"pay 1% of the buildings value as property tax each year"
A old rotten building might be worth just 10000€. And 100 € a year ain't that much. One would have to tax the property - and who will set up the rates in a fair way in a process that is not vulnerable to corruption?
I think Japan is one of the outliers where pretty much all property value is locked with the land itself, as buildings depreciate not appreciate.
That's good, because if they can't pay, their house is up for remodelling too. /sarcasm
Also, you need to figure out how you define vacant, and how to track it.
If I relocated for work, and use the house 3 months a year and every other month for a weekend, is it vacant? How do you tell?
The definition of vacant is something that would have to be figured out, but it's not impossible. For example, you could do a generous 6-12 months of the year occupation without taxation, and then a sliding scale from there. (So you pay 0% of the new tax at 12 months yearly occupation, 0% at 6 months, 50% at 3 months, and 100% at 0 months.)
Imagine you worked all your life and now you just want to enjoy your peace in your home for your last years. You really would not want to move and I am very against driving old people out of their homes, even though I am one of those young people with a small apartment also seeing empty and unused space everywhere.
Not everyone can do that easily. I would not know how that works and where are the downsides. I can learn it, sure, but for an 80 year old this would be real stress, having to figure unknown contracts out - and not getting cheated. Old people are a prime target for frauds for a reason.
This is why complaining about rising property taxes is almost never about the elderly people who actually live in the house. It's about their children that want to inherit the house without paying off their parents' property taxes.
People in different countries experience different realities.
> The reality is that the same thing, in effect, happens if you stop paying property taxes. The tax builds up, etc.
and in many places worse things will happen to you if you stop paying property taxes.
That was my point, not binding the value just to the building itself.
In general, everything you could propose that puts pressure on landlords leads to transfer of ownership from your (maybe friendly) landlord with 2-3 units, to larger, more professional companies who can handle the paperwork and regulations, with a tendency to tear down and rebuild something that is more expensive to rent or buy.
I live in Turkey. We had 80% p.a. inflation, where the government decided to lower the interest rates even further. Our president said Interest rates are the cause of inflation and if we lowered interest rates inflation would go down. State banks gave out house loans with 12% p.a. interest where the inflation rate was above 80% p.a.
A lot of Turkish people got their free money from the bank and invested in real estate. In Turkey, everyone evades tax and property taxes are not really collected. This in turn fueled inflation even more, sky-rocketed inequality and caused the worst housing crisis.
That is why I am convinced that property taxes are a must.
I think allowing short term rentals, and giving owners strong eviction rights for damage, illegal activity or non-payment (which we have) need to be paired with property taxes to prevent all landlords becoming large inhuman entities.
It should also be noted that if you tax everything at the value it could make, you distort the usage of valuable locations to exclude housing.
You could maybe try to figure out based on water usage but then someone could just leave water tap slightly leaking since water cost is not that expensive
Probsbly squatters are those cheap solution that can enforce it in the most efficient way