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> If that were true, then many units would be empty.

This is literally true. In SF as of 2023, there's roughly 60,000 vacant units. In New York as of 2021, apartments listed as available and unavailable for rent but also vacant was around 89,000.

To contrast, there was around 7,700 unhoused people in SF in 2023.

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NY doesn't sound bad at all, there is roughly 10M people, given random estimate of 2 people per apartment, 89k, would be barely 2%

Edit: plus in NY you have all those HoA payments, so you pay really high price for not renting the place out

Yeah 89k sounds very low actually.

Once you consider apartments in between leases, apartments in Reno, and anything else without a certificate of occupancy, that sounds like the right amount for a hot market with low vacancies

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