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About 115,000 units of housing are held up in various stages of municipal planning, review and contemplation, according to a new analysis the province commissioned from Deloitte.

De Jong said he’s developing a plan that could offer municipal governments money and other resources if they more quickly push through a backlog of housing projects in the Lower Mainland. He confirmed money is likely to be the incentive to local governments.

“But I don’t want to get ahead of myself,” he said, adding that the government first needed to speak to municipalities and work with the Union of B.C. Municipalities.

“We want to engage with communities to say how do we do this better, faster, more efficiently together,” de Jong told Postmedia News. “If it’s a question of resources do we need to train more urban-planning specialists? … Whatever you do it’s got to be tied to better results. We have in excess of 100,000 units, some of them have been awaiting consideration for six or seven years. That’s not good enough.”

The cautionary message in de Jong’s budget speech may also have been aimed at residents, and specifically those who may have been hoping for a little extra help getting into the scorching real estate market.

Announced in the budget was a razor-thin increase in the First-Time Home Buyers Program threshold. First-time buyers would now be eligible to save as much as $8,000 of the property transfer tax on a home valued up to $500,000. Previously, they could save up to $7,500 on a $475,000 home.