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Originally Posted by squiggs96
The bigger obstacle to lower home prices is from municipal governments, not provincial. It takes almost a year for a permit in the city of Vancouver for a regular, single family home. I was on a highrise project that took 8 years for zoning from the time the company bought the land to the time the permit was received. Add in 3 years of build time, and that's 11 years that over 250 units weren't available. During that time prices of everything went up.
Some people on here don't like my view that more supply will lower prices. Both the Green and NDP platforms call for more supply in order to lower prices. The Greens want to deliver 4,000 units of affordable housing per year. The NDPs want 114,000 over the next 10 years. Most of these would be in the lower mainland and Victoria. All developers combined here are already doing about 15,000 units per year. So now the government is going to pump out 76% of all combined developers units? That sounds like a fail proof plan. And yet, people blame Christy Clark for making the homes unaffordable.
The Greens and NDP are also wanting to introduce a 12% PTT on homes over $3M and taxes on capital gains over $750,000 on principal residences. Neither of these are going to reduce housing prices.
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I agree with you that a lot of this needs to be addressed by the municipalities, but any discussion about housing also needs to look at rentals and improvements to the Tenancy Act. That said, do you think the Liberals did or were planning on doing enough to address the issues pertaining to fraud and speculation?
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My other big issue with the NDP/Green coalition is removing the tolls on the bridges. By removing tolls your are giving people a bigger incentive to drive instead of car pooling, taking transit, and/or cycling. By removing the tolls on the Port Mann bridge, the bridge then comes back onto the province's books. By placing large debt back on the books, as they are being serviced off the books, the AAA credit rating is in jeopardy. If BC slips to a AA credit rating, similar to Ontario's, that could cost the BC government about $2B in interest payments annually. If taxes go up to cover these interest payments, then it will cost even more to live in BC. Removing MSP premiums, but just rolling them into payroll or income taxes, doesn't achieve much.
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Completely agree with you here. Weren't the Green Party against removing the tolls on the bridge for exactly those reasons? If the NDP were smart (and that's a big if), they'd consider putting that motion forward separate from their budget so that it can fail when the Liberals and Greens vote against it.