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posted by martyb on Friday September 16 2016, @03:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the for-$10K/year-I'll-make-a-house-look-lived-in dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @02:28PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @02:28PM (#402797)

    I spend nearly 4 hours per day on trains commuting to and from work.

    So aside from the weekends you really only go home to sleep and that's it as that's all you have time for after that commute. What's the damn point of having a house then if you don't have much time to enjoy it?

  • (Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Saturday September 17 2016, @06:39AM

    by Bogsnoticus (3982) on Saturday September 17 2016, @06:39AM (#403048)

    I get 4-5 hours of R&R once I get home, providing I hid the bread knife before I left in the morning.
    Not to mention Australia is still civilised enough that noone tried to mug or steal from you, at least if there are potential witnesses, that you can catch up on lost sleep during those long trips.

    --
    Genius by birth. Evil by choice.