01-25-2024, 07:19 PM
(01-25-2024, 07:31 AM)ac3r Wrote: If I bought up a huge swath of land in the suburbs...or hell, the giant Manulife parking lot at Charles/Joseph, fenced it up and then didn't touch it for 10 years that isn't going to be any use for people. Well, perhaps with the exception of myself since I could decide to just flip the property (like Vive has done in the past) in 10 years time when it has more value. If said property was instead bought by a developer eager to get to work and immediately began construction of housing projects, then the public benefits.
That's a public policy failure in how we assess property taxes. The existence of rebates for vacant property in Ontario might have made sense in an era of surplus land and no demand justifying its development, but that's hardly the case now. We should be assessing a vacancy premium on lands that have approved developments but aren't building.