Vancouver's Empty Homes Tax — Declared Vacancies Down 67% (2017–2024), With Attribution Openly Caveated

Vancouver introduced Canada's first municipal Empty Homes Tax in 2017, requiring owners to declare occupancy each year and taxing homes left vacant (1% of assessed value at launch, 1.25% from the 2020 tax year, later raised further). Revenue is ring-fenced for affordable and social housing.
Reported results: declared vacant homes fell from 1,131 (2017) to 922 (2018) and 787 (2019, initial review). The City's 2024 annual report puts the cumulative fall since 2017 at 67%, with vacant homes below 1,000 and a vacancy rate of 0.49% versus 0.90% in 2017. The tax had raised about CAD 194 million by the 2024 report year.
Caveats: the city itself notes that isolating a single policy's effect in a dynamic housing market is hard (immigration, rental supply, construction and ownership costs also matter); self-declared data are open to fraud until audited; and CMHC data show condo rentals rose by 5,920 units (21%) between October 2018 and October 2019, consistent with owners renting out rather than paying, though causality is not proven. No independent causal evaluation was found.

Read the full analysis: https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/empty-homes-tax.aspx