Those houses are lived in though (ignoring the whole issue of unoccupied investment properties). You can have an illiquid market with a ton of housing stock. The Bay Area has a problem with insufficient total housing stock, not with tax policy. You can see this via rental market prices, which are not locked-in like property taxes are.
Imagine a Soviet grey-concrete apartment block. You get on the list when you're 18, and get your "free" apartment five years later, in which you are effectively stuck for the next 50 years. It's illiquid, there is high supply, there are low prices.
Now imagine you can swap apartments by paying a huge bribe. It's still illiquid, there is high supply, there are low average prices, there are high marginal prices.
Not necessarily. I've been seeing several ex-rental units which have recently been passed down as part of an estate.
Inheriting a house doesn't result in a valuation event, and the seller has nothing encouraging them to sell. So, the house sits there empty - They're only paying $100/month in taxes, which is coffee money.
The combination of no capital gains on inheritance, no estate taxes and ancient property valuations creates a multi-generational issue where houses are kept locked up.
The problem is staying becomes increasing attractive over time. Retired people save money by staying put, young workers can't afford to move in. This breaks the housing market.
SF is not a housing market it's effectively a planned communist community with a few bribes on the open market.
> Retired people save money by staying put, young workers can't afford to move in.
This is a problem of housing stock. If you build more housing, it's not going to be occupied by people who've been sitting on it for the last 50 years. That's impossible, because it's new.
Well sort of. Consider a couple in a 4 bedroom house who's kids have moved out, but don't move into a smaller place (say 2 bedroom condo) because they would have to pay a bigger tax bill. So there are two bedrooms not being used because of taxes.
> Consider a couple in a 4 bedroom house who's kids have moved out, but don't move into a smaller place (say 2 bedroom condo)
This would theoretically deal with the problem of having young couples with many children who can only afford to live in a 2-bedroom condo, because all the bigger housing is occupied by old people with empty nests and the only new housing is 2-bedroom condos or smaller. But, if you're not interested in forcing the old people to leave, it doesn't solve the problem of housing supply -- you'll still need some housing for the old couple and some more, separate, housing for the new large family, and if you don't build additional housing to accommodate the incoming people you'll end up with a housing shortage, regardless of whether old people shift from their existing homes into smaller ones or not. As long as you're building housing for the people who move in, you might as well build it in the sizes they demand.
Imagine a Soviet grey-concrete apartment block. You get on the list when you're 18, and get your "free" apartment five years later, in which you are effectively stuck for the next 50 years. It's illiquid, there is high supply, there are low prices.
Now imagine you can swap apartments by paying a huge bribe. It's still illiquid, there is high supply, there are low average prices, there are high marginal prices.