Under the EHT's current form, nearly 5,400 of the more than 7,900 homes deemed "vacant" were able to make use of exemptions to the tax.

Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart is taking what could be the first steps toward his campaign promise of tripling the city's Empty Homes Tax (EHT).

In September, Stewart unveiled the promise to hike the tax rate to three per cent as one of the key planks in his housing platform.

Vancouver's EHT currently applies a one per cent tax on the assessed value of homes deemed to be vacant for more than six months per year, barring specific exceptions.

Stewart is...

The British Columbia Real Estate Association (BCREA) reports that a total of 78,345 residential unit sales were recorded by the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) in 2018, a decline of 24.5 per cent from the 103,758 units sold in 2017. The annual average MLS® residential price in BC was $712,508, an increase of 0.4 per cent from $709,601 recorded the previous year. Total sales dollar volume was $55.8 billion, a 24.2 per cent decline from 2017.

“BC home sales fell below the 10-year average of 84,800 units in 2018,” said Cameron Muir, BCREA Chief Economist. “The sharp decline...

The slowdown in Canada's housing market will get worse before it gets any better, a new analysis predicts, because the country is about to be flooded with a "huge amount" of new homes.

"Canada has been undergoing a construction boom," Capital Economics senior economist Stephen Brown wrote in the report issued last week. "As has been typical of historic real estate cycles around the world, new supply will reach the market just as demand is falling."

Indeed, home sales in Toronto in 2018 were 15 per cent below their historical norm in 2018, while in Vancouver they ran 40 per cent below the long-run...

The trend in housing starts was 206,981 units in December 2018, compared to 212,338 units in November 2018, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). This trend measure is a six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates (SAAR) of housing starts.

"The national trend in housing starts decreased in December, the fifth decline in the last six months," said Bob Dugan, CMHC's chief economist. "Reflecting these recent declines, total annual housing starts in 2018 were lower than in 2017, as lower single-detached starts more than offset a slight increase...

Metro Vancouver* home sales in 2018 were the lowest annual total in the region since 2000.

The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV) reports that sales of detached, attached and apartment properties reached 24,619 on the Multiple Listing Service® (MLS®) in 2018, a 31.6 per cent decrease from the 35,993 sales recorded in 2017, and a 38.4 per cent decrease compared to the 39,943 residential sales in 2016.

Last year’s sales total was 25 per cent below the region’s 10-year sales average.

“This past year has been a transition period for the Metro Vancouver housing market...