20 Replies to “Left Coast, Lost Cause”

  2. Jeez David, I wonder why house prices are falling, eh. Perhaps the correct term is “Cratering” maybe?
    Do the homeowners actually own that home?
    Or do the Injuns own that home?
    You have no clue do you!

  3. And why are the condos empty in the first place? Overbuilt? Junk? This is nothing more than a slow motion expropriation of private property similar to what the Bolsheviks did…..

    1. Nonsense!
      I love my $1.1-million shoebox 400 square foot condo! I can look right down on the addicts on the sidewalk! I can see the exact moment the needle pierces the skin!
      Great times!

  4. “So we’ll raise the speculation and vacancy tax by one point and bring in a new Unsold Condo Tax on finished condos left empty for more than a year, climbing every year they sit. That could unlock up to 5,000 homes for British Columbians.”

    That’s one way to strangle new builds…. no developer will start a condo building without all of the units sold, or the maintenance fees will include a unsold unit fee to cover the costs until they do sell.

  5. Hey I’m waiting for the Injuns to mess with the Chinese owners. I’m sure they will work something out, peacefully and no money will change hands, nudge nude wink wink.

  6. Sure … more confiscatory taxes are the answer. That’s always the answer for the socialists, communists, fascists, and totalitarians …

  7. Another absolutely brilliant NDP plan. Buy up all of the unsold million dollar condos and turn them over to BC Housing as affordable housing units. The rent them out to people that couldn’t afford them in the first place for rents that won’t cover the monthly maintenance costs and Shazam!!!! the poor BC taxpayer gets saddled with the difference. Meanwhile the developers walk away with their costs covered, Eby and his entourage get accolades for their brilliant idea, and poor bloody taxpayer gets steamrolled into another tax burden that will take generations if ever to pay off. When is the average voter in this province, or country going to understand that socialism doesn’t work unless everyone is contributing. As soon as one person understands how to graft the system the cancer begins and it doesn’t end until ….? The politicians and their bureaucrat handlers have grafted the system for years contributing nothing but empty promises that next time they’re elected they’ll fix things. When are voters in this country going to understand that they have been ‘patsyed’ and ‘played’ for years. Look at the three generations of the Gonzo Lewis clan playing politics for years, or the guy that gave Ontario “Rae Days” or the genius of the guy caught in the Velvet Glove, need I mention the rest of the upper echelon of the national NDP party? Now look at their provincial counterparts and you get to understand why this country is teetering on national bankruptcy.

    1. uhuh.
      and WHOOOOOOO voted for all this but said TAXPAYERS?
      as such getting it good and hard right up the arse.

    3. Huh … so the taxpayers are passive investors in low income housing, eh? Uh … can they write off their contribution against their taxes?

  10. “Good grief” is right.

    I almost feel sorry for Eby now, his desperation is so apparent. He’s being destroyed in the X comments for trying (and failing) to link this crisis to Donald Trump.

    1. Fred.
      You can resist.
      That quivering Marxist activist deserves all the scorn being heaped on him. His delivery is so forced and painful, no one is buying it save for the hard-core unionistas.
      What’s remarkable here, is the media. Suddenly, they are asking tough questions of Eby and making him noticeably squirm. Tells me two things.
      1. They’ve been freed from their shackles.
      2. Carney freed them, because he prefers his fellow Liberals as the BC government than Eby and the Marxist horde. That 29k dividend per press employee keeps paying off for Carney.
      Interesting times.

  11. As CRB says, the terrific uncertainty around all the indigenous land claims is killing the real estate market. Nobody wants to commit to a big mortgage on a property they might not ever actually own, and will end up paying not only property taxes, but rent or some other form of extortion.

    Another factor is housing prices: the economy. Every time the NDP get into power, they destroy industries with regulations and taxes. Every time. Being socialists, they hate capitalism and want to nationalize everything. When they were first elected under Dave Barrett in the 1970s, they managed to scare away mining and lumber and many other industries. Once the young people who had voted for them found that they couldn’t get a job, they voted the Social Credit back in, and those poor guys had the unpopular job of making deep spending cuts and cleaning up the mess. 20 years later, the children of that first batch of ignorant young voters would not listen to their folks, and voted the NDP back in again. Same result: industry fleeing the province, job losses, recession. And every 20 years since then it’s been the same story. Except this time BCers are also left with a huge drug and homeless problem, a huge foreign crime gang problem, a huge indigenous land extortion problem, a huge corruption in children’s education problem. Might be far too impossible to fix.

    The media and the schools, of course, no longer remind us of the historical horrors of socialism and communism. Whole generations now think that socialism, or getting “free” money, actually works. Even today we could point out places like Zimbabwe, where socialists have devastated the economy and achieved hyperinflation, but the media would refuse to publish such stories so as to protect their socialist paymasters. From Wiki:

    “The economy of Zimbabwe has been undergoing hyperinflation since February 2007, according to Cagan’s definition of hyperinflation. During the height of inflation from 2008 to 2009, it was difficult to measure Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation because the government of Zimbabwe stopped filing official inflation statistics. However, Zimbabwe’s peak month of inflation is estimated at 790.6 billion percent month-on-month, 89.7 sextillion (8.97×1022) percent year-on-year in mid-November 2008. At that time, a $100 trillion banknote could not pay for a simple bus fare.”

    1. How did that joke go? “Why did the chicken cross the road? To deliver a standing ovation!” No, I’m remembering wrong.

  14. The BC government claims that 99% of properties are exempt from the speculation tax.

    Which is to say doubling it is basically just theatre for pleasing the envious “eat the rich” losers who keep electing the NDP.

    Meanwhile the actual wealthy people who just have pied a terres in Vancouver or Whistler will either view it as yet another silly line item if they’re rich enough or if the line item gets big enough, they’ll just dump it. Which the losers think will benefit them, but the reality is those properties just get bought by someone wealthy enough to afford a property in BC after offloading their last property.

    Who really gets screwed is anyone who saves up for a little getaway or anyone who might want the wife and kids to live somewhere nice and peaceful while he has a weekly commute to the big city for the job to pay for it all, because right now at 1% of assessed value per year he’s likely already paying upwards of $6 on one of those properties and Eby has vowed to double it and keep ramping it up until morale improves or the pitchforks come out… but there’s not enough people actually affected to make for a big enough pitchfork mob to stop it.

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