Someone bought a century home in Saint John and is allowing it to rot. The buyer apparently lives in Toronto and doesn’t care that the building is falling apart.

This is shitty. Someone has the money for “an investment”, which means other people don’t get somewhere to live.

  • BondjimbondEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Vacant home taxes can work if they are serious numbers. I want to see a vacant home tax at 25% of the property value annually.

    • masterspaceEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      No issue there, but why just vacant homes? Why are we not taxing all non primary homes when so many people who want and should be able to afford a primary home, cannot?

      • kent_ehEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        Any tax that targets landlords will simply be passed on to the tenants, making rent more expensive.

        Vacant building taxes seem to me to be a more effective tool to increase housing availability.

        In Winnipeg there are some very visible buildings that have dozens of apartments that have been boarded up for years. The owner is a speculator in another city who refuses to do anything with the buildings. It’s just sitting there falling into disrepair.

        • PenguinTDEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          the pass off to tenants are simply not true, there is a threshold and after that threshold buying a home is cheaper than renting. And not occupied rental unit is actually “expensive” to the landlords, so they will be forced to sell.

          There are many things that affects how that would be applied, and the fall out of how you implement such tax.

          • you can’t design the rules only for big metropolitan cities.
          • remote region does benefit from ownership cause the owner pays property tax to help maintain some basic local infrastructures.
          • need serious loop hole check so you don’t ended up having companies gobble up everything “on sale” cause regular human landlords can no longer afford extra units.
          • buying a place should come with responsibilities to maintain that place, if left to rot or damage heritage site, government should be able to take over and bill the owner.
        • masterspaceEnglish
          22·
          1 year ago

          Any tax that targets landlords will simply be passed on to the tenants, making rent more expensive.

          Simply untrue, if a landlord has to pay more tax on a non-primary residence, they’re going to have to rent it out for far more than a mortgage payment would cost a first time home buyer, meaning that the first time home buyer will have an easier time justifying outbidding them at sale time.

          Also impossible for a landlord to pass that on in any property that is rent controlled with long term tenants, likely forcing them to sell their second and third homes, putting more on the market and driving prices down.

      • SplitdiplessEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Not a bad idea, so long as the secondary property has utility. I’m thinking cottagers and those with Cabins in the woods can be taxed out of their long weekend/summer stays, but it doesn’t add to where homes are needed.