Councillors, researchers want financial penalties for investors holding empty Saint John buildings

Investors who have been buying New Brunswick residential properties and leaving them empty — sometimes even benefiting from property tax reductions as the buildings deteriorate —  have been frustrating Saint John policymakers for years. 

But the New Brunswick government is not planning any immediate action to combat the issue.

"The treatment of vacant property will be amongst the considerations as we review the property tax system," New Brunswick Finance Minister René Legacy wrote in an email to CBC News.

"Our aim is to have recommendations and proposed amendments in place for the 2027 taxation year."

A statement from the City of Saint John said it is monitoring 175 vacant buildings and the high majority of them — over 90 per cent — are residential properties.

City staff and councillors have long called for New Brunswick to adopt policies, such as those used in British Columbia and Ontario where dozens of communities can impose a special “vacancy tax” on residential buildings that are left empty by their owners for more than six months per year.

In some cases these charges can exceed several thousands of dollars per year on an empty residential building. 

The City of Toronto explains on its website that the goal of the vacancy tax is to prod property owners with empty housing units to make them available as places to live by either selling them or renting them out.

Saint John Coun. Brent Harris has been calling on the province to authorize a vacancy tax since 2021.

Harris runs a non-profit called Vacant-To-Vibrant that works to acquire empty and often dilapidated residential properties and bring them back to life — which he thinks is possible for the majority of the city’s vacant buildings.

“Let's just say 80 can be repaired — that's 200 plus units probably between those 80 buildings,” he said.

"That covers more than the amount of homeless we have. It starts to bite into the working middle class that are looking for affordable rents. Like that is solvable, but there are currently no mechanisms to do that work"

Saint John experienced a surge in real estate investment in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic and although most new buyers of residential properties have used them as housing, some investors have purchased buildings, only to leave them empty.

In New Brunswick, municipalities are not allowed to levy a special charge on vacant housing and in many cases, the province has done the opposite, cutting property taxes on empty buildings for owners as they fall into disrepair.