Condo Listings Soar, Vacancy Tax Increase, AI Hallucinations
February ushered in balanced conditions for Metro Vancouver’s real estate market, with 5,057 new listings reflecting a 10.9% year-over-year increase, following January’s notable 46% surge. Condo listings are rising sharply as investors may be offloading properties amid challenging cash-flow conditions. Active listings grew to 12,744, a 32.3% jump from last year, but accumulation has slowed compared to January’s pace. Sales totalled 1,827, down 11.7% from February 2024. In the Fraser Valley, active listings hit 6,978, with condos likely contributing to this near-decade high, signalling the end of recent speculative fervor. Sales in the region dropped 26% year-over-year to 920, aligning with a broader market rebalance.
Banks could begin cutting rates as early as next week, aligning with the Bank of Canada’s policy interest rate announcement scheduled for March 12. If a cut occurs, fixed mortgage rates below 4% could become the norm. Typically, such conditions would spark a spring buying frenzy, but uncertainty lingers as buyers grapple with fears of an escalating tariff war. Rising tensions with the United States—spurred by Trump’s proposed 25% tariff on Canadian imports—seem more like political posturing than a concrete threat, with both nations stalling on decisive action. On a lighter note, Canada’s victory at the 4 Nations Face-Off brought a much needed sense of national pride amid this economic turmoil.
The sales-to-active listings ratio is 14.8% overall—10.7% for detached homes, 18.5% for attached, and 16.8% for apartments. Months of supply stabilized at 7, with fewer new listings. Detached supply fell from 11 to 9 months (8 in December), townhomes rose from 4 to 5, and condos held at 6 (up from 5). Townhomes remain the tightest market; North Vancouver and Port Coquitlam favor sellers at 4 months, joined by Burnaby North and Ladner. Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows, and Maple Ridge hit a scarce 2 months.
Speculation and vacancy tax increase
BC's 2025 budget includes changes to the speculation and vacancy tax effective January 1, 2026. For Canadian citizens and permanent residents who are not classified as untaxed worldwide earners, the tax rate will increase from 0.5% to 1%. Similarly, foreign owners and untaxed worldwide earners, currently taxed at 2%, will see their rate rise to 3%. These adjustments reflect the province’s continued efforts to address housing affordability and availability.
In tandem with these increases, the provincial government is enhancing support for residents. The non-refundable speculation and vacancy tax credit for B.C. residents will rise from $2,000 to $4,000. This change aims to provide meaningful relief to eligible taxpayers, particularly those who maintain occupied properties within the province.
The declaration is due on March 31st of each year.
A.I. hallucinations derail B.C. couple’s tribunal bid
A British Columbia couple’s reliance on artificial intelligence backfired when they cited court cases in a condo dispute, only to learn most didn’t exist. Facing off against their strata over unapproved renovations in their unit—changes made before they bought it—they turned to B.C.’s Civil Resolution Tribunal for relief. They submitted a list of 10 legal precedents generated by Microsoft Co-Pilot, an AI chatbot, to argue their case, but a tribunal ruling exposed nine as pure fiction. Products of AI "hallucination" where the model invents convincing but baseless details. The tribunal rejected their plea, upholding that strata approval must come before major alterations, as owners cannot reasonably expect retroactive approval for alterations done without the strata’s prior authorization.
This misadventure highlights a broader issue with AI tools: they can mislead as easily as they inform, especially in critical situations like legal battles. The couple had hoped to legitimize their unit for rental use, but the strata stood firm, leaving them empty-handed. It’s a cautionary tale for anyone tempted to trust AI without double-checking—while it’s a powerful resource, its knack for fabricating answers can turn a solid argument into a house of cards.
xAI launches Grok 3
Following a $6 billion Series C, Elon Musk's xAI released their most advanced model yet, Grok 3—trained on its Colossus supercluster with 10x the compute power of previous state-of-the-art models. It blends superior reasoning with extensive pre-training knowledge, and displays significant improvements in mathematics, coding, world knowledge, and instruction-following tasks. Grok 3 can process extensive documents and handle complex prompts while maintaining instruction-following accuracy, showcasing its powerful information retrieval capabilities.
It outperforms many of the competing models like OpenAI's GPT-4o and Gemini 2.0 Pro. I found it to be incredibly fast and accurate, producing more relevant responses compared to the popular ChatGPT. Unlike ChatGPT, one of the main advantages is that Grok doesn't have a strict knowledge cutoff date. xAI designed it to continuously update its knowledge base, so it's loaded with info all the way up to the present day. ChatGPT, depending on the version, typically has a fixed cutoff, after which it relies on static data unless it’s been retrained or patched. It doesn't have a perfect memory of every single moment, but gets fresher intel more often. Grok 3 is currently in public beta, available to try for free.
Banks could begin cutting rates as early as next week, aligning with the Bank of Canada’s policy interest rate announcement scheduled for March 12. If a cut occurs, fixed mortgage rates below 4% could become the norm. Typically, such conditions would spark a spring buying frenzy, but uncertainty lingers as buyers grapple with fears of an escalating tariff war. Rising tensions with the United States—spurred by Trump’s proposed 25% tariff on Canadian imports—seem more like political posturing than a concrete threat, with both nations stalling on decisive action. On a lighter note, Canada’s victory at the 4 Nations Face-Off brought a much needed sense of national pride amid this economic turmoil.
The sales-to-active listings ratio is 14.8% overall—10.7% for detached homes, 18.5% for attached, and 16.8% for apartments. Months of supply stabilized at 7, with fewer new listings. Detached supply fell from 11 to 9 months (8 in December), townhomes rose from 4 to 5, and condos held at 6 (up from 5). Townhomes remain the tightest market; North Vancouver and Port Coquitlam favor sellers at 4 months, joined by Burnaby North and Ladner. Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, Pitt Meadows, and Maple Ridge hit a scarce 2 months.
Speculation and vacancy tax increase
BC's 2025 budget includes changes to the speculation and vacancy tax effective January 1, 2026. For Canadian citizens and permanent residents who are not classified as untaxed worldwide earners, the tax rate will increase from 0.5% to 1%. Similarly, foreign owners and untaxed worldwide earners, currently taxed at 2%, will see their rate rise to 3%. These adjustments reflect the province’s continued efforts to address housing affordability and availability.
In tandem with these increases, the provincial government is enhancing support for residents. The non-refundable speculation and vacancy tax credit for B.C. residents will rise from $2,000 to $4,000. This change aims to provide meaningful relief to eligible taxpayers, particularly those who maintain occupied properties within the province.
The declaration is due on March 31st of each year.
A.I. hallucinations derail B.C. couple’s tribunal bid
A British Columbia couple’s reliance on artificial intelligence backfired when they cited court cases in a condo dispute, only to learn most didn’t exist. Facing off against their strata over unapproved renovations in their unit—changes made before they bought it—they turned to B.C.’s Civil Resolution Tribunal for relief. They submitted a list of 10 legal precedents generated by Microsoft Co-Pilot, an AI chatbot, to argue their case, but a tribunal ruling exposed nine as pure fiction. Products of AI "hallucination" where the model invents convincing but baseless details. The tribunal rejected their plea, upholding that strata approval must come before major alterations, as owners cannot reasonably expect retroactive approval for alterations done without the strata’s prior authorization.
This misadventure highlights a broader issue with AI tools: they can mislead as easily as they inform, especially in critical situations like legal battles. The couple had hoped to legitimize their unit for rental use, but the strata stood firm, leaving them empty-handed. It’s a cautionary tale for anyone tempted to trust AI without double-checking—while it’s a powerful resource, its knack for fabricating answers can turn a solid argument into a house of cards.
xAI launches Grok 3
Following a $6 billion Series C, Elon Musk's xAI released their most advanced model yet, Grok 3—trained on its Colossus supercluster with 10x the compute power of previous state-of-the-art models. It blends superior reasoning with extensive pre-training knowledge, and displays significant improvements in mathematics, coding, world knowledge, and instruction-following tasks. Grok 3 can process extensive documents and handle complex prompts while maintaining instruction-following accuracy, showcasing its powerful information retrieval capabilities.
It outperforms many of the competing models like OpenAI's GPT-4o and Gemini 2.0 Pro. I found it to be incredibly fast and accurate, producing more relevant responses compared to the popular ChatGPT. Unlike ChatGPT, one of the main advantages is that Grok doesn't have a strict knowledge cutoff date. xAI designed it to continuously update its knowledge base, so it's loaded with info all the way up to the present day. ChatGPT, depending on the version, typically has a fixed cutoff, after which it relies on static data unless it’s been retrained or patched. It doesn't have a perfect memory of every single moment, but gets fresher intel more often. Grok 3 is currently in public beta, available to try for free.