MVC Populate dropdownlistfor in CREATE view from another model

So I basically have the same issue as this post: ASP.NET MVC - How to populate dropdownlist with another model?

The solution works... technically.. as long as the model is populated. However, I'm working with a CREATE view where the controller's action simply returns a blank "View()" obviously because it's creating something so you don't have any data yet.... yet I obviously still want the dropdownlist to populate from a model which gets it's data from the DB. If I try to run this code on a view with an empty model I get "Object reference not set to object" when it tries to grab the property that returns the list.

I tried instantiating a new, blank model in the Create action with the USING statement and set only PropertyTypeList property with a new instance of the Type model, and passed it to the view and it sort of worked... the view showed up with the dropdown of the other Type model populated, but it pre-filled in a bunch of the int/date types with 0's and 1/1/1900's because I have non-nullable fields. This is the closest I've gotten so far to simply letting the user create a new record with a pre-populated dropdown from ome of the fields that comes from a model.

I could just create a new Type model in the Create Action and assign it to the Viewbag or Tempdata, which I've done in the past, but this idea just makes me feel DIRTY. Viewbag disappears if the person refreshes the page so they get an error and is totally unprofessional. And I don't use Tempdata much because it relies on session state which gets very problematic if a user has my form open in mulitple tabs which could easily happen.

I feel like the solution from this post is SO close. It works fine when you're working with the EDIT action because you're passing a full model. But does anyone know how to get a dropdownlist to populate like this with an empty model? I tried something like adding an extra class to my secondary Type model

namespace blablanamespace {

    public partial class PropertyType {
    .. bla bla bla propertytype ID and name here
    }

    public class ViewModel
    {
        private readonly List<PropertyType> _keytypes;
        public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> PropTypeItems
        {
            get { return new SelectList(_keytypes, "TypeID", "TypeID"); }
        }
    }
}

and

@Html.DropDownListFor(model => model.TypeID, new SelectList(new blablanamespace.Models.ViewModel().PropTypeItems))

but then I just get this error:

Value cannot be null. Parameter name: items

If I change the ViewModel class to instantiate a new list of types like so

 public class ViewModel
    {
    public class ViewModel
    {
        private readonly List<PropertyType> _keytypes = new List<PropertyType>;
        public IEnumerable<SelectListItem> PropTypeItems
        {
            get { return new SelectList(_keytypes, "TypeID", "TypeID"); }
        }
    }

I don't get the error this time, but I just get a blank form(yay) with a blank dropdownlist(boo!!). I figured this latter method would work since when I want to populate a new fresh list in the controller I basically do the same thing

List<ApplicationKeyType> _keytypes = new List<ApplicationKeyType>();

That behavior doesn't appear to be the same in the model.