The data is public, less than 5% of homes are going to foreigners. Don't see how they even accomplish banning foreigners when there are free trade and free investment agreements. The problem is that bonds have negative yields. Retirement funds are forced into buying real estate, because housing is a safe investment right?
The federal government knows this and knows they can't do anything. If they targeted retirement funds like they should... what happens? Housing bubble pops, retirement funds lose tons of money. They are busy attacking the oil industry because they know they cant extract anything out of Finance, Real Estate, or insurance.
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.
I mean... it has to eventually. If my country has a population of 50 million and I build 800 million homes, will investors keep buying them all at above market rates (read: more than I spent building them)? Then I can build 100 million more and keep collecting infinite money?
Why is foreign investment in Canada real estate so big vs the US? Is it just a pyramid scheme or something, or are investors actually making use of the properties?
The Canadian economy is almost entirely dependent on real estate[0][1]. It's almost a certainty that the Liberal government would never hurt that sector in any meaningful way. I'm guessing that they're run the numbers and they know this won't have any real effect (other than political points scoring). Most of the RE demand comes from immigration (in CA, currently more than 1%/year) - look at any country that has high…
It's fine for demand to go up as long as supply can keep up -- which unfortunately hasn't for decades thanks to NIMBYs https://financialpost.com/news/economy/ontario-alberta-and-m... https://www.livabl.com/2021/05/canada-housing-market-most-un... Look at any satellite or aerial view of Vancouver or Toronto and it's basically all SFH https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/twj89s/yonge_st_fr...
I live in a small-mid sized city in Ontario. The biggest issue with our lack of housing is a hugely corrupt local government that has introduced a TON of extra fines and red tape to the building process. Plus there's a tremendous amount of "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine" with the local building companies (of which there are functionally two). This all means that it's prohibitively difficult and expensive for any new developers to enter the scene and the best margins exist in the $500k+ range for new houses. It's a nightmare.
This is nothing but pandering for votes before an election for those who don't understand this won't have any significant impact on affordability of houses for Canadians. There's a reason why we still also pay the highest telecommunications bills in the world - industrial complexes have captured our government, and even it's far worse that that; regulatory capture. Edit to add: 3 points down to 0 points; downvotes ar…
I know this is probably naive thinking but I don't understand how we can have so much land and still have unaffordable homes and concentrated populations.
Exactly: it's the policy, it's captured by for-profit industrial complexes - and if you want to get into deeper conspiracy hypothesis, it's also foreign influence laundering $100s of billions into our real estate market, not only buying up/owning our most valuable land and properties, but at the same time making the costs of every Canadian go up and quality of life going down - making us weaker as a society, and more vulnerable to takeover; there's a whole book written on this called "Wilful Blindness: How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP Agents Infiltrated the West" by Sam Cooper; Canada is one of the richest countries in the world, resource and spring water wise with our lakes, and especially per capita with only 38 million population - we're a prime target, rich and relatively easy, and our systems are clearly captured.
This is nothing but pandering for votes before an election for those who don't understand this won't have any significant impact on affordability of houses for Canadians. There's a reason why we still also pay the highest telecommunications bills in the world - industrial complexes have captured our government, and even it's far worse that that; regulatory capture. Edit to add: 3 points down to 0 points; downvotes ar…
I know this is probably naive thinking but I don't understand how we can have so much land and still have unaffordable homes and concentrated populations.
They also need to encourage provinces to change zoning laws to encourage mixed-use zoning and denser development. Suburban sprawl isn't going to be the best long-term answer to supply shortage.
The data is public, less than 5% of homes are going to foreigners. Don't see how they even accomplish banning foreigners when there are free trade and free investment agreements. The problem is that bonds have negative yields. Retirement funds are forced into buying real estate, because housing is a safe investment right? The federal government knows this and knows they can't do anything. If they targeted retirement…
I wonder how many homes are bought and sold through shell companies, family members, etc?
I’m mostly familiar with Vancouver since my wife has relatives there. About half a dozen years ago they imposed a 15% tax on foreign real estate investors. I heard 2015 figures suggesting foreign Chinese investors accounted for one third of the $29 billion market in 2015. Vancouver real estate prices had been rising a lot for a long time but I think they felt the foreign investors exacerbated the problem for locals,…
Well it's complicated. Foreign investors would be buying mansions that locals couldn't afford anyways. And the locals are just bidding against themselves for the cheaper stuff armed with low interest rates and bank of Ma and Pa. My statistic says that only 20% of RE is foreign owned.
It is full loopholes like people with 10 year visas, work visas, student visas are exempt. We have University students with $31million Vancouver mansions in their name. Our tax system is screwy where we have very low property taxes and high employment tax. The whole west side of Vancouver claims poverty level incomes on average (like qualifies for government tax rebates bad), yet it is the most expensive land in the country.
Astronaut families are a problem and I feel leach on the society. Paying very low taxes, using all the social services, yet making income outside of the country so not paying anything.