Province Considers Response to Mansions on Metro Vancouver Farmland

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Price Tags Vancouver has written extensively about the existing loophole where properties in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) can be purchased with no foreign buyers’ tax, and where large mansions in the 10,000 square foot range can be built. Usurping agricultural land for a residential estate can also get your property taxes reduced to agricultural levels too, by growing a few grapes or allowing a few calves on your property. Of course once this arable farmland is gobbled up for private estates, it is no longer at a value that a farmer can afford to buy, and takes away from future food security.

In British Columbia roughly five per cent of land is zoned as agricultural land reserve an innovation from the 1970’s that protected land for agricultural use. While provincial rules regulate the land use, each property can build a single family dwelling and owners can get relaxations from building and use restrictions. When the City of Richmond deliberated about the astoundingly large mansions being built on farmland in their jurisdiction, they decided to “limit” the size of houses on the ALR to 1,000 square meters-which is still a 10,000 square foot mansion, and does not stop the degradation of agricultural land into residential mini-estates.
Metro News reports that this horrifying evaporation of farmland has been observed by the Green party leader Andrew Weaver. Weaver noticed that when the foreign buyers’ tax was introduced, buyers looked elsewhere for investment property not fettered by the tax. “Many non-residents are buying land zoned for agricultural use but instead of farming, they’re building large homes and selling the property for inflated prices.We’re seeing a preponderance of mega-mansions starting to appear on what formerly was agricultural land in parts of Metro Vancouver…Using agricultural land for pricey homes instead of farming drives up real estate prices and decreases food security. We’re now in a situation where land and houses are being treated as commodities that are traded like gold or potash or silver as opposed to their purpose.”

UBC professor Tom Davidoff is even more blunt, saying “limiting large homes on agricultural land makes sense. I think it’s wrong to have people building mega-mansions and treating them as residential real estate if the whole point of (agricultural land) is not to be residential real estate. Better you should turn it into apartments than ridiculous luxury homes.” While the BC housing minister is reviewing the foreign buyers tax to see whether it has had an impact and should be kept, Mr. Weaver is also reviewing whether farmland should be available for purchase to foreign nationals.”We want to encourage people to come live here, work here, pay taxes here. What we don’t want is third-party, offshore interests using our land, our homes as tools for speculative investment.” It remains to be seen what action will be taken by the Provincial government to reverse the carving up of the most fertile soils in Canada-and the farms of Metro Vancouver.