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I didn't say it would happen overnight. That real estate is apparently more valuable as hotels and vacant investment properties than it is as housing stock. New York should embrace and exploit the fact that billionaires will pay high property taxes on empty condos, not try to fight it.

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In 2011 there were 34000 homes in Manhattan that were absentee owned or rented. That's a lot, but not in comparison with the size of the city.

Also, the population in Manhattan has been going up since 1980, so it can simultaneously be true that there are more people living here and more vacant investment properties and hotel rooms.

I doubt we're in any danger of Manhattan emptying out in the next few hundred years from anything other than a nuclear attack or climate change.

Alas, the billionaires pay almost no property taxes on those condos:

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/05/why-billionaires-dont...

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