Vancouverites have been happy to drop the dime on absentee neighbours, phoning in 1,456 tips about supposedly vacant or under-used homes since the introduction of North America’s first empty homes tax.
Residents, it appears, are only growing more eager to report. City statistics provided to Postmedia show that between 2017, the first year of the tax, and 2018, the number of tips almost tripled year-over-year. So far this year, citizens’ zeal for tips hasn’t cooled off: a comparison of January 2019 and the same month in 2017 shows a 600 per cent increase in tips.
The work of Vancouver’s 12-person empty home tax audit team is reportedly paying off: While the vast majority of audits — about 95 per cent — conducted during the first year of the tax found properties to be in compliance, city numbers show that audits found 331 non-compliant properties for 2017, which generated a combined $6.2 million.
In other words, the amount of tax revenue generated through audits was enough to cover most of the $7.5 million one-time implementation costs for the program or more than double the $2.5 million operating costs for the tax’s first year.
That’s just part of the $38 million in empty homes tax the city expects to receive for 2017, of which the city had collected about $24 million as of last week (that’s up from the $21 million reported in late November when the city released its first report on the empty homes tax). It’s too early for a 2018-tax-year revenue estimate, the city said.
The tax, an levy of one per cent of the property’s assessed value for the year, targets homes that are vacant or only used part-time. In a city with a near-zero rental vacancy rate and a housing unavailability crisis, the policy is seen as a way to increase the number of units available for rent, raise revenue for affordable housing, or both. Some critics question the tax’s efficacy or argue against what they see as its fundamental unfairness, but so far, the city’s numbers suggest the tax is achieving both of those goals.
The City of Vancouver describes its empty homes tax as “the first of its kind in North America,” and other jurisdictions battling their own housing crises have taken notice. Over the weekend, The New York Times quoted Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart and cited a report by the Real Estate Institute of B.C. in a story about New York considering a so-called “pied-à-terre tax” on homes worth $5 million or more which are not the owner’s primary residence.
Vancouver’s plan for collecting unpaid empty homes tax revenue will work “exactly the same as it works if your property taxes are unpaid,” said the city’s director of financial services, Melanie Kerr. The taxes are added to the property tax bill. If taxes remain unpaid for three years, the city can seek a court order to sell the property.
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In the meantime, neighbours can keep phoning 311 with tips
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