High levels of speculation are generally tied to supply & demand. If B.C boosted supply enough that alone would drive speculation down. Don’t get me wrong, I agree that its the right direction to try and bring down speculation, but I think attacking it directly is going to after the symptoms rather than the disease (though to Eby’s credit, his government also pursuing a comprehensive zoning & land use reform policies to boost supply and make the housing market more varied etc.)
I feel like instead of a speculation tax, it would be smarter to have a provincial Land Value Tax (or try and get the municipalities on board with replacing their property tax systems with LVTs or split rate taxes). On top of facilitating more efficient land use, and being better for equitability and revenue reliability, LVTs tend to promote more efficient land use & transit oriented development and deter speculative land holding.
Corrupted_G_nome on
Good, alot of this os foreigners buying up housing as a commodity. We need housing to live in.
Like the recent increases in Federal taxes have slowed the housing market. I hope to see more constraints to slow the increase of price and limit empty housing.
2 Comments
High levels of speculation are generally tied to supply & demand. If B.C boosted supply enough that alone would drive speculation down. Don’t get me wrong, I agree that its the right direction to try and bring down speculation, but I think attacking it directly is going to after the symptoms rather than the disease (though to Eby’s credit, his government also pursuing a comprehensive zoning & land use reform policies to boost supply and make the housing market more varied etc.)
I feel like instead of a speculation tax, it would be smarter to have a provincial Land Value Tax (or try and get the municipalities on board with replacing their property tax systems with LVTs or split rate taxes). On top of facilitating more efficient land use, and being better for equitability and revenue reliability, LVTs tend to promote more efficient land use & transit oriented development and deter speculative land holding.
Good, alot of this os foreigners buying up housing as a commodity. We need housing to live in.
Like the recent increases in Federal taxes have slowed the housing market. I hope to see more constraints to slow the increase of price and limit empty housing.