> in San Francisco – as well as many other high-cost cities such as Vancouver, London, and New York – we see a different phenomenon: an extremely tight housing market with skyrocketing rents, that puzzlingly also has a high vacancy rate.
...
> It is difficult to know whether an “absentee” or foreign buyer has an intent to occupy the unit or rent the unit, or whether the unit is intended solely to be an investment property.
...
> In August 2017, CoreLogic estimates that absentee buyers purchased 15.8% of homes in the San Francisco Bay area. In September, this number increased to 17.1%. 23 Thus, while we do not know how many of these units purchased by absentee buyers in the Bay Area may be held vacant, it seems to be a significant amount of ongoing sales in the region.
https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/CR...