Vancouver's current empty-homes tax means that owners of vacant properties pay about the same rate of tax as a business.Vancouver’s precedent-setting empty-homes tax resulted in only 117 homes being converted to rented from vacant in the second year of its operation, according to a staff report.
“We are seeing some effect, it is moving empty units,” Mayor Kennedy Stewart said, unperturbed by the low numbers of new rentals produced in the Vancouver initiative. The city’s director of financial services, Melanie Kerr, noted in her report that raising the tax could result in people trying to avoid it altogether through legal mechanisms.If the EHT goes higher than that, the city could run the risk that owners will start to convert their properties to business-tax classes in order to avoid the new levy, Ms. Kerr said.
True, free market is based on supply and demand BUT if a product is in limited supply then government must interfere (for public interest). Housing supply is limited therefore no-one should own more than one residence. Foreigners should own none. This will calm down rental too
WELL I THINK ITS TIME FOR A NEW LAW (OLD) ITS CALLED SQUATTERS RIGHTS LAW WHERE SQUATTERS CAN MOVE INTO VACANT HOMES AS LONG AS NOTIFY NEIGHBOURS OF VACANT HOUSE AND MUNICIPAL GOVT HmmWONDER HOW THAT LAW WOULD WORK GIVE HOMES BACK TO CANADIANS?