As Toronto weighs housing tax, prices in Vancouver are creeping up again

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One economist, Jimmy Jean of Desjardins Capital Markets, said a tax on foreign buyers in Ontario could prompt nonresident investors to move elsewhere - such as markets in Montreal and Calgary.

The Ontario government is considering a tax on non-resident speculators as it looks for ways to cool the hot housing market in the Greater Toronto Area.

Ontario's economy benefits enormously from newcomers who decide to make the province home.

According to the Fair Housing Plan, expanding rent control to all private rental units in Ontario-including those built after 1991-will ensure increases in rental costs can only rise at the rate posted in the annual provincial rent increase guideline.

By exempting students from the NRST the province is intentionally keeping a door open to allow global speculators to buy up single family homes in their children's names - at the expense of tax paying residents who can't compete.

Toronto's lakefront along Lake Ontario has become home to high-rise towers, many of which have sold units to offshore buyers. In particular, the GGH has experienced dramatic price increases in recent months. The ability to earn property income was cited as a factor that was twice as important to those aspiring to buy homes for the first time than it was to current homeowners.

The government is also planning to expand the province's existing rent control system to cover all tenants, ending the exemption that now allows unlimited rent increases, it added.

The government will also work to better understand and tackle practices that may be contributing to tax avoidance and excessive speculation in the housing market, such as "paper flipping" - a practice that includes entering into a contractual agreement to buy a residential unit and assigning it to another person prior to closing.

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One expert says potential solutions in Ontario could be the same ones we need here.

Wynne said the measures were created to help people afford to rent or buy a home, brushing off a suggestion that the move was more about boosting her approval rating, which has recently plunged to just over 10 per cent, according to polls.

Toronto prices rose 33 percent in March from a year earlier and the average price of a detached home topped C$1.2 million ($903,000) last month.

Housing affordability has eased in metro Vancouver for the first time in over three years, says RBC Economics.

The Ontario government is slapping a 15-per-cent tax on foreign home buyers and capping rent increases across the province as it seeks to cool a runaway housing market in greater Toronto. The new rule would cap rents at inflation, up to a maximum of 2.5 per cent annually.

"People work hard to provide for their families". "And when the rising cost of housing is making more and more people insecure about their future, and about their quality of life in Ontario, we know we have to act". "We've developed a comprehensive action plan to help stabilize the housing market". We know these individuals are concerned by the housing market. The corporation is revising its technical definition of "affordability" to recognize housing objectives from all levels of government, which will open the door for further incentive to construct affordable housing.

We'll wait for the details but from the sounds of things, indications are that they're taking a sledge hammer to it.

"Most of those projects are now on hold pending a review of this announcement and many of them will be cancelled and not proceed", he said.

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