Developers were literally building high-rises to give foreign "investors" something valuable to buy.
...and yet with all of this development, the rental vacancy rate still hovers around 0...
...and it’s not like we have a huge number of empty homes because we have 2 layers of empty home taxes at this point and we’ve precisely quantified how many there are (~6000 private residences out of a total of ~900000 in the metro area) and there aren’t that many...
...and the population keeps exploding at 2%/year...
...and most of the residential land in the metro area is still restrictively zoned for only single family homes.
I don’t think that we need money-laundering to explain the crazy real estate market here. We just need plain-old NIMBYism, break-neck population growth, and historically-low interest rates.
It's based on an affirmative declaration - every property gets a letter sent to its owner or listed representative annually, containing the declaration. You return the declaration (or submit it on the British Columbia website) before the deadline affirmatively declaring that the property isn't empty.
If you (or no one else) don't make the declaration, the property is taxed. If the province and/or city can't find you, a lien is put on the property (which can eventually be used to force a sale).
If you falsify the declaration, this is legally equivalent to a false affidavit, and you can be prosecuted. The tax is fairly small, to encourage compliance.
People like having one factor to blame. It means they can avoid all the cognitive overhead of engaging with a complex reality. It means never having to evaluate if policies you support and goals you desire might be at odds.
When everything is the fault of those foreigners, a truly remarkable amount of cognitive work just doesn't have to happen.
...and yet with all of this development, the rental vacancy rate still hovers around 0...
...and it’s not like we have a huge number of empty homes because we have 2 layers of empty home taxes at this point and we’ve precisely quantified how many there are (~6000 private residences out of a total of ~900000 in the metro area) and there aren’t that many...
...and the population keeps exploding at 2%/year...
...and most of the residential land in the metro area is still restrictively zoned for only single family homes.
I don’t think that we need money-laundering to explain the crazy real estate market here. We just need plain-old NIMBYism, break-neck population growth, and historically-low interest rates.