The Left Wants to Tax 2 Million Vacant Homes. They Could Be Seriously Wrong in Their Calculations

The Left has consistently announced that it will not support the project of subsidies for loans, which was prepared in the Ministry of Development and Technology. At Saturday’s convention, it presented its ideas for “starting up” the real estate market and making it easier for Poles to find a roof over their heads. One of the ideas is to tax vacant properties.

– The Left will submit a project to use two million vacant properties in Poland – announced Włodzimierz Czarzasty. Premises in which no one lives are to be subject to an additional tax.

Czarzasty added that the bill, which is to be presented soon, “will be beneficial for both owners and tenants.”

The left has used the echoing slogan about 2 million vacant apartments. In the eyes of its politicians, these are apartments in new investments that speculators bought to resell after a dozen or so months for a large profit. The truth is much more disappointing.

How many vacant properties are there in Poland?

Polish regulations do not regulate what a vacant building is. In order to fill this gap, institutions and organizations interpret this concept in different ways. The Central Statistical Office assumes that these are unoccupied apartments. However, some foundations, for example, consider it an apartment, building or premises unused for at least 12 months.

In a commentary for Gazeta Wyborcza, Małgorzata Wełnowska, senior real estate market analyst at Cenatorium, explained that additionally, when determining the number of unoccupied residential premises, the GUS pollsters took into account data from electricity suppliers. In this way, they obtained a more reliable number of vacancies.

Thus, the category of uninhabitable apartments includes both those that are actually unfit for living due to their poor technical condition, as well as those that are in good technical condition but are treated as a capital investment. If we include in the 2 million houses in the countryside from which the residents have long since moved out – because these houses are in a terrible condition (they require renovation, are energy inefficient) and, in addition, are located in a town where few people want to live, because the children or grandchildren of the previous owners have moved to a larger center – then the existence of such premises has only statistical significance. Forcing its owners to pay vacancy tax will only result in accelerating the decision to demolish.

In many empty buildings no one wants to live

The same is true of empty apartments somewhere in small towns. Moving to places that offer better work and living conditions is a completely natural direction. Apartments in old tenement houses somewhere on the eastern wall have been empty for years, they are classic vacancies – but very few people really dream of moving there. Quite often, people who could live there move somewhere else, rent and take out loans to buy their own apartment. If returning to their hometown were that easy, they would decide to do so.

The Left has no point in looking here for a solution to the problem of the housing deficit.

The Central Statistical Office estimates that there are as many as 60,000 vacant apartments in municipal resources. Laziness or sabotage on the part of local governments? Not necessarily. There are many apartments in municipal resources in very poor condition. They cannot be occupied, they are renovated according to the financial possibilities of the municipalities. This often requires huge amounts of money: many of these apartments are located in almost hundred-year-old tenement houses that have practically never undergone a proper renovation.

Is the second apartment vacant?

What about properties that are the subject of court proceedings, primarily inheritance? The legal situation is unregulated and it is not really possible to move in there, let alone sell such a house or apartment.

Another issue is whether the Left considers a second apartment to be vacant. If someone has an apartment in Łódź, but lives in Warsaw on a daily basis and returns to the Łódź premises from time to time, should they be taxed in order to encourage them to sell the apartment that is vacant for part of the month?

The Left’s slogan is catchy, but not supported by knowledge of reality. We are waiting for the projects and justification – maybe from them we will learn what the coalition party really wants to tax and how it will affect the real estate market.