Someone mentioned that for accounting reasons property portfolios may be better sitting empty than offering tenants a discount because their yields look bad?
In: Economics
For the record, the idea that swaths of real estate holders are just sitting on empty buildings to jack up pricing is false.
It’s not true now. [Occupancy rates](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRVRUSQ156N) are the [highest they’ve been](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USHVAC) in 30+ years.
But it’s also *never* been true. It’s *extremely* rare that it would be worth it to a landlord to leave an apartment vacant. Maybe for a month or to to try and get a better deal, but that’s going to happen anyway and definitely not long-term. Every month it’s vacant is 100% lost income–and even a cost, for minimal utilities and taxes. It doesn’t take long for the increased rent to not make up for the months and months the apartment sat empty.
There may be some edge cases–there always are–but the stats show it’s not the norm.
(Commercial real estate might be a *little* different since they tend to have longer-term contracts and thus it might be worth it to wait for a higher price to “lock in”, but that’s different.)
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