New taxes on non-Nova Scotian homeowners met with mixed reviews
CBC
New measures to target Nova Scotia's housing crunch, introduced with the Progressive Conservative government's first budget, are receiving mixed reviews from those who work in and study the market.
The measures include new taxes to be applied to non-resident homeowners — meant to cool a hot housing market with limited supply.
The supply shortage has been building for years, but has become more acute during the pandemic. Tammy Hines, president of the Nova Scotia Association of Realtors, says there have been no recent signs of improvement.
"We still are in the lowest inventory that we've had, I believe, historically, in 30 years," said Hines. "We've been in even more of a crunch in the last few months than what we were even last year at this time."
Hines said she is struggling with what to make of the new tax measures — a five per cent deed transfer tax when a non-resident purchases a residential property, and a two per cent tax on the assessed value of buildings with three or fewer units owned by non-Nova Scotians.
"We really don't see where that is going to increase the inventory," she said.
Hines said she suspects the impact will be greatest in rural areas, where non-residents tend to buy seasonal homes.
"But that's not necessarily where the statistics are showing us there's the biggest shortage of housing," she said.
Every part of the province is facing housing shortages to varying degrees, but there's a concentration of need in the Halifax Regional Municipality where there's an estimated shortfall of up to 25,000 units.
Statistics Canada reported that in 2019, non-resident ownership rates in Nova Scotia were four per cent — higher than both Ontario (2.2 per cent) and British Columbia (3.2 per cent) where taxes on foreign buyers were introduced in 2016 and 2018, respectively.
The same report showed the rate was highest outside HRM.
Statistics collected by the Nova Scotia government in 2020 tell the same story.
Two years ago, 3.6 per cent of residential properties were owned by non-residents. In Halifax, the rate was 2.4 per cent, while the highest rates were recorded in rural areas. The two highest figures were in parts of Richmond County, Cape Breton (14 per cent non-resident owners) and the Municipality of Shelburne (12.8 per cent).
Hines said she doesn't think the overall rate of non-resident ownership was significant enough for the new taxes to make a marked difference on the housing market. She said the bottom line is that Nova Scotia needs to create more supply.
More than 100 workers at a steel plant in eastern Ontario are being laid off either temporarily or permanently, as a company with facilities in Quebec and Ontario cuts its workforce due to challenging market conditions — including U.S. tariffs.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.
Premier Susan Holt is defending her decision to not use electricity exports to Maine as leverage against U.S. tariffs, arguing the move might cause long-term pain for New Brunswickers.
Montreal's St. Patrick's Day parade first started on Saint-Paul Street in 1824, and a couple centuries later, this annual tradition is still going strong.