Half of Vancover homes file for empty house tax

I thought this was an interesting stat. It appears that half of all Vancouver homes have had to file as empty because of the tax on empty houses. You can guarantee its the same in all the other cities which have had the same set of circumstances. Aussie NZ etc. It looks like the housing bubble is well and truly over as house prices start to decline. California has the most houses on the market , so we seem to have internal migration as well as international immigration. This is getting crazy.

Do you know, in greece, you dont have to pay counsil tax, if your house is not complete. Regardless iffuou are living there or not.

I wonder if they will ever regret letting all of that criminal money hide in their real-estate. What a great money laundering scheme. They sure didn't care when the money and fees were rolling in at the beginning. That tax is like trying to put a band-aid on the gaping wound from a gunshot. What is is now, every house is over 1 mil?

This will be interesting to watch. Go free markets go.

a reply to: Pandaram


Same in NZ but you have to pay unimproved land tax which is a fraction of developed. So theoretically you could be building the place for years and living in a caravan while you do it as you can afford.

Housing prices are not declining overall in the Pac NW. Vancouver area may be a bit different. There's still rising prices outside of the immediate US Northwest Coast metro cities. My neighbors raised there home and land prices already due to shortage and demand.

a reply to: anonentity

Not surprising. Of the six or seven new highrise developments that have gone up over the last 3 or 4 years around where i live have stood probably 50-60% empty since being built. As in, no lights or curtains have ever been in most of the windows, there's been barely any increase in people in the area despite each of these buildings having at least a hundred units, rent in one of those buildings (for a two bedrrom suite) is almost twice what i pay for the top floor of a house(luckily my rent hasn't increased in the 9 years or so i've lived there).

Maybe in some ways it's good they're empty. They've added no new amenities for the hundreds of people that can fit in those buildings. No new grocery stores or anything like that....a bunch of tanning salons and a couple new starbucks though....

This looks like the same thing that is happening in London. Houses/flats being used as investment vehicles instead of simply a place to live. Because of this money inflow, common workers can't even afford to live where they work and have to take public transport from their affordable housing outside of the city.

WashingtonPost

London faces a crushing shortage of affordable housing, because the city is a global magnet for aspirational newcomers, a safe refuge for stash-your-cash capital and a victim of its own smashing success, even in these anxious Brexit days.

"Affordable" here being a relative term, where the average price for a flat last year was $713,143. It is especially brutal for young people, those in the middle income range and first-time buyers.

Looks like they are going to use a tax to try and dissuade this behavior.

a reply to: ClovenSky



It's probably the same criminals as here.

-the banks

They are holding a ton of property in all cities.

a reply to: Mandroid7


To keep them going on the market, and dumping the prices which will leave them exposed?

a reply to: anonentity

The irony is that if people have a mortgage, the bank still technically owns the property regardless of who the "owner" is. Yet people with mortgages claim they own a home or property :/

originally posted by: ClovenSky
I wonder if they will ever regret letting all of that criminal money hide in their real-estate. What a great money laundering scheme. They sure didn't care when the money and fees were rolling in at the beginning. That tax is like trying to put a band-aid on the gaping wound from a gunshot. What is is now, every house is over 1 mil?

This will be interesting to watch. Go free markets go.

The BC government and the Chinese government had themselves a pretty sweet little scheme going there for awhile.

facts:

inflation has priced everyone out of the market, we WILL experience a deflationary period and it's going to be rough

a reply to: Carcharadon


The reality that the billions made from illegal drugs has to be laundered. The fact is on that scale it has to go through banks, or legal business that pay tax to make it look legit. Which means most of the Bankers are criminals in the true sense of the word.

a reply to: anonentity

most drug money is probably laundered through real estate to be honest

originally posted by: dubiousatworst
a reply to: anonentity

The irony is that if people have a mortgage, the bank still technically owns the property regardless of who the "owner" is. Yet people with mortgages claim they own a home or property :/

That doesnt count in Vancouver. Investors are buying 6 or 10 units at a time and leaving them empty. The ones living in them are the ones with mortgages and those people are not the problem. The problem are the investors that inflate morgage costs for those that want a home and now have no more disposable income for goods and services.

a reply to: toysforadults

neses

Yes I think that's a given. Or placed into banks in under ten thousand dollar amounts. From "Cash businesses".

a reply to: anonentity

it's easier than that

all you have to do is throw an entertainment event, like boxing or MMA fights, concert or anything really. your event host 5,000 people and they all paid for their $50 tickets at the event in cash boom clean money

a reply to: toysforadults

Between real estate and the casino's..billions were laundered in B.C. especially Vancouver, and the suburbs.
The government was fully complicit in screwing us out of a fair slice of the pie..ie the chance to own a home at a realistic price.

a reply to: vonclod

delfation is already happening don't worry. just cause the bulls can't see it yet doesn't mean it isn't happening

wages are to low, 80% of people are paycheck to paycheck and it's OBVIOUSLY not because they are buying phones, we know that

a reply to: toysforadults

The cost of living here is very high, indeed very hard to get ahead, but the housing market has thankfully slowed a bit. It was insane at one point..people selling their homes well over asking prices, sometimes hundreds of thousands over. Then, anyone hanging on for dear life to a home they owned were hit with big property tax hikes.