Foreign residential property buyers to be taxed at 15% in Vancouver

0.8% vacancy rate, good luck renting also landlords all use fix term year leases now where you agree to move after it expires in order to bypass the provincial rent increase cap and raise your rent +30% https://www.biv.com/article/2016/6/tight-rental-market-bc-la...

Wonder if San Francisco could do the same to these foreign real estate squatters.

The tax only really affects landed immigrants who live and work in BC, and foreign capital investments in new developments as the Chinese speculators with billions who want to park money in Vancouver have already found ways around it because they can deposit millions to set up national corporations and have it do all the land holding/flipping. For example my sister who has lived here 30yrs with American citizenship will have to move to another province or back to the US if she sells her house since she will be eligible for the 15% tax buying a new place, on top of all the other existing taxes so is looking at +20% tax when her family outgrows their home.

I have been upset by how quickly many people have concluded that the problem in San Francisco (et al) is something something supply/demand and not about speculation, and that the solution is to open up zoning laws and allow new development.

The existence of enormous wealth inequality means a few billionaires can easily scoop up all the available property on the market in San Francisco, and thus the housing price is extremely vulnerable to speculation. Since land is the most valuable thing you can own, and thus the most lucrative thing to speculate on, I am sure this is happening.

Here http://voxeu.org/sites/default/files/schularick_fig1.png is a figure from a recent paper showing a dramatic rise in the price of housing since 2000. The authors of this paper again conclude that something about movement or building or zoning needs to change.

I disagree. To me it is obvious that this shift after 2000 is the result of speculation. Specifically, we know that the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 opened up a vast new derivatives market in the hundreds of trillions of dollars. This market contributed to a series of enormous bubbles and speculative bursts - e.g. the energy market speculation that Enron caused, and later the housing bubble that destroyed the global economy, still ongoing.

It seems obvious to me that the sudden and dramatic rise in land price is at least partially, and probably mostly, related mostly to derivatives and speculation. We didn't change much since 2008 - it stands to reason this would still be ongoing.

It is also my belief that the recent push to "build build build" and "rezone" in SF is a result of this speculative putsch, which wants new and valuable property in SF to make good on the bubble of speculation.

Since this bubble is driven by billionaires in tight markets (not poor people being given fraudulent mortgages nationwide), it's probably harder to see and pop. But I really, really wish people were paying attention to this more. We haven't learned the lesson of 2008 - things have changed, and not for the better.

A move by local government to drum up votes for upcoming election.

Make it look like we doing something, at the same time raising additional budget with the tax surplus.

I think it's too little very late.

15%tax on illicit funds is just cost of doing business ( with says around it too).

Quote from a localasian realtor to me: "now my client can't buy the 9million dollar house he wanted for investment cause of tax." in one scenario