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What happened to the punitive taxes for unnocupied homes I read about a couple of years ago? If I recall it was a "tax" 1% of the property value every month a
by gota 5y ago
What happened to the punitive taxes for unnocupied homes I read about a couple of years ago?
If I recall it was a "tax" 1% of the property value every month after the first 12 of vacancy
I can't imagine that going into effect and rent/house prices _not_ going down
- exporectomy 5y agoIf the problem is caused by too many people wanting to live there, rather than empty houses, it wouldn't help. Nobody likes to blame themselves, but everyone living in a high-priced area is partly to blame for the high prices, not just some faceless evil baddies.
- kennywinker 5y agoThere are more empty homes (or occupied just enough to avoid the tax) in vancouver than there are unhoused people here.
- exporectomy 5y agoUnhoused people? Homeless people aren't the market for house buying. It's people who aren't even in Vancouver because they can't afford to live there.
- kennywinker 5y agoBut they are in need of a place to live. One of the consequences of the current housing market in vancouver is that housing is unaffordable even as a renter. Those vacant homes, if they were available for rent would drive down rents for everyone and help house some of those unhoused people.
- exporectomy 5y agoSure, there will be some downward pressure on rents (not necessarily an actual decrease) but that's not an argument that empty homes are a major contributor to the high prices. It might not even be discernable above the noise. The argument of counting homeless people and empty homes is disingenuous because it seems superficially like that's the whole problem when it's surely not.
- kennywinker 5y agoIdk, my empathy for middle income people struggling to buy a home is tiny in comparison with the empathy i feel towards people living in their cars or tents. I can’t see a way that we would get to full housing without radical changes to the way land is used and commodified, that would likely have upstream benefits that would help with home affordability
- fredophile 5y agoThat tax applies to the city of Vancouver. Most houses in Canada are outside of Vancouver.
- rishav_sharan 5y agoDid it have any effect? From what I hear, Vancouver has one of the costliest real state markets in Canada
- ttul 5y agoIt’s utterly bonkers. The median single family home in Vancouver costs CAD $1.9M (USD $1.5M).
- digislave 5y agoVancouver is famous all over the world as an attractive city (for example I live in Berlin, Germany, and many people I know would like to visit Vancouver). I've never been there, but I have heard it is next to the sea AND next to the mountains, and it lies in a first world country with a solid economy and good health care. Maybe the prices just reflect demand?
- voisin 5y agoAll true, and all were true 20 years ago when prices were not this out of line with local incomes.
- xvilka 5y agoAnd likely it will not be affected much by the climate change.
- rishav_sharan 5y agoHasn't British Columbia where Vancouver is at, had terrible weather this year? Looks like Vancouver is actually more vulnerable to the climate crisis compared to other major Canadian cities; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57654133 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57654133
- throwawaysea 5y agoThat tax was for the city of Vancouver. I heard it did help to some degree, and may have caused a shift in foreign buyers from Vancouver to Seattle, which is not too far away.