Hacker News Reader

Comment by swamp_donkey | Hacker News Reader

Vancouver development is in bad shape now thanks to these taxes and a glut of new supply that was built with financing not available to the average developer

Pre sales are dead. Some projects are in receivership. New Projects are not going ahead

View on HN

Did we read the same article?

> A feature of the EHT is that it focuses on residential properties, not commercial spaces

> [Due to] the shift to remote work during the pandemic, office vacancies remain stubbornly high in many cities.

> With the combination of Vancouver’s EHT combined with the province’s SVT, the taxes are credited with reducing the residential vacancy rate to 0.49%

A residential vacancy rate that low means people are deeply stuck - that means the market has almost no slack, and people can't move there. That's a very very bad situation - employers want to hire more people, but they can't get talent because that talent can't move. AND the people who can't move then can't get the better paying jobs they're being offered.

> A residential vacancy rate that low means people are deeply stuck

Is that what it means? Paris has a similar vacancy rate and seems to be doing alright. Vancouver has also seen population growth rates above 4%/yr, which outpaces the province, so people are moving there.

Is there a talent shortage in that city? Unemployment seems higher than normal but that could be an oversimplification.

I guess I’m struggling to see the connective tissue between the stated points.

How are you defining "doing alright"...?

Have you been to Paris recently?

Great food, tons of bike and rail infra, 35 hour work week, strong social safety nets, lower than average rate of violent crime, wide consideration as the preeminent destination for fashion and art, etc. etc.

Right - for the people who can afford to live there. That's dramatically artificially limited, the people who aren't rich don't get many of those things.

Rent control helps, from what I remember. but I imagine you may be looking from the perspective of purchasing a home (in which yes - pricey!)

Rent control doesn't change how many people get to live there, just swaps some people for others. And usually hinders housing production, reducing that number more over time.

> the taxes are credited with reducing the residential vacancy rate to 0.49%

Isn't that really, really low and a driver of rent rises?

They taxes vacancies so vacancies went down - but that doesn’t mean that someone who was happy keeping their property empty put it on the market and found some random tenants with all of the hassles that entails - you can never get rid of them as the laws strongly favour tenants. So you lose control of your “property”

Instead they find someone in their network, like a friend or friends adult child that is studying who can stay there and they pay a trivial rent to “take care of the house”

Shouldn't more supply result in lower prices?

Prices in the condo market have fallen.

Some buyers that bought pre sale say at 700k maybe put down 120k and now the units are worth 600k and can only get a mortgage for 600k, have to come up with the extra 100k.

Lots of the supply is tiny condos that are not as desirable as a house for having a family.

the clamp down on Airbnb has also hurt the market for these tiny condos.

Also canada reduced the rate of immigration so demand isn’t increasing as quickly. The population of British Columbia decreased.

A hotel in Vancouver for a night in the summer is $400+

Reply on news.ycombinator.com