Take back your city!

Foreign ownership of real estate in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland is destroying our cities and way of life.

Any semblance of a healthy real estate market is gone and with it the hopes and dreams of countless families. House prices in Vancouver are completely detached from economic fundamentals and it is getting worse by the month. Home inventory is at near record lows and rental vacancy rate is near 1%.

Why is this happening? Offshore investment is taking over our city. Wealthy overseas investors are using our real estate as a place to store their wealth. They consider our homes safer than a bank and are using them in lieu of.

What's more, is that many of these offshore investors are taking advantage of loopholes to reduce or eliminate taxes paid on the sale of these houses thereby denying the Canadian taxpayers any benefit from their purchase.

Worse still, is that many of these homes are being taken off the market and sit empty thereby denying a home to a local family and driving up rents due to a reduced amount of housing stock available.

The time to act is now! As concerned citizens we are calling on our elected representatives to overhaul our laws regarding foreign ownership including:

• Limits on the purchase of homes by Non-Canadian residents for income tax purposes
• Immediate Collection of data indicating the origin of any real estate buyer in Vancouver and the lower mainland. No more “we don’t have the information”
• Collection of data indicating how many homes are unoccupied
• A special levy on all home purchases by non-Canadian residents for income tax purposes

Take back your city, take back your homes! Let’s make our elected representatives do their job and represent us!