That means tenancy contracts, risk of damage, and a whole raft of legal obligations.
If you're an absentee building owner, you don't (can't, really) worry about any of those things yourself. Instead, you lease your building to a property management agency, who handles all of that for you.
Well being a tax cheat also introduces a whole raft of legal obligations...
I mean, as compared to the cost of making it look lived-in, or just stopping by so as to technically "be occupying it". Rents in Vancouver are at a very low ratio to the cash value of property, as bad as 70:1 (value:annual rent.) In the normal world, it's more usually 20:1. This means that the costs and risks of renting a property in Vancouver are often considered not worth it.