Mayor Moonbean will find them a home. Remember back he said he will end homeless in Vancouver by 2015. He still working hard at it LOL.

what do you guys think about Concord Brentwood?

FYI:

It's hard to comment on the building/development itself without seeing it in person. However, as someone who lived in Brentwood for over 9 years, I can offer some pros and cons of the area because you're really buying into a community when you buy a condo.

Pros:
- location is central to many areas of Metro Vancouver
- everything you need for everyday life is within walking distance
- a little bit more diverse than other high rise communities like Metrotown or Coquitlam Centre

Cons:
- currently overvalued compared to other emerging areas like the River District or Burquitlam
- traffic is a nightmare at the intersection of Willingdon and Lougheed. I'm not sure if they're going to create access to the property from Dawson, so you should look into that on the site plans.
- construction will continue for another 10-15 years, so be prepared for noise and dust
- new complexes are a magnet for transient renters, and petty crime. The common property of your building will be trashed after the first couple of years, so you'll probably have to pony up special assessments for new paint, panels, etc.

Vancouver slaps $10,000 a year tax on empty homes. Lie about it and it?s $10,000 a day | Financial Post

Excellent lol I'm currently looking for a rental DT, market is shit.

I wouldn't get too excited. Even if more empty houses and condos come on the market the rent will still be unaffordable.

It's like with everything the Gov't does, they're always late to the party and try to do quick patch work to make it look like they actual give a shit and they're fixing the problem when in reality they're worsen it.

that's fucking harsh...lol, imagine a chinese investor, one year later, he heads back to vancouver and found out he owes $3.65mil of empty house penality.

I could care less if the rent remains expensive, I just wish there was more selection.

LOL.
Sweet math.....

But how would it work for people who are "selling" their house? Lets say that I am an owner overseas and have a property worth $2 mil, but I dont want to rent it out. So I put it up for sale for $8mil, knowing that noone will purchase it and even if they do I can deny to sell at that price.

The city can't dictate what I list my house for, and since its up for sale I don't want to rent it out because the potential new homeowners will want to move in asap. Then the homeowner can just come back and use it whenever they want to and just keep the house for sale on the market.

When we lived in the condo it wasn't uncommon to have foreign owners miss on monthly strata fees and special assessments, sometimes for 1-2 years.

I'm sure residents in areas with $4m+ homes will love having rental homes in their area with 10 renters live in one house so they can afford the $10,000/month. Might as well start calling vacant rental homes "million dollar hostels".

excluding condo's that have no renting bylaws is b.s.

Thats what you call "lieing" and get slapped with $10k a day penalty.

Then we will see a thread on revscene "How To Appeal $10k A Day Penalty"

Gov can't make you sell your house with the price they decide. Is my house I can decide to sell it what I see my house is worth.

Same with renting it. I can rent my house for $20k a month because I feel that's how much my house is worth.

Just like people selling 2nd clotes, cell phones, cars they put the price they feel their item is worth it. If the buyer don't like the price they can look elsewhere.

If the gov starts forcing ppl to sell/rent their house at a certain it will lead to a lot of issue possible a ton of lawsuit.

In Hong Kong, my family rents out apartments to parents who want our address for entering certain famous elementary school, they just pay the rent and never live there. The School Board learned the trick and hired inspectors to check out the utility meters. These parents began to turn on all the lights inside the house 24/7 to pretend someone lives there.

School board isn't stupid, but can't do shit about it. Now they check mailbox, ask the property managers, ring the bell at 7am on weekdays. So there is no absolute way to avoid empty house.

That's not how a legal loophole could potentially work. In order to prove that you are selling in good faith, you'd have to prove that you are genuinely trying to sell.

By jacking up your asking price multi-fold just gives the city the evidence they need to prove in court that you are not selling in good faith and hence lying just to avoid the tax. You might as well consider paying the 10k per year tax to begin with than doing that.

Remember, as most of the city accusations (tickets) go, the burden to prove otherwise is on you. You need to first find that proof to make a legal loophole works

If you listed your home at slightly over asking but never had showings or entertained offers, would be pretty hard to claim foul?

If that's all it takes to get around the tax then it's a huge fail. Brb just put your house up for sale for 15 years and never have a showing or entertain offers while you live somewhere else, nothing fishy about that.

Fishy is one thing, but how can the city actually prove that? Are you gonna drag homeowners to court and put a lien if you win and they dont pay the fines?

Or is it gonna be an no argument thing? where the city says that you get fined and thats the end of the story, but we all know thats not gonna happen. I would like to see how the city is gonna mitigate this

Easy. Get the neighbours snitching and give them a monetary reward. It works in the states for minority communities with illegal immigrants.

It's politics. Whatever keeps them in office, best believe they will do it.

Easy to say, harder to actually do.

I assume anyone who is trying to get out of paying this 10k a year tax is planning on leaving their house empty for years on end. Otherwise you own a multimillion dollar investment, if you have to pay 10k on it for a year because you can't stay there just pay it. Or if you are so broke, then you should probably be renting it out to generate money, and save the 10k tax.

So with the understanding that someone who is avoiding the tax is going to list their property for like 2 years, in order to avoid this tax. What happens when values shift north and you aren't quick enough to react to the price shift, then all of a sudden you have 3 offers on your property, and one of them is no subjects, and full asking. If you decline all 3, I'm pretty sure you have just made the governments case of "dealing in bad faith".

And then what, you tried to save 20k (over two years), and instead you end up owing 10k*400+ Days.

Honestly I think this could work, the people with 500k-900k condos will probably have to rent them out, because paying 10k tax on that when they can be rented to make 30k a year is pretty retarded (taking a 40k a year hit on a 500k investment is not advisable).

And those who have multimillion dollar properties won't even think twice, they will just pay the tax.

Or we'll see multiple listings going up for billion dollar condos soon, cause the government can't tell me what to do!

Setting an asking price so high that your property sits on the market for years? You might as well walk around with a big sign saying "AUDIT ME - I'M A BIG CHEAT."

Then you just let it go and sell it at that profit? That's the point of an investment no?