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Also doesn’t change the fact that higher property assessment values can mean a lower property tax rate even if the tax has actually gone up. If enough people believe the property tax is set based on a rate then a lower rate will give the appareance of doing a good job to keep the costs down.

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Tamil is a state in India, not a race

Well actually Tamil is the language spoken by (surprise) Tamils. Tamil Nadu (which literally means “Tamil Land” is a state in India. Tamils are an ethnic group whose homeland is Tamil Nadu and who also live in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere. Whether you want to call an ethnic group a “race” is subjective and not worth debating.

realpaul:

The Big Lie is that prices go up. They don’t. The purchasing power of your dollars goes DOWN.

Are there prizes for this kind of thinking? The price of something is how much money it takes to buy it. The purchasing power of money is how much of something you get for a given amount of money. In other words, one is the reciprocal of the other, and if one goes up the other goes down, by definition.

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Sikh is a religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikh

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You don’t really understand how municipal taxes work this has been covered 1,000 times here so I won’t go into detail but it doesn’t work the way you think it does.

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“High real estate prices are a stealth tax. Governments, at all levels, pursue policies that tend toward higher real estate prices.

Why? It’s a way to raise taxes without officially “raising taxes.”

The key beneficiaries are the municipal politicians and municipal public employees, but also the provincial governments, along with the federal government.

Higher assessments mean higher property tax revenue. This means that municipalities require less in the way of transfer payments from the provinces, and, in turn the provinces need less from the federal government.

Feeding the municipalities with high real estate prices leaves the feds and the provinces with more money to “redistribute.”

This is before we even start talking about the sales tax revenues associated with building, buying, selling, and maintaining property.

Maybe we need to rethink the way we do municipal finance?

Perhaps eliminate all property taxes, with a corresponding increase in provincial sales taxes, with municipalities getting a transfer from the provinces based on population?

Has anyone thought about or written about the housing bubble from this angle?

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Cariboojohn on 11.12.09 at 3:56 pm
Hi Garth
I live downtown Vancouver- Gastown, in somewhat of a new building. 1996 It has 170 suites in it.
I was just reading my council minutes.
One lien has been placed on a unit.
Two last warning letters for two units.
And four warning letters to units.
That seams high to me.That thay can`t pay the mantenace fee`s

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http://www.cbc.ca/canada/briti.....wsuit.html

The B.C. Supreme Court has ordered a home inspector to pay nearly $200,000 in compensation to a North Vancouver couple for a faulty home inspection he performed.

The court found that Imre Toth of Aldergrove was negligent because he failed to inspect the entire home, and should have advised the couple to hire a structural engineer before they bought the $1.1-million house in September 2006.

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The bubble now is US Treasuries.

And that bubble is caused by credit, specifically “bail out credit” provided to banks at 0% or thereabouts used to buy 10-Year and 30-Year paper and make a “risk-free-margin”.

Except it’s not risk-free, because as soon as interest rates start to rise, anyone who bought a 30-Year on effectively a 100% margin, will lose his shirt.

That is the stuff bubbles are made of. And that is very dangerous.

Einstein once defined a lunatic as someone who keeps on doing the same thing even after there is overwhelming evidence that course of action is misguided.

Tis the season for lunatics clearly, take care!

http://seekingalpha.com/articl.....urce=yahoo

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Yet despite all the deterrents the band keeps playing and the price of drinks keeps on rising.

Low incomes, poor quality jobs, last major employers shedding workers, difficulty attracting out-of-town employees, high commercial taxes, bad weather, traffic, drugs, litter, gangs, apparently mostly local buyers with local incomes, major buyers of our products in recession, AND YET IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE.

I feel like i have fallen down a rabbit hole. Now where did i leave my ruby red slippers?

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yes it does seem like a big stretch. except i don’t think that was what he was saying. are you smoking something dave?

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Don’t get your panties in a bunch. Relax.

Let me sum up your thought process:

1. I know a few asians gangsters;
2. There are lots of asians in Vancouver;
3. Therefore, high real estate prices in Vancouver are probably caused by Chinese money laundering gangsters.

Seems like a pretty big stretch to me. First it was the realtors, then the developers, then the speculators, then the media, then the bankers, then the CMHC… now it’s Chinese gangsters. Who can we blame next?

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Have we just completely given up on staying on topic these days?

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The S Granville merchant issue is a sad one. I lived in that area for years and in the past 3-4 years lots of the mom n pop business closed because their lease went up fourfold at the end of the lease. The area is losing character fast.

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and you will be allowed to stay in the country for years and years, probably collecting social benefits, free medicare, living a nice/luxury life, have a couple of kids (very important, must be 2 or more). If after everything you lost your case and have to be deported, you can now make another claim to stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds because of your kids and that China does not allow more than 1 kid per couple (not true anymore by the way) and you get to stay for years and years while that gets sorted out through our nice legal and refugee system, probably at taxpayers expense.

If you try to do that in US, Australia? tough luck, you get send back to China along with your $$ pretty fast!

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As I said previously, I have nothing against any community. Hell, my ex and his family are Colombian and trust me, if assumptions are made about any group, Colombians are high on the list.

As I previously stated I’m personally acquainted with at least two Asian gangsters. Another guy was kicked out of school for gang related activity. I’m not making it up, dude. All three were Chinese in that particular case.

I also made the point that Vancouver really is different in its immigrant makeup from Toronto, and the nature of those demographics may influence how criminal elements differ in each city. I guess that went over your head though.

The sad fact is we can’t have any kind of real discussion about criminal activity in different ethnic communities in this city because the minute anyone makes an honest observation, guys like Dave jump in and accuse you of making “accusations”.

News flash, dude: a comment like “All the crime in this city is because of the Chinese immigrants” is an accusation.

Comments like “I actually know a few Chinese gangsters and here’s what I observed” are not.

Pretending problems aren’t there because they touch on ethnicity doesn’t help anyone.

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Geez, you wonder why Canada is still a member of an extremely exclusive club in the world? That club being of a handful of countries (think it’s only about 12 or so now) that doesn’t have a preferred tourist destination status with China. Guess why? Because Chinese gov’t does not want to make it easy for corrupt officials and smugglers to come to Canada with their $$ and then hide behind Canada’s refugee systme (@ Cdn taxpayers’ expense btw) for years and years while spending their ill-gotten gains on a good life. And you know what that means? Despite the free advertising and publicity Vancouver (and recently Toronto) got in several very popular Chinese TV series, there aren’t going to be a lot of tourists and international students coming to Canada. So that means Canada/Vancouver aren’t going to be getting the billions of $ in tourism $$ that a couple hundred thousand Chinese tourists will bring to the local economy every year. Also more and more “proud” homeowners will have compete for those limited quantity, coveted international students to rent their dingy basements to pay for the mortgage. Now granted you can try to substitute with say Japanese, Korean, and Indian tourists and students but I’m not sure there is enough additional demands.

Anyways I just get really pissed about people saying how happy they are to have rich Chinese immigrants coming here with their new found likely corruption related/ill gotten gains and drive up the house prices. It’s just so selfish and short-sighted! Yeah you get maybe a few hundred million corruption money but you are probably sacrificing a few billion in potential revenue. Also I got news for you! Those rich Chinese immigrants aren’t going to shell out big bucks for your house if it is old, dingy, moldy, neglected! yeah that’s right! Those people aren’t stupid, they aren’t going to pay top $ for some old crappy house. They will only pay top dollar for a big lot to bulldoze and rebuild over, or for an existing well maintained mansion. If you are hoping to sell your non-renovated or even crappy renovated old timer on a small lot on a crowded street to a rich chinese guy looking to show off for $1M+ or whatever you feel your house is worth? Tough luck!

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I just heard a woman on the CBC talking about a rental scam where people ask for money up front and of course don’t provide any actual accommodation. Nothing shocking there. But describing it she said, “This type of scam is very common when there is anxiety about the availability of accommodation because the rental market for the Olympics is very tight and people may jump at any opportunity.”

Maybe locals believe that but anyone from outside of Vancouver looking in would see a ridiculous amount of listings and relax.

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Vancouver has the highest commercial property tax rates in Canada, by quite a bit. In a normal city commercial property tax rates are 2 to 3 times residential property tax rates. In Vancouver commercial property tax rates are an astonishing 5 times residential property tax rates.

The high commercial property taxes are an effective deterrent to business in Vancouver (along with the usual Vancouver deterrents, like high business insurance costs due to high property crime in Vancouver and the bubble pricing of housing in Vancouver which makes it difficult to attract and retain employees).

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http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2215373

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