We have to remove incentives for holding / renting property. I think it’s Germany that taxes the shit out of you if the owner doesn’t live in the residence. This would immediately rid the United States of all of these “investment property” owners and people buying up houses to rent with million dollar cash offers to diversify their portfolio. The stock of available homes would go up. This would also lead to the sale of any prop (?) houses being held onto indefinitely because of cheap taxes that are being rented out to fund their life actually living somewhere else. It would cut down on vacation property ownership, which again increases housing stock. It would cut down on career AirBnB-ing.
The downsides are a decrease in rental stock, and potentially less investment in any given property since a landlord is no longer maintaining it. I feel like we could find some easy fixes here with things like tax rebates for non-cosmetic home improvements.