Quote Originally Posted by Suppressed Poet View Post
I forgot for a moment I am conversing with someone incapable of understanding a supply & demand curve. Builders haven’t been throttling back supply for higher profits. New home construction has dropped considerably since the Great Recession & never really made a recovery. Covid, inflation, and high interest rates has really exacerbated the problem further. Builders would love to construct more homes, even if that means lower profit margins, for more market share and additional net revenue but face substantial challenges. I’m not even suggesting we do in fact need to incentivize builders as the market will find a way, but if you want government action to make a difference that would be where I’d point towards.

There can be all sorts of reasons for the vacancy rate. Of course you would have a problem with people owning vacation homes being an authoritarian communist and all… How about you start first with Bernie Sanders, the Clintons, the Biden family, etc. about giving up their vacation homes? Or you can just stop being a playa hater…
You advocated government intervention initially, then you backtracked that government intervention would be authoritarianism a second later, which is it? Your much vaunted supply and demand is merely a theory that as long as there is demand, artificially manipulating supply will drive up profit margins. I'm not entirely sure why you think there's anything stopping the few major national builders from going whole hog, but building supplies are /not/ in short supply and the price index has fallen by almost 60 points. Builders sell homes at cost+ and a margin, so I don't know why you think they have any problem selling homes if the build them, as we both agree on, there is plenty of demand that they're bought once actually constructed.

Freeing up the massive supply of vacant homes has been taken up by an increasing number of states which are levying larger and larger taxes on under utilized or non utilized properties, which is a necessary solution.