Some countries have a large yearly tax if you leave a house vacant for longer than 6 months or a year without a valid reason. More countries need to do this.
Not sure about the USA, but it’s a big problem in Australia. Foreign investors (that don’t live in Australia nor have any intent of moving to Australia) buy properties then just hold them as speculative assets. They don’t want tenants, because they don’t want to go through all that effort. All they want to do is hold them and watch the value go up, in the same way you’d hold stock or Bitcoin.