Do this in the US too, please. Also farmland.
Would this solve anything except to make current farmland owners essentially landlords to the same huge corporations working the land?
Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes
51–60 of 817 posts
Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> If there is a glut of new houses prices will definitely go down
Given the billion of investment dollars and cheap loans avaliable, it might be physically impossible to build enough homes fast enougg for the prices to go down
Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes
#53Liberal 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.
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Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes
#54Earlier 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.
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.
Or we could have seen this coming a mile away and built more houses and reduced the idiocy of city zoning.
But yeah it’s the immigrants fault. Lets reduce immigration while we are facing a labor shortage.
Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes
#55I 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 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, private capital, REITs which does not appear to be addressed at all?
Can you not do this and also seek to identify hedge funds, private capital, REITs, and other entities which may be more difficult to regulate at a later time? Maybe this first piece of legislation is the quick win?
Are you saying that foreigners who do not reside at all in Canada should be able to buy a primary home in Canada? Because that's what this bill is preventing. If you're a "foreigner" it's not relevant so long as you're actually a resident of Canada.
Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes
#56A populist policy that amounts to pissing into the wind. Canada's rising real estate prices has a simple cause: demand far outstrips supply. The demand isn't driven by foreign investors. It's driven by a 1.1% annual population growth rate, the majority of which is immigration.
I am one of these migrants. Canada's immigration system recruits high-skilled workers and many of the fast track programmes require that you demonstrate a minimum proof of funds in the tens of thousands of dollars (multiples of the average Canadian's liquid savings).
High-skilled workers aren't moving to Canada to live in the abundant land of northern Manitoba. They're moving here to live in areas with relatively high opportunity: Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal if they speak French. Housing demand is concentrated in those areas and surrounding regions.
There isn't a matching desire to build homes at a pace that outstrips immigration. Interestingly, total number of dwellings in Canada has grown by ~1% annually over the last 5 years. On the surface, that looks to match the immigration rate (1.1%), but both those numbers are for the whole of Canada. The majority of immigrants move to one of the main cities, whereas new homes are much more geographically spread.
TL;DR: increase homes or decrease people, everything else is pointless.
Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes
#57I don't know about Canada, but in the US there are some tax law changes that could drastically reduce 'land hoarding' and help encourage excess capital to flow into construction of new properties rather than rent seeking.
Right now 1031 exchanges mean real estate over many other types of investment are tax advantaged, (I can't do the same thing with my stock for instance) and doubly so for places that put caps on property taxes.
The US (and canada?) should heavily tax capital gains on land appreciation for all but your primary residence, at the same time it would give tax incentives on capital gains for constructing new units.
Right now excess capital is encouraged by multiple tax laws to just play the rent seeking game waiting for land appreciation while others do the hard work of causing an area's land to become more valuable.
Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes
#58Earlier 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.
Weird, I know the left likes to blame the rich, but I’ve never seen specifically rich foreigners. Also for real how can the voters (ie the average citizen) be the problem? The average citizen has no money and no political or regulatory power. The average citizen just exists in a system they have no control over and responds to incentives. Hoping that en mass people won’t do that is like politely asking a river to mov…
This is definitely a thing in Vancouver: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/05/726531803/vancouver-has-been-...
Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes
#59Earlier 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.
Weird, I know the left likes to blame the rich, but I’ve never seen specifically rich foreigners. Also for real how can the voters (ie the average citizen) be the problem? The average citizen has no money and no political or regulatory power. The average citizen just exists in a system they have no control over and responds to incentives. Hoping that en mass people won’t do that is like politely asking a river to mov…
Attacking rich foreigners for not paying enough to their adopted homes is fairly common throughout the world, no? America does make it harder to avoid paying tax with a system that taxes income regardless of which country you earned it in, but most of the rest of the world does not work this way.
To use the UK as an example, attacking rich foreigners for their "non-domiciled" tax status is extremely common. This is where you live in the UK, but for tax purposes hide your wealth in another system with lower tax rates, effectively paying no income taxes at all in the UK. Variations of this concept exist throughout the world in many countries and routinely draw politically ire.
Just this week: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-61017993
Wealth coupled with a collection of passports often creates far more opportunities to avoid tax than being stuck under the rules of one single State, rightly or wrongly.