Well it’s been a year since the BC government brought in a ‘foreign buyer tax‘ in the Vancouver metro area. How’s that affected the market?
“The public perception is that it hasn’t brought down prices and has had no effect,” said Simon Fraser University professor Josh Gordon, a political scientist in the university’s school of public policy. “But the slowdown in price increases is a positive.”
Even before the tax was implemented, Mr. Gordon said it was unlikely to have a huge impact since it was not targeting all foreign money, much of which comes in with new immigrants who are not affected by the tax.
He and others have always said that the province – or country – would need to add many more measures: more investigation into the sources of money coming into the country; more rigorous pursuit of people avoiding capital-gains tax on their real-estate transactions; a more comprehensive tax that targets people not paying income-tax in Canada.
Mr. Gordon believes that, if the lack of dramatic impact from the tax proves anything, it’s that people in Vancouver have a profound belief that the market will continue to rise.
Read the full article over at the Globe and Mail.
