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Comment by trophycase | Hacker News Reader

Maybe they should just lower prices? I don't understand how it is more profitable to leave 60% of your rooms unrented or whatever it may be.

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In many multi-family dwellings it takes a small fraction of units occupied to break even on taxes and maintenance. If the building is a place to park cash and collect appreciation in the future maybe a 40% occupancy is good enough.

Maybe there is a tax incentive to leave it empty? For a while people in Manhattan were puzzled by empty store fronts in popular neighborhoods. Then it hit the news that if you crank the rent up sky high on retail space so that no one can afford it because there can only be so many Gucci stores in Manhattan, the lost rent (that no one could have actually afforded) can be used as a tax deduction.

Is that really how tax law works in Manhattan? How far does that extend? If I own a 2 bedroom house, and the second bedroom is empty can I claim a tax deduction on hypothetical unpaid rent from a roommate?

It's only for retail space. Actually, I just went looking for a source explaining exactly how this works, and it seems to have been a little overblown. I think it might have been stories like this that are bit light on details that got this idea started:

https://www.amny.com/opinion/the-sad-story-behind-nyc-vacant...

But the only specifics I could find is that there is a tax on commercial retail rent in NYC on $250,000 a year or more rent, and now the rent has been pushed up so high that everyone is paying it, but ultimately landlords are just holding out for long term leases with big national brands, and many of them already have all the Manhattan locations they need. Apparently, there is a push to raise it to $500,000, or even put in a tax on empty retail to give landlords an incentive to take a chance renting on boutique or so-called "popup" stores.

https://cityandstateny.com/articles/opinion/commentary/reduc...

The problem is the landlords who own multiple buildings, who would rather leave one building half empty than have rents go down in all their other full properties

A landlord putting all of their units on the rental market would have a negligible effect on total rental supply of any city-sized urban area, and thus the average rental rate. Therefore, it's in their financial interest to put as many rental properties on the market as they can.

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