Nearly a quarter of condos in Vancouver are empty or occupied by non-residents in some dense areas of downtown, a signal that investors play a significant role in the city’s housing market.
And the city overall has a much higher rate of empty apartments and houses than other Canadian cities, with a rate closer to places like New York and San Francisco at the height of their mortgage crisis in 2010.
Downtown, the rate is so high that it’s as though there were 35 towers at 20 storeys apiece – empty.
That’s the latest discovery that adjunct UBC planning professor Andrew Yan made when he analyzed 2011 census numbers to try to add more information to the contentious debate over whether Vancouver is turning into a high-end resort or offshore investors’ holding tank.
Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/home-and-garden/real-estate/vancouvers-vacancies-point-to-investors-not-residents/article10044403/
