The vast majority of Vancouver residents support B.C.’s hefty new tax on foreign home buyers, but many doubt how effective it will be, according to a new poll.
The Angus Reid Institute survey found a whopping 90 per cent of respondents are in favour of the province’s 15 per cent property transfer tax, which comes into effect across Metro Vancouver on Tuesday.
But the same poll found many people are concerned the tax won’t actually do much to make housing more affordable for locals.
“It appears relatively few people in Metro Vancouver are especially confident that these efforts will pan out,” Angus Reid said in a release.
Forty-two per cent of respondents said they don’t expect the tax to have much of an effect, if it has any at all, and 71 per cent expect buyers will be able to avoid it through some kind of loophole.
Four-in-five also believe the government waited too long to address the housing crisis, compared to just 10 per cent who said now is the time to act.
Another six per cent of respondents said the government should have maintained a hands-off approach.
Apart from the widespread support for the new property transfer tax, the poll found a full 87 per cent of Metro Vancouver residents back the idea of taxing vacant homes at the municipal level.
But similarly to the transfer tax, two-in-five respondents expressed doubts that a vacancy tax would do much to improve locals’ access to the real estate market.
The Angus Reid Institute poll was conducted from July 26 to 28 among a representative sample of 737 Metro Vancouver adults. Surveys of this size have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
To read the full results, visit the Angus Reid website here.
