ILLUSTRATION: TONIA COWAN; ISTOCK NOVEMBER 2016 BCBUSINESS 13
A
fter years of debate
about price escalation
and declining afford-
ability in the Vancouver housing
market, the province and the
city have, at last, stepped in
with measures to address the
crisis. The province's targeted 15
per cent property transfer tax
premium (in effect since August
2) is designed to pull in the reins
on foreign buyers who don't live
in Metro Vancouver. Meanwhile,
Vancouver's proposed vacancy
bylaw (to be presented to coun-
cil in November) would serve to
increase an owner's incentive
to occupy the properties they
purchase—or at least make
those properties rentable for
people who do.
Both taxes aim to cure a
version of Dutch disease that
had taken hold in Vancouver.
That term was coined by The
Economist in 1977 to describe
the then-struggling Dutch econ-
omy. The Groningen natural gas
field discovery in the late '50s
had resulted in soaring foreign
investment, driving the value of
the guilder higher but also mak-
ing it tough for the Dutch manu-
facturing sector to compete
internationally. Over the course
of seven years, unemployment
rose sharply, from 1.1 per cent
to 5.1 per cent; as The Economist
soberly observed at the time,
T H E M O N T H LY I N F O R M E R
tmı
"We were two young gringos,
and these farmers had been
doing the same thing in their
families for 200 years" –p.15
N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6
Going Dutch
Is B.C.'s reliance on real estate a threat to our economy? A look at the
Netherlands in the 1960s shows why there might be cause for concern
INSIDE
U.S. expats take B.C. ... Green economy blues ... How to make an exit ... Sulu talks diversity ... + more
THE EXPLAINER
by Timothy Taylor
TOP COMMODITY
Vancouver real
estate has become
B.C.'s export boom
