Support growing for an absentee homeowners tax: survey
Posted June 1, 2015 9:59 am.
Last Updated June 1, 2015 10:00 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – The push for a tax on absentee homeowners is gaining steam, according to a new poll.
Numbers from an online Insights West survey suggest three in four of us would support an absentee homeowners tax.
“About three in four residents believe that this would be a good idea,” says Mario Canseco with the pollster.
“It’s higher with those who are aged 18 to 34, essentially everybody who wants to get in to the housing market, and also highest in those with the highest household incomes,” he notes.
But what about those who are already own?
“It’s a chicken and egg thing, in a way,” says Canseco. “There are a lot of homeowners who are worried about the fact that they’re living next to an empty house, but they also believe that the fact that [these] houses are essentially more expensive, this makes the value of their own homes higher and this is, in a way, beneficial to them as well.”
Only 21 per cent feel the debate on foreign real estate ownership is inherently racist, but that number jumps to 35 per cent among those of East Asian heritage.
The poll also finds one thing we can all agree on is that real estate is a better long term investment than mutual funds or GICs.
