[rezashirazian]

I grew up in West Vancouver and there are countless neighborhoods and streets with empty million dollar houses. I remember they would go on sale and within a few days they'd be off the market, sold $30,000 - $100,000 above asking price. This has driven up prices to ridiculous heights. The average salary in Vancouver for a Software Engineer is around 75K, yet the price for a detached single family home is around $1,500,000. I don't think there is anyway for a single working family to afford a single detached house anywhere in Metro Vancouver area. This was long overdue

[robotresearcher]

And how does this get local people into those empty homes?

[sintaxi]

It won't. This tax is ultimately unenforceable since it would be trivial to put down a family member as living at your vacant house. All they would have to do is collect mail there and it would be virtually impossible to prove otherwise.

[rezashirazian]

Not true. It's fairly trivial to see if someone is living in a specific location. A simple bank statement shows where you've been spending money and tends to be good indicator of whether you're in Vancouver or not.

Canadian government already has a program like this in place for recent immigrants to ensure that they actually reside in Canada during their permanent residency period. Over the past fews years many people immigrated to Canada and left after landing to become 'convenient Canadians' five years later. Canada already knows how to do this.

[rezashirazian]

Less foreigners try to buy up houses, bringing down demand and eventually price.