It was one confusing council meeting at one point Tuesday, as Councillor Kerry Jang made a motion to amend the empty-homes tax, basically asking staff to study new data coming in in 2017 and decide whether there should be some kind of exemption for secondary homes “frequented for family purposes.”
Your guess is as good as mine as to what this might mean. It also caused some confusion at council, which had to break briefly so that councillors and staff could huddle to talk about what that all might mean and whether it was legal and doable.
I need to ask more questions about this, because it’s not clear to me what should happen with families who think that they might qualify for this new, undefined exemption — should they hope it will be allowed and hang on to their condos? or sell or rent now, in case it isn’t allowed. (Or be prepared to take the hit.)
The NPA wanted to delay everything until that question was settled. But the Vision councillors clearly wanted to send the message to the public and media that the tax is moving forward.
In the meantime, the meeting also gave us a glimpse of some of the people who feel as though the tax is unfair to them. It was supposed to apply to people who are truly investors, truly people hedging their investments with empty property in Vancouver. Not them. People who, through good planning and diligence, have managed to end up owning both a house (or two) outside Vancouver and a house or condo inside Vancouver. My story here has some of their comments.
4 responses so far ↓
1 IanS // Nov 17, 2016 at 9:28 pm
Was curious about this:
“People will also be exempt if they own condos in buildings where the strata
council had a rule in place, as of the start of the new tax, restricting
rentals.”
What if you buy a place next year which has rental restrictions? What if your strata adopts rental restrictions after the new tax comes into place?
2 Kirk // Nov 18, 2016 at 10:21 am
Ha! How ironic. Historically, condos sold for less if the building had rental restrictions. Now, investors don’t want renters because they do better just parking money and flipping, and this tax could make those buildings now worth more.
Anyway, my building has a cap on how many units can be rented out. I *believe* that we can vote to change that cap at any time. So, if some investors or second-home owners bought a bunch that they don’t want to rent out, they could just vote to bring the rental cap lower to exclude themselves of the tax.
Can’t wait to see how this plays out. We all know that if there’s any sort of loophole at all, it’ll be exploited.
3 Norman12 // Nov 23, 2016 at 7:26 am
“Family use” means coming to Vancouver two or three times a year for shopping and wanting a place to stay while you are here. I agree 100% with the other comments – I think there will be a lot of special general meetings of stratas to amend the bylaws. Why can’t the rules be based on occupancy – if your unit is vacant for 6 months out of any 12 month period, it is deemed to be empty.
4 Everyman // Nov 25, 2016 at 3:53 pm
No doubt Cllr. Kerry (Raise the Red Flag) Jang got some marching orders from his masters.