I don't know the specific rules in Vancouver, but yeah, a lot of those attempts were illusory/perfunctory...
If you can afford to have one, or multiple, $2M+ condos that you just "park" your wealth in to leave them vacant, the presence of a $10K or $20K fee/tax a year is in the "chump change" category.
Vancouver has fewer vacant units than the average for the country.
> The number of vacant homes in Vancouver has fallen below 1000 as of 2024. The latest Annual report shows low vacancy rate of 0.49%. [the average is 2.7%]
Guess what happened with the housing prices? Right. They kept increasing. The housing density went up, so the prices must also increase.
If you can afford to have one, or multiple, $2M+ condos that you just "park" your wealth in to leave them vacant, the presence of a $10K or $20K fee/tax a year is in the "chump change" category.