there is a record number of vacant homes at the moment.

We're currently close to the record for all time lowest vacancy rates. We're at 6.3%. The highest (over the past 70 years) was in 2009, at 11.1%. It got down as far as 5% a few times. I downloaded the raw data and it says the average is 7.28%

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRVRUSQ156N

There's a popular image of a bunch of Scrooge McDucks sitting on giant inventories of housing but the evidence doesn't support that. Someone saying, "I saw a bunch of empty houses." is exactly as logical an argument as a climate denier saying, "It's been cold all week." That's just an anecdote.

The data is very clear on the matter. We don't have enough housing.