Vancouver to Tax Foreigners Purchasing Real Estate - Polidicks

[img]http://bc.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.1201353.1363658474!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_960/image.jpg[/img] [quote]The new 15-per-cent foreign buyer tax will apply to residential real estate deals in Metro Vancouver — from Bowen Island to Maple Ridge/Langley Township — starting Aug. 2, according to legislation.[/quote] [quote]A $2-million home in the Lower Mainland would see an extra $300,000 in property transfer tax if purchased by a foreign citizen. That would rise to $1.5 million on a $10-million home.[/quote] [quote]The tax isn’t perfect, but it’s a good move that could discourage foreign buyers who are pushing up the region’s real estate prices, said Tom Davidoff, an associate professor at the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business.[/quote] [quote][B]The latest government data shows foreign buyers — mainly from China — purchased more than $1 billion worth of B.C. property between June 10 and July 14, and 86 per cent of that was in the Lower Mainland.[/B] Countries that have tried taxing foreign investment report that it slows rising prices, said UBC geography professor David Ley. “Other cities that have employed a tax at this kind of scale have indeed cooled the market at the top end,” he said. “It does have an effect.” The tax also applies to corporations that purchase residential real estate (but not commercial properties), and government can examine the citizenship status of directors and the beneficiaries of corporate profits in deciding whether to add taxes. The foreign buyers tax was a surprise move by Premier Christy Clark’s government, which had recalled the legislature for what it said was mainly legislation to give the City of Vancouver the power to implement a vacancy tax[/quote] [quote]On Monday, the premier said increasing the property transfer tax on foreigners is about “making sure that British Columbians get first crack and best crack at buying new homes and existing homes when they come on the market.” “There is evidence now that suggests that very wealthy foreign buyers have raised the price, the overall price of housing for people in British Columbia,” she said. “If we are going to put British Columbians first and that is what we’re intending to do, we need to make sure that we do everything that we can to try and keep houses affordable and to try and make sure that those very wealthy foreign buyers find it a little bit harder to buy a house in the Greater Vancouver area.” Up until recently, the government had denied wealthy foreign investors were a contributing factor in skyrocketing Lower Mainland housing prices.[/quote] [quote]However, the tax could have unintended consequences and loopholes. It relies on buyers self-reporting their nationality and providing a social insurance number, backed up by new auditing procedures and penalties. “You hire yourself a tax lawyer, you hire yourself an accountant and you can get by that pretty quickly,” said NDP leader John Horgan. “I think sophisticated investors, those who are laundering money in our real estate market, will be able to get by that very quickly.” NDP critic David Eby said Canadian-owned companies that solicit foreign capital to buy property may also be able to get around the tax, while others raised the problematic scenario of a person with citizenship buying property as a proxy for non-resident family members.[/quote] [url=http://vancouversun.com/news/politics/premier-unveils-foreign-buyers-tax-on-metro-vancouver-real-estate]** SOURCE**[/url] Too little, too late. The biggest loophole of all is that this tax only applies to the Greater Vancouver area. Places like Victoria, Whistler, Kelowna and even here in Kamloops are exempt and we are all bracing to see our stats on foreign buyers spike. Many of the interior cities have already been seeing a flood of people leaving Vancouver because the cost to even rent was impossibly high. This year already our town has seen a 22% increase in the number of new building permits. The analyst on CBC's Afternoon Show has already advised that it will not be out of the ordinary to start seeing real estate advertisements in Chinese and heavy use of matching numbers, especially the number 8. Nobody is happy about it. You may of smacked the spider with your shoe, but she was pregnant and now her babies are scattering EVERYWHERE. Looks like I'll never be able to own a place in BC now unless something drastic happens.

Get out while you can it will only get worse as long as they keep letting foreigners buy property to launder their money and the BC government is addicted.

what makes the vancouver area so attractive to the chinese market?

[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;50780845]what makes the vancouver area so attractive to the chinese market?[/QUOTE] A well established modern Chinese community which started post-Expo 86 as residents mainly from Hong Kong moved in (which back then wasn't remotely a serious problem because residents of Hong Kong are nowhere near as spineless compared to people from the mainland) and because for years there were tons of loopholes that allowed you to basically dump money here and not get taxed. These days the causual joke is that you don't buy a house to live and work here, you buy a house because you've got $28 million in laundered cash and Beijing's looking for you. That and extremely casual racism.

I still think that the best solution here would be to improve squatting laws so that if someone hasn't used a property in at least a year, then squatters can live on that property as long as they pay for utilities and any damage they've caused from the time they live there. Not only would this stop Chinese real estate investors, it'd would help immensely with any homeless problem.

Oh yeah, wanna hear the best loophole? If you are a registered student, you are [b]STILL[/b] exempt from paying the tax. [url=http://www.torontosun.com/2016/05/12/311-million-vancouver-mansion-owned-by-student]I've already mentioned here before that this is already a well known loophole on the other side of the Pacific.[/url]

I don't think this is really going to stop the rich from buying homes

[QUOTE=pentium;50781055]Oh yeah, wanna hear the best loophole? If you are a registered student, you are [b]STILL[/b] exempt from paying the tax. [url=http://www.torontosun.com/2016/05/12/311-million-vancouver-mansion-owned-by-student]I've already mentioned here before that this is already a well known loophole on the other side of the Pacific.[/url][/QUOTE] apartntly there thinking that maybe a 50% price drop myight hapeen becuase of this [url]httP://www.cbc.ca/news/business/osfi-stress-test-1.3695691[/url]

[QUOTE=garychencool;50781126]I don't think this is really going to stop the rich from buying homes[/QUOTE] No but it's going to artificially triple the "value" of realestate in say, Gibsons. Which is a pretty big fuck you to anyone trying to actually live here and own a fucking house.

wow they even made it so that shell and holding comoanies cant get around it on second thought, this is just a cool glass of water on a forest fire

[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;50780845]what makes the vancouver area so attractive to the chinese market?[/QUOTE] Its the closest international airport in the western world from china.

As far as I know most of the Chinese who buy houses in Vancouver don't actually live in them. So why can't they implement a law that says if you buy a house in Vancouver you have to live in it for x months out of the year?

[QUOTE=Taepodong-2;50783777]As far as I know most of the Chinese who buy houses in Vancouver don't actually live in them. So why can't they implement a law that says if you buy a house in Vancouver you have to live in it for x months out of the year?[/QUOTE] its shortsighted

[QUOTE=Taepodong-2;50783777]As far as I know most of the Chinese who buy houses in Vancouver don't actually live in them. So why can't they implement a law that says if you buy a house in Vancouver you have to live in it for x months out of the year?[/QUOTE] I think someone thought that through by having a co-owner (student) live there on their behalf. [url]http://www.torontosun.com/2016/05/12/311-million-vancouver-mansion-owned-by-student[/url]

[QUOTE=Taepodong-2;50783777]As far as I know most of the Chinese who buy houses in Vancouver don't actually live in them. So why can't they implement a law that says if you buy a house in Vancouver you have to live in it for x months out of the year?[/QUOTE] That's another bill they're currently working on. the Vacancy Tax basically makes you pay more for the house annually the less you are living in it. It helps weed out the really, really slimy folks who don't even want to shove relatives across the ocean. Of course a fantastic loophole is putchase a "built to suit" house (We call them "Single family homes that are between 40 and 50 years old with large floorplans), demolish it and rebuild the modern variant of what we call the "Vancouver Special" which is a multi-family house that both suites pay rent on but the owner remains in China. One of the first places I lived when I was in Vancouver was the upstairs of a house which was owned by someone in Texas but was paying someone to come by monthly to collect the rent.

it'd be bad if you wanted a vacation home in vancouver

[QUOTE=Map in a box;50787142]it'd be bad if you wanted a vacation home in vancouver[/QUOTE] if you can afford a vacation home in vancouver you're already swimming in money

The summer climate compared to Beijing is VERY mild. Beijing's weather yesterday was 35c with 80% humidity. Vancouver in comparison was 23 with 60% humidity.

[QUOTE=pentium;50787164]The summer climate compared to Beijing is VERY mild. Beijing's weather yesterday was 35c with 80% humidity. Vancouver in comparison was 23 with 60% humidity.[/QUOTE] You have to take into account that we have oxygen.

[QUOTE=pentium;50786824] One of the first places I lived when I was in Vancouver was the upstairs of a house which was owned by someone in Texas but was paying someone to come by monthly to collect the rent.[/QUOTE] That sounds like my first apartment.

sadly this isn't just a canadian problem. we have this cancer in the first US too. chinese and russians buying property of modern homes and apts and leaving them empty shile its price value increases cause their governments arent good enough. hope canada can fix itself before its too late

As a bit of an update while I strongly recommend you take these current statistics with a grain of salt, something in the last two weeks alone is going strongly against the usual trends. [img]https://shawglobalnews.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/vancouver-data.png?w=1024[/img] [img]http://shawglobalnews.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/home-sales.png?w=1024&h=678[/img] [quote]Evidence from realtors and MLS data is showing the Vancouver real estate market is in the midst of a major slowdown, with prices dropping and sales plummeting, but some experts say it’s too soon to tell.[/quote] [quote][B]There were only three home sales in West Vancouver between Aug. 1 and 14 this year, compared to 52 during the same period last year. That’s a decrease of 94 per cent.[/B][/quote] [quote]Eilers says he’s been warning of a real estate slowdown for at least a year due to the region’s unsustainable and unsupportable prices. West Vancouver, where he does a large part of his business, had a benchmark detached home price of almost $3.4 million in July according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV). The median household income in the region was $84,345 in 2011, according to the District of West Vancouver. “The market in West Van is up 450 per cent since 2001. So is everyone making 600 per cent more income than they were so they can pay their taxes and buy their houses? Of course not. So how has this inflation been financed? By offshore money and record debt.”[/quote] [quote]North Vancouver detached homes fell 10 per cent in price in three months down to $1.8 million. Their average home price for all properties fell 17.3 per cent in that time period to $1 million. It’s more of the same in Burnaby and Surrey.[/quote] [quote]“It’s only slowing down at the top where there is uncertainty,” he said. And that uncertainty is “diabolically dangerous,” according to Eilers, who has sold real estate during four different correction periods in Vancouver. “When the market changes, it typically changes over night or within a couple of weeks, but it often takes two to three months for everybody to figure it out. That’s why it can be so scary,” he said. A strong price correction often takes months to appear because sellers are unwilling to lower their prices until they have to. According to the realtor, often sellers have their houses appraised months before they put them on the market, meaning in the climate we are currently witnessing, sellers are expecting to list their homes at record-high prices, even though the number of sales and listings indicate prices should be lowering. “Typically what happens when the market starts to flip is all the buyers go into hibernation and all the listings come on. What are the odds on getting that seller to price his home at a fraction of where the market is now? It’s zero,” Eilers said. What causes prices to fall is “urgency, anxiety, and fear,” according Eilers. He says a climate of financial overexposure, a treadmill of buying and selling and flipping homes, owning multiple properties, and buying before selling will test how long sellers can hold on without selling in desperation. He points to the 1980 housing crash that dropped prices by 40 to 60 per cent within a year and took six years to recover. “So your $2 million house became $800,000 in five months. There’s a lot of economists and a lot of wise people that believe that our financial structure is much closer to that structure from a corrections point of view,” Eilers explained. The Bank of Canada recently warned that those invested in the Vancouver housing market are particularly vulnerable to a price correction due to the large share of “highly indebted households.” And the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation increased Vancouver’s risk rating to “high,” due to “evidence of problematic conditions” including price acceleration and overvaluation.[/quote] [url=http://globalnews.ca/news/2887766/data-is-the-metro-vancouver-real-estate-market-in-free-fall/]**SOURCE**[/url] In a nutshell, the high-risk properties are being dumped as quickly as speculators can. It is still WAY to early to say if this is going to be a downwards trend or as the article states a correction period. I'd honestly want to see what it looks like in a year.

holy crap an average depreciation of $300,000 ? In just over 1 month? Seems to me the plan is working but may in turn screw over homeowners who are looking to sell... just shows how much of an impact Chinese buyers had on the residential market. At least now, Canadians hopefully will be able to get back into the residential markets

[QUOTE=shutter_eye5;50917014]holy crap an average of depreciation of $300,000 ? In just over 1 month? Seems to me the plan is working but may in turn screw over homeowners who are looking to sell... just shows how much of an impact Chinese buyers had on the residential market. At least now, Canadians hopefully will be able to get back into the residential markets[/QUOTE] In a few years if/when the markets calm down, yeah. This turn happening so suddenly could fuck me severely as my building is being bought out and redeveloped, the ensuing loss is likely to cost me dearly and there won't be much availble for what I get out of it, so now I'm sincerely looking at losing what little homeownership status I had.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;50917019]In a few years if/when the markets calm down, yeah. This turn happening so suddenly could fuck me severely as my building is being bought out and redeveloped, the ensuing loss is likely to cost me dearly and there won't be much availble for what I get out of it, so now I'm sincerely looking at losing what little homeownership status I had.[/QUOTE] Let's form a facpunch commune on Bowen Island. Technically it's still part of the GVRD :v:

[QUOTE=Cakebatyr;50919641]Let's form a facpunch commune on Bowen Island. Technically it's still part of the GVRD :v:[/QUOTE] I was just there, and it's a beautiful place. The water tasted/smelled like sulphur though.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;50920048]I was just there, and it's a beautiful place. The water tasted/smelled like sulphur though.[/QUOTE] Should have mentioned that in the Canada thread, I live there. And yeah our water quality is garbage.

Are all the Chinese people moving out? That'd be a sad consequence of this

[QUOTE=proboardslol;50920324]Are all the Chinese people moving out? That'd be a sad consequence of this[/QUOTE] ??? They never moved in.

[QUOTE=Tetsmega;50920332]??? They never moved in.[/QUOTE] I assumed vancouver had a chinese population based on the picture in the OP