Vancouver, suffering from a near-zero supply of homes available for rent, plans to slap investors sitting on vacant properties with a new tax in an effort to make housing more accessible in Canada's most-expensive property market.
The levy, which would start in January, may be as high as 2 percent of the property's assessed value, Kathleen Llewellyn-Thomas, the city's general manager of community services, told reporters Wednesday. That would mean a minimum C$20,000 ($15,000) annual payment for the typical C$1 million-plus detached home in Vancouver based on July 2015 assessment data, the most recent available.
"Vancouver is in a rental housing crisis," said Mayor Gregor Robertson, whose announcement follows a separate measure by the province in July to impose a 15 percent tax on foreign buyers. "Dangerously low vacancy rates across the city are near zero."
Vancouver is penalizing property owners for not renting empty buildings.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @06:27AM
First, we allow all of our good-paying manufacturing jobs to be exported.
Next, we spend what money we have left buying stuff from the people who now -do- produce stuff.
Now, those (Chinese) folks have to figure out what to do with all that money we gave them.
(They can't buy any of -OUR- manufactured goods because, again, we exported all of our manufacturing jobs.)
So, what's left for them to buy with their giant piles of money?
West Coast real estate.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]