Decisive action on housing market long overdue
Premier Christy Clark announced on July 25 that a 15 per cent property purchase tax will be applied to all residential property purchases by foreigners, including trusts and corporations. About six months ago, I received a call from a polling firm which was clearly working for the BC Liberals. The caller asked a number of very specific questions, and one was what issues I was most concerned about. The first thing I mentioned was the high cost of housing, and how soaring real estate prices have a devastating effect on people who are not in the marketplace. That includes people who want to buy, people moving into the area from elsewhere and renters. At that time, the provincial government had done absolutely nothing on that particular file, and in fact was all but asking investors to bring their money to B.C. and keep the real estate boom going. Not long after that call, The Globe and Mail published several crucial stories about what was actually happening in the real estate mar...