeownership, but that’s only 10,000 units a city of 800,000.
The real question to ask is why the hell is it literally illegal to build anything other than a single-family home in 38% percent of the city’s land, nearly two-thirds of land zoned for residential purpose?
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-map-single-family-homes-17699820.php
Sure, snapping your fingers and making those ~30,000 units come on to the market would have a small effect, but it pales in comparison to how much supply could be added if such a huge chunk of the land wasn’t legally mandated to be single-family homes.
