Percentage of people owning condos but not living in them increases

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) -Housing affordability advocates are alarmed by new numbers that show the percentage of condo landlords is on the rise.

Statistics Canada shows that last year, 46 per cent of Metro Vancouver condos were not occupied by their actual owner.

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Justin Fung with Housing Action of Local Taxpayers says this has increased by about 10 per cent over the past decade.

“Some of these units are being built in a way that are investor-friendly, they’re not necessarily the types of units that folks, who try to live here day-to-day, are going to find as being reasonable accommodation,” says Fung.

He believes when people purchase properties mainly as an investment for rental, this behaviour will naturally push rental prices higher.

“There are the landlords who are buying these up, the investors buying these up, are willing to pay a significantly higher price than locals,” says Fung. “As expected, the rents they are expecting are in line with that as well.”

Fung says he is concerned about this trend because homes are increasingly being built specifically for investors and not locals, which is contributing to the affordability crisis.

“There’s a hollowing out of communities when that happens,” he says. “When we have empty homes that people are not living in, we have condos that are half empty, it’s hard to build a community around that.”

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