Tim Pawsey wanted to make sure PT saw this – from BC Business:
In the past two years, Israel, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg have each enacted vacant property laws with one common goal: to alleviate an acute housing shortage for local citizens.
Few jurisdictions impose a tax specifically on vacant property. Far more common is a carrot-and-stick approach that rewards owner-occupants with tax benefits while imposing additional costs on foreign and non-resident transactions.
Click to enlarge.
There’s a big difference between Vancouver and those other cities.
In other cities, vacant property and high housing costs hurt the local industry and economy. In Vancouver, vacant property and high housing costs ARE our local industry and economy.
22.2% seems very low. The coal harbour area is quite dead; there is no way >75% of units are occupied. By the looks, 60% of units are empty on any given day. I question the accuracy of the research.
Sorry, the figure is 22.8%, not 22.2, but still very low.
Many “owners” use the apartments as their vacation homes, living there 1 month a year, letting the place sit empty for the rest of the time. You can’t really stop these people, even though these people probably comprise a significant portion of the suites in Coal Harbour.
A lot of places look emptier than they are. I remember looking at the building I rented in a few years ago and consistently only seeing a few lights on, but I know it was fully rented. Be careful about drive-by assessments of vacancy.
If someone can afford property in Coal Harbour, then afford to leave it empty most of the year because it’s merely a seasonal home, then they can afford to pay a higher tax rate.
The problem is coming up with a tax that’s simple to administer, doesn’t require the cooperation of other levels of government, is impossible to avoid, yet doesn’t result in massive tax increases for full time resident owners or big rent increases.
Rental property is the big problem. If you give tax breaks for rental property then you’ve effectively given that tax break to all the investors and speculators too. After all, an empty home is simply one that is “temporarily” between rentals.
If I had a solid solution that could be implemented tomorrow I’d probably be in government rather than posting comments on this blog. :\
Important issue and useful to see the comparison. In Australia however the restrictions on overseas buyers to only buy new properties are only theoretical – there is no enforcement provisions for this regulation and overseas buyers have and continue to purchase established properties without restraint.
Could just look at New Brunswick for a model within Canada.
In New Brunswick, there are two levels of property tax (provincial and municipal/local), and two classifications of property (residential and non-residential). Residential property is further divided as either owner-occupied (e.g., principal residence) or non-owner occupied (e.g., apartments and cottages).
In the current system, non-owner occupied properties are taxed twice (once by the province and once by the municipality/local service district). Owner-occupied properties are taxed only once by the municipality/local service district.
Non-owner-occupied units pay double the taxes of owner-occupied units.
In Vancouver, owner-occupied homes get the Home Owner Grant (if below the threshold), while non-owner-occupied homes would pay the full municipal taxes. It may not be 2 to 1, but non-residents would pay more.
I don’t really understand the uproar over empty condos – it boils down to people dissatisfied with others’ utilization of their own space.
So is it equally “offensive” for an empty-nester senior couple to occupy a large multi-bedroom home in Vancouver? What about a single person occupying a whole house?
i.e.
– a 2 bedroom condo in Coal Harbour sits empty much of the year – uproar!
– a 4 bedroom house in Vancouver has 2 empty-nester occupants – not a whimper.
Do you really not see the difference between one person living in a house and it being empty month after month or year after year? Would you like to live on a street full of unoccupied houses?
If one person lives in a house, and it is well maintained by gardening contractors and the occupant is a busy person working late at night, etc. and you never see the person – no I don’t see the difference between that and a well-maintained empty house.
WRT empty houses, I’d expect there might be more complaints about houses rented out to noisy people.
… and people are complaining about empty condos here. If you live on a floor of empty condos – there’s a lot less noise.
… and should people really be dreaming of a suburban utopia where the neighbours pry into each others’ business? Reminds me of the Kravitzes on Bewitched.
What the hell kind of scenario is that? A rare and fanciful one, I’d say. If your neighbors are all vampires and the light of day turns them to dust, then no, i don’t see the difference. No, nobody wants prying neighbors, but explaining the value of regular neighbors or a sense of community seems rather pointless to one who can’t see other people as anything but an imposition. Let me put it this way. When you were a kid, did you play with other kids on your street?
LOL. I’ll put him in the anti-placemaking group. “Get off my lawn!”
Damn kids!