Vacancy tax will rely on owners to declare if homes are empty

The Globe and Mail spoke to Tsur Somerville, a UBC business professor, for a story on the proposed empty home tax in Vancouver.

“I don’t know how successful they’ll be at getting people to comply,” Somerville said.

News 1130 also interviewed Thomas Davidoff, a UBC economist and real estate specialist, for a similar story.

“If you define vacancy narrowly enough, it’s very easy and cheap for somebody to fix the property so they don’t really do anything different, but they avoid the tax,” he said.

Davidoff also spoke to The Tyee about housing affordability options available to the B.C. government.