Barcelona Fines Landlords Who Let Buildings Sit Empty

I dug through insideairbnb more and it's actually 12,374 (65%) units that are listed as entire unit in Toronto. That absolutely is a very significant amount of units. Only about 7k of the listings are either shared room/private room.

Data: http://insideairbnb.com/toronto/?neighbourhood=&filterEntire...

> Lets say anyone renting out their unit for less than half a year wouldn't have put the unit on the rental market anyways

See, that's a valid point though in Canada it is difficult to get a mortgage and there are people now buying a second unit to treat as an airbnb property and generate income. Chances are that if the unit is sitting idle for > 90 days and You say it's negligible but you have to remember that we have one of the lowest vacancy rates.

source: https://dailyhive.com/toronto/vacancy-rate-toronto-ontario-c...

So forget about affordable rentals, there even is a shortage of just units in the market over here.

Also, just go on r/toronto and search for Airbnb and you'll see an overwhelming majority of people echoing the issues that i've been saying.

I write that in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way usually, but getting and caring for a tenant could, in some cases, be more expensive than leaving the space vacant. If you own the property outright, it's a measure of the cost of extra wear-and-tear, property tax, any other fees and fines, and maintenance (like this new one) against the rent you collect.

It's not always the case that the rent is going to be a bigger number than tax, fines/fees, and extra wear-and-tear, especially if you own the property outright. If you add in rent control and a rising trend in rental prices, some landlords would rather leave the space vacant for a while to wait out the market for higher prices.

You could easily lose money if you don't recognize and account for all of the costs.

But in this case, it's possible to sit on land with out utilizing it and actually gain wealth solely because of flaws in that market were land price raises due to other forces than their productive worth. Speculation, persons hiding money from their dubious governments, political influence etc. Sitting on under utilized land is as unproductive as paying people to not grow crops. Even more so since at least in agriculture this, very occasionally, makes sense.

In addition in a growth area, much of the wealth created by those who developed it goes to those that impeded the development. This is exactly the wrong incentives, moving reward from the productive to the counter productive.

So since the market is so seriously broken, producing a dangerous drag on the economy by making labor less and less mobile, there is no choice but to fix it with financial incentives and disincentives.

I was recently able to travel to China for the first time and was fascinated to learn about their housing market. Apparently the Chinese government doesn't have a property tax.

For men in China, owning a home is already incredibly important. It's practically a requirement for getting married, to the point where a woman's family would almost certainly disapprove of a marriage if the man doesn't own a home (which, keep in mind, would be called an apartment in the US). So that coupled with China's huge population means there's already a major demand for owning a home.

China is also experiencing incredible economic growth. Local governments are pouring money into "economic development areas" where you can find modern shopping malls, skyscrapers for businesses, and lots and lots and lots of (what we would call) apartment buildings.

And this isn't just happening in Beijing or Shanghai. There are "tier 3" cities in China with populations the size of LA and NY where you see clusters of dozens and dozens of 40-50 story apartment buildings shooting up.

I was told that the value of homes in these economic development areas -- even in "tier 3" cities -- is going up by an absolute minimum of 10-15%/yr (that's being conservative). So if you have money in China, of course you invest in housing. There's no property tax.

When I see these clusters of apartment buildings popping up all over the country, I really wonder how many people are actually living in them, and how many are just getting turned around year after year for a profit. Chinese people have an unfathomable amount of trust in their government (from a westerner's perspective), so when I asked some friends about this, their response was basically, the government will take care of it. Regardless, very interesting place!