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We have a very high vacant home tax in Vancouver. There are also taxes on foreigners buying real estate. The pandemic has put a serious dent in foreign buyers a
by eloff 6y ago
We have a very high vacant home tax in Vancouver. There are also taxes on foreigners buying real estate. The pandemic has put a serious dent in foreign buyers as well.
None of it made much difference. Homes are selling after just days on the market, and as much as half a million above asking.
Putting a for sale sign on your lawn is akin to chumming shark infested waters. It begins a bidding frenzy.
I don't know what the solution is, but I'm ready to throw in the towel and leave the country for more affordable locales as soon as my lease is up. I don't work a local job, there's no reason for me to be here aside from the fact that I love the city and the country.
- balfirevic 6y ago> I don't know what the solution is Build more homes.
- eloff 6y agoI don't think it's possible to build enough homes in Vancouver. It's part of a solution, but a shift to higher density housing is also required.
- balfirevic 6y agoI certainly didn't mean "build more homes, but only the low density kind".
- hhjinks 6y agoVacancy tax isn't enough. Any residential property you own that is not your primary dwelling needs to be highly taxed. With how low western interest rates are currently, it's way too profitable to own property you don't ever plan to use yourself. Housing is essential. It's bordering on a human right. When only the people who already own property can afford the prices, you've effectively created an insurmoutable barrier between the haves and the have-nots. The solution is to build more homes in the areas with jobs, and to make it unprofitable for private actors to own rental properties.
- eloff 6y agoI'm missing something here, how do you own multiple homes and not have to pay the vacancy tax? You have to rent them, and at that point they're part of the rental supply and not contributing to the problem anymore.
- hhjinks 6y agoRental properties absolutely contribute to the problem. I even outlined one of the reasons as to why in the above comment. The problem isn't that housing prices have passed some arbitrary threshold. Rising housing prices and easy profit from buying up property and renting it out eventually leads to neo-serfdom with the non-property-owning class being locked to renting for life. Moving property ownership to the people who want to live there is by definition part of the solution, and you don't own a property you rent.
- eloff 6y agoYeah, that's true. I suppose I wouldn't be stuck renting if homes were the price they are in Calgary.
- kspacewalk2 6y ago>Any residential property you own that is not your primary dwelling needs to be highly taxed. An excellent way to drive up rents into the stratosphere, both by reducing the rental stock and by having the landlords pass the tax right on to the renter (remember, landlords don't run charities and will adjust rents accordingly). So all you're doing with that high tax is giving even more of a subsidy to homeowners at the expense of renters. Regressive taxation in all but name.
- hhjinks 6y agoThere are a million ways to tax rentals that make it impossible for landlords to pass the bill onto the renter.
- 6y ago