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There are 293 units in the two Living Shangri-La buildings, so it would also normally have six to nine units for sale, not 17. The Harbour Green complex has 209 units, so typically four to six condos would be for sale, not 13.

Josh Gordon of Simon Fraser University’s School of Public Policy isn’t surprised many luxury condos have been put up for sale.

“Both (taxes) are going to hit pretty hard,” said Gordon, an assistant professor at SFU. “If you leave a place empty, you could potentially be subject to three per cent (of the assessed value).”

That could be expensive — a property assessed at $4 million could face a tax bill of $120,000. In theory an owner could avoid the taxes by renting out their place, but Gordon said owners are “loath” to rent luxury condos.

“It’s one thing to rent a run-of-the-mill place, but with these high-end places, it’s hard getting a tenant who can pay you enough,” he said. “And you’re going to be very wary of any damage to a place like that, so that changes the dynamic.

“The other thing is (using a condo as) a long-term store of value. If you have this new policy regime which discourages foreign ownership through the satellite family and foreign-owner component (of the provincial speculation tax), then that changes your calculation.

“A lot of people will be selling, not necessarily because they’re subject to the tax, but because they think the price (of their property) is going to go down.”

Prices have dipped downtown, and some units are taking a long time to sell. A condo on the 67th floor of the Trump Tower recently sold for $2.95 million, but it took over a year to sell, and was reduced over $400,000 from the original sale price of $3.389 million.

Still the seller did well: they bought the condo for $2,038,346 in November 2016.

jmackie@postmedia.com

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