Hacker News Reader

Sounds like Seattle (and many other cities) should consider doing the same thing that Vancouver did since it appeared to be effective.

The tax in question was enacted by the government of British Columbia. You may be confusing this with the "vacant homes tax" which the City of Vancouver enacted recently?

Foriegn ownership is only a small part of why Vancouver real estate is so high. The last stats I saw said foriegn sales amounted to 10-15%. It's mostly Canadian citizens, coupled with low interest rates that are causing this bubble.

I saw a stat that said 40% of condos purchased in Toronto (another crazy market) were bought by speculators. Foriegn sales are even lower (sub 10%) than in Vancouver.

These laws focused on foriegners are good for scoring political points, but they don't really address the issue.

> It's mostly Canadian citizens, coupled with low interest rates that are causing this bubble.

If that's true, how do you explain that the median home price to household income ratio is roughly 12x?[1] Affordable is defined as 3x.

1 - For house price I used the 900k avg house price from the parent article. For median family income I used 76k from StatsCan's 2014 census. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/f...