Not a Communist regime at all.
Pretty much the way the housing market worked back in the mid 1970’s when house prices were reasonable because property had not become the preferred investment vehicle of the wealthy and young people had a chance of buying their own homes.
Of course there were rental properties, but both of the ones we rented were owned by people temporarily overseas. There were more council properties available if you could meet the criteria, but private rentals were hard to come by. I don’t remember there being Holiday Cottages and I knew no one who had a second home.
The minute we had scraped a deposit together (second jobs) we bought. I was 20. The mortgage was expensive and the first few years a real struggle but that was what you expected and our peers were all in the same position.
Where I live now, in one of the national parks, there is a new estate of 20 properties. Only one is lived in. All the remainder are owned by investors and many of those are not even furnished. In the winter at night the high street of the town is completely dark, none of the houses occupied at all. The local shops struggle to stay afloat and very few local people can afford to buy in the town.
I believe our housing stock should be used by people needing a home. I don’t accept that anyone needs a holiday cottage or that properties should be bought and left empty by investors looking to make large profits out of property appreciation.
The market is broken and it is not in the interests of the current government to adjust the taxation mechanism that could do something to correct it.