Tag Archives: taxpayers

BC, economy, opinion, prices, renting

Housing Action Rally Saturday Sept 17th 2pm

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Housing Action for Local Taxpayers (HALT) is a group of Vancouverites whose goal is to pressure government to take action on local housing affordability.

HALT wrote in to let everyone at VCI know they are holding a rally at the Vancouver Art Gallery this Saturday Sept 17th at 2pm.

They have a  great line up of speakers including Christine Duhaime the Vancouver lawyer focused money laundering.

More information can be found on their Facebook page.

Here’s some info from their comment yesterday:

Specifically we are calling on Government to:
– HALT money laundering and tax fraud by individuals hiding their money in our housing market
– HALT Immigrant Investor Programs that bring in owners who do not contribute to our income tax base
– HALT corporate donations to political parties. For too long, our governments have served moneyed interests and not the interests of the citizens of our city and our province
– HALT AirBnB of our rental stock. We need regulations in place to protect our renters
– HALT demolitions of affordable rentals that are being replaced by unaffordable luxury condos marketed to offshore buyers

We’ve got a great panel of speakers lined up including:
– Christine Duhaime, a lawyer heavily involved in catching foreign money launderers in Vancouver
– Josh Gordon, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy, Simon Fraser University, who has done extensive research on the impact of foreign capital on our housing market
– Dr. Darren Joneson, whose housing story we featured on our Facebook page
– Caroline Adderson, author of the book “Vancouver Vanishes” owner of FB community of the same name, will talk about demolitions of heritage homes, zoning and how we create density in a liveable, sustainable city
– Paul Kershaw, founder of Generation Squeeze, who will talk about the the challenges millenials face in getting into the housing market and Gen Squeeze’s “Homes First” policy.

Please come out, stand up, be counted, and let our government officials know that enough is enough!

Thanks for your support,
The HALT Team

You can find more info on their Facebook page and at haltvancouver.org.

Canada, CMHC, mortgage, opinion

Should banks take on more risk?

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There’s an article over at the CBC on the CMHC and CEO Evan Siddall.

Mr. Siddall is of the opinion that the CMHC should not be privatized as it acted as a ‘shock absorber’ during the last correction, but does think the banks should take on a share of the risk for insured mortgages.

“That ultimately will be a decision for government to make and we’re in the process of looking at different options that will take a few years to evaluate, but the idea is that people should have skin in the game,”

“In the insured mortgage businesses, the banks offload all that risk to the government through CMHC, The government’s interested in taking a reduced role in the housing market … so we’ll look at different ways to share risks with lenders.

What do you think, should the CMHC force banks to take on more responsibility for the insured loans they hand out or would the banks just use that as an excuse to charge more?

Read the full article here.

Canada, debt, economy, equity, opinion, presales, prices, supply, west side

Taxpayers funding condo flippers?

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By now everyone knows about the high cost of the Olympic Village project.

Current estimates are that it will cost taxpayers between $400 – $600 million to pay this off.

There are 68 units still left unsold over the last six years, but over at the ‘Canada House’ building it looks like a number of units have been bought and flipped, at least one for more than $400k profit in a month.

Hat tip to Mac who pointed out this article in the Province.

So whats going on here? Should these units have been priced higher or considering the tough sales across this project were they right to unload them quickly even if there were buyers willing to pay more?

Open Topic

Friday Free-for-all!

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Yeah, it’s the weekend!  That means it’s time for our regular end of the week news round-up and open topic discussion thread, here are a few recent links to kick off the chat:

–18k Inventory party!
–Updated inventory graph
–Taxpayers victims of ‘hot money’
–Welcome to Effluent Richmond
–1 month later Telus still not sold out
–special offer, $510,000 off
–CMHC dismisses bubble talk
–The CMHC board of directors
–Silver linings of slow growth economy
–Condo craze gets crazier
–Wolverine moves down under
–Huge drop in Chinese immigrants
–Building permits rise, just not here
–Pastrick thinks prices might fall
–Buying with 5% down?
–Time to cash out?
–Condo owner, why so glum?
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So what are you seeing out there?  Post your news links, thoughts and anecdotes here and have an excellent weekend!