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Comment by Helmut10001 | Hacker News Reader

Such a law existed in San Francisco since 2022 and it was just cancelled by court order. The problem is: there are so many edge cases for empty apartments that it is impossible to account for. In Berlin, e.g., just imagine all the empty apartments in 10 years because no one wants to rent unrenovated, uninsulated apartments because of energy prices. The landlord cannot pay renovation. Forcing landlords to pay an empty apartment penalty doesn't help here.

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I am not a capitalist, but isn't that the kind of problem that capitalism would solve?

Wouldn't the landlords would just take a loss and sell the property to avoid penalties?

If there is no business model and no one wants to pay, what then? We'd have a lot of vacant properties that would need to be renovated by the city. We see this in lots of places in Germany already, where there simply aren't buyers (because of demographics, primarily). Further, if you devalue properties with such a law, then you'd have a credit/dept property - landlords couldn't pay their dept, if property prices devalue by state law. Lastly, no one would build properties anymore under such a law.

.. Cities also rely quite a bit on property and real estate transfer taxes. By reducing property values, cities destroy their own tax base while needing lots of additional money to renovate state-acquired, vacant properties.

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