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1. B.C. throne speech acknowledges importance of housing supply on affordability

   In its recent speech to the throne, the B.C. government added a laundry list of measures that were not included in its election platform. Regardless of the motivations for this manoeuver, the speech included an important admission on ...

2. It takes three times longer to obtain building permits in Vancouver than in Burnaby

   The Fraser Institute’s latest study spotlights the difficulties homebuilders face at city halls across B.C.’s Lower Mainland. The study findings reinforce a recurring theme from almost three years of tracking this issue—there are huge ...

3. B.C. government floats two promising ideas to address affordability and transportation woes

   In recent weeks, the British Columbia government announced big changes in two critical areas for Metro Vancouverites—housing and transportation. The region is short on both homes and taxis (or substitutes such as ride-sharing). The ...

4. Federal government touts Chinese investment while B.C. government discourages it

   Canada’s federal government recently announced that it’s embarking on a campaign to increase investment and migration from China. In particular, Immigration Minister John McCallum (pictured above) said that the government wishes to ...

5. Retroactive nature of new tax on foreign owners threatens rule of law, investment in B.C.

   Appeared in the Vancouver Sun, Aug. 5, 2016 Mike de Jong, B.C.’s finance minister, recently and unexpectedly announced an additional property transfer tax of 15 per cent on foreign nationals purchasing residential property in Metro Vancouver. Whatever the ...

6. Backlog of development approvals aggravating housing woes in Metro Vancouver

   British Columbia’s Ministry of Finance recently divulged that 10 per cent of residential property transactions during a 34-day period in June and July, 2016 were sold to foreign nationals, prompting the province to introduce an ...

7. CMHC confirms that housing supply is the problem in Vancouver

   The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) released its quarterly housing market assessments for Canada’s major urban centres, noting that “evidence of problematic conditions” in Vancouver moved from moderate in April to strong ...

8. B.C. municipalities should reduce barriers to housing construction, not foreign ownership

   British Columbia’s provincial government has begun releasing long-awaited data on foreign nationals purchasing real estate in B.C. While this topic has gained much attention as a possible source of housing price inflation, the government ...