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“It’s very, very hard to stop the charging locomotive of a rising real-estate market,” said Ley, who was on the committee that drew up the UBCM report, which was seven months in the making.

The B.C. Liberal government tried to calm offshore investment in 2016 by launching a 15-per cent tax on foreign buyers in Metro Vancouver, Ley said in an interview, and this UBCM report simply adds further recommendations to bring stability to the market.

The UBCM report supports the overall principle of a foreign-buyers tax and suggests several key ways municipalities could work with the new B.C. NDP government to expand and fine-tune it.

It recommends that pre-sale contracts for condos, which are often marketed in Asia before construction begins, be subject to the foreign-buyers tax, which currently does not apply to condos until a sale actually closes. It also urges “expanding the geographic scope” of the foreign-buyers tax, with Ley remarking that could include instituting it for the Fraser Valley and Victoria, which have experienced sharp price hikes.

In an effort to crack down on what is believed to be widespread avoidance of the foreign-buyers and other taxes, the UBCM is also pushing for the B.C. government to make sure the “beneficial owner” of all new dwellings is not disguised, but would be registered with the Land Titles Office. That, the report said, would “close a major loophole.”

The UBCM report committee, which included leading municipal politicians and veteran real-estate industry insider Richard Wozny, stressed the dire need to close a range of tax-avoidance schemes that have long been exploited in B.C.’s property development sector, especially by people who don’t intend to live in the houses they buy.