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Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

bloomberg.com

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Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#31

Post by woah »

VincentEvans wrote: post #7

I don’t know the specifics on Canadian real estate market and the specifics of the problems there, but based on my understanding of the problems facing your neighbors to the south - I feel like it’s almost an attempt to appease citizens by blaming the issue on “foreigners” (always a move that is popular with politicians) to redirect attention from the much more likely cause - massive investments made by hedge funds,…

> massive investments made by hedge funds, private capital, REITs which does not appear to be addressed at all?

If corporations buying houses was actually affecting the purchase market prices, then we'd see an equal effect on rental prices going down. A corporation can't live in a house, so they'd be renting it out. If these evvvill corporations were keeping houses vacant just to screw over regular hard working folks, resulting in no effect on the rental market prices, then we'd see it in the vacancy stats. But that's never actually mentioned by housing conspiracy theorists because the vacancy stats show that the areas with highest prices have extremely low vacancy rates, because demand for housing is so much higher than supply, because not enough housing has been built.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#32

Post by gunfighthacksaw »

hengri wrote: post #23
tqi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like it’s almost an attempt to appease citizens by blaming the issue on “foreigners” (always a move that is popular with politicians) Yeah the Right loves to blame poor foreigners while the Left prefers to blame rich foreigners but at the end of the day they at least agree that it is never the voters themselves who are to blame.

It's low interest rates to blame

Nah, it’s the animal sprits

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#33

Post by hemreldop »

dsnr wrote: post #25
mperham wrote: post #20

Liberal governments will do everything but the one thing that will solve the problem: make it much, much easier to actually build more housing. Everything else is just pointless busywork.

This is not really guaranteed to solve the problem. It will only be a part of the solution. In many countries, including Europe, new properties are quickly snatched by investment companies that have much easier access to capital than private individuals and can easily afford to pay above market prices. People shouldn’t really have to compete with companies or “investors” on the housing market.

Well investment companies buy to resell. If there is a glut of new houses prices will definitely go down in the medium term.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#35

Post by jenkstom »

I could sell my house (not in Canada) for so much more than I bought it two years ago. But then what? All of the houses around here are going to corporations who are squeezing money out of those who can't find a home to buy. Because they've all been bought up by corporations. I'm not "anti-corporate" by any stretch of the imagination, but this is definitely a problem that is hurting families. I would vote for something similar here.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#36

Post by chollida1 »

VincentEvans wrote: post #27
hengri wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's low interest rates to blame

Which should’ve helped a whole bunch of hard-working regular people to buy their first-time homes, but that is not what is happening it seems?

> Which should’ve helped a whole bunch of hard-working regular people to buy their first-time homes, but that is not what is happening it seems?

This is false if you think about it.

What drives the price of a house is what people can pay on their monthly payments.

As rates go down prices go up as people can afford to pay more.

Unfortunately for home buyers this means the downpayment goes up. What you end up with is a bunch of first time home buyers who can in theory afford the mortgage payments but can't build up the $200,000 nest egg required as a 20% downpayment on a $1,000,000 home.

When rates go back up home prices will drop and so will the size of the downpayment required, even though the person will pay about the same monthly on their mortgage.

Lower rate help those with existing homes and therefor existing equity more than those without homes.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#37

Post by ameminator »

tqi wrote: post #15
VincentEvans wrote: post #7

I don’t know the specifics on Canadian real estate market and the specifics of the problems there, but based on my understanding of the problems facing your neighbors to the south - I feel like it’s almost an attempt to appease citizens by blaming the issue on “foreigners” (always a move that is popular with politicians) to redirect attention from the much more likely cause - massive investments made by hedge funds,…

> I feel like it’s almost an attempt to appease citizens by blaming the issue on “foreigners” (always a move that is popular with politicians) Yeah the Right loves to blame poor foreigners while the Left prefers to blame rich foreigners but at the end of the day they at least agree that it is never the voters themselves who are to blame.

There are many likely reasons for the explosion in housing prices - but we can't pretend that immigration isn't one of them. A solution will likely need to be multi-factored, but reducing demand by reducing immigration will probably have to be part of that solution. To ignore that is to limit how effective your measures in reducing the cost of housing can be.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#39

Post by nawgz »

woah wrote: post #31
VincentEvans wrote: post #7

I don’t know the specifics on Canadian real estate market and the specifics of the problems there, but based on my understanding of the problems facing your neighbors to the south - I feel like it’s almost an attempt to appease citizens by blaming the issue on “foreigners” (always a move that is popular with politicians) to redirect attention from the much more likely cause - massive investments made by hedge funds,…

> massive investments made by hedge funds, private capital, REITs which does not appear to be addressed at all? If corporations buying houses was actually affecting the purchase market prices, then we'd see an equal effect on rental prices going down. A corporation can't live in a house, so they'd be renting it out. If these evvvill corporations were keeping houses vacant just to screw over regular hard working folks…

[flagged]

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#40

Post by the_optimist »

woah wrote: post #31
VincentEvans wrote: post #7

I don’t know the specifics on Canadian real estate market and the specifics of the problems there, but based on my understanding of the problems facing your neighbors to the south - I feel like it’s almost an attempt to appease citizens by blaming the issue on “foreigners” (always a move that is popular with politicians) to redirect attention from the much more likely cause - massive investments made by hedge funds,…

> massive investments made by hedge funds, private capital, REITs which does not appear to be addressed at all? If corporations buying houses was actually affecting the purchase market prices, then we'd see an equal effect on rental prices going down. A corporation can't live in a house, so they'd be renting it out. If these evvvill corporations were keeping houses vacant just to screw over regular hard working folks…

This is a total and complete non sequitur. No reason rental prices would go down. I just looked at materials of one such company touting 50% increases.
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