Vancouver councillors unanimously back a motion to hike the empty homes tax to five per cent of a property’s assessed value, effective next year
Vancouver is raising the tax that prods owners of empty homes to rent their vacant properties in order to help ease the city’s low vacancy rate.
In a social media message posted after the motion was approved late Wednesday, Stewart says boosting the tax from three per cent is a “big blow to housing speculators.” The tax was introduced in 2017 as a one-per-cent levy designed to return empty and underutilized properties to the market as long-term rental homes in an effort to raise the city’s barely one-per-cent vacancy rate, the lowest in Canada.
Further increases are possible and Stewart has described the tax as an important step in tackling Vancouver’s housing affordability crisis.
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