The landlord can try. But when you introduce land tax and all those vacant apartments and lots come to market suddenly, I'd wish him luck with succeeding to shift the tax burden onto renters.
It's known that land tax together with similar antimonopoly taxes can't be shifted. What's nice is that not only this type of tax doesn't slow down the market, but on the contrary makes it more effective. Essentially without rent capture (antimonopoly tax) there is an open sink in the economy, so no matter how hard people work, all this value exits out of the economy, mostly in form of parked money in real estate.
As George predicted, all technological progress will just yield higher real estate prices and everybody will be working even harder than before.
Thank you for the explanation! I am still not sure I believe that what you predict would happen to a large degree in the Bay Area.
I agree a land tax would push the owners of vacant lots to develop them. But, the NIBMY owners of single family homes will still fight against the building of new apartment complexes and try to constrain housing supply (to prop up their property values). I certainly would hope that more apartments would be built though!
It's known that land tax together with similar antimonopoly taxes can't be shifted. What's nice is that not only this type of tax doesn't slow down the market, but on the contrary makes it more effective. Essentially without rent capture (antimonopoly tax) there is an open sink in the economy, so no matter how hard people work, all this value exits out of the economy, mostly in form of parked money in real estate.
As George predicted, all technological progress will just yield higher real estate prices and everybody will be working even harder than before.