Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 817 posts

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#71

Post by bogota »

nawgz wrote: post #39
woah wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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]

Pleased refrain from personal attacks and instead focus on debating what was actually written.

I have downvoted you because this goes against the general spirit of discussion on HN.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#72

Post by WestCoastJustin »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #43
RandyRanderson wrote: post #6

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…

"Canadian economy is almost entirely dependent on real estate" This is a myth, real estate makes no contribution to (ironically) the Real Economy. Think about it, if rents in London double, then the % of GDP in real estate doubles! Everyone's life has just gotten worse because they have to earn money elsewhere and pump it into real estate whether they like it or not. The greater is your housing shortage, the more the…

Currently, more than 10 per cent of Canada’s GDP is derived from residential real estate activity: renovations, ownership transfer costs and real estate commissions. [1]

[1] https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadas-unhinged-housin...

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#73

Post by bryanlarsen »

incomingpain wrote: post #61

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…

Price is set at the margin, especially in such an inelastic market as housing.

"supply 100, demand 99, price goes down. Supply 100, deman 101, price goes up."

5% isn't a lot, but it could have a disproportionate impact.

Housing isn't a federal responsibility, so the provinces are more to blame for the crisis. Ontario just totally whiffed implementing a report on how to reduce housing costs, so I expect the problem to continue.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#74

Post by [deleted] »

axg11 wrote: post #56

A 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 d…

[deleted]

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#77

Post by ameminator »

bogota wrote: post #54
ameminator wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, it's not the immigrants' fault - it's the government's fault. At the end of the day, this confluence of circumstances is its responsibility. The combination of low interest rates, no expansive public transport projects, no action on money-laundering, hurdles in supply (as you mentioned) - and yes, expansive immigration policies (Canada had the highest population growth in the G7, mostly due to immigration [0]).

The truth is, this problem has been growing for many years and public servants have allowed the issue to grow beyond any control (and actually profiting off it in some cases). Now, the rest of the population will suffer and it's become a hard problem to solve.

Finally, yes we have a labor shortage - but it may actually be a labor correction. Wages have been stagnant for years and inflation is running wild. Wages need to rise to catch up - artificially depressing wages with immigration is a recipe for disaster.

[0] https://www.cicnews.com/2022/02/canada-fastest-growing-count...

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#78

Post by msie »

incomingpain wrote: post #61

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…

It's amazing to me how some people are so entrenched in believing that foreigners are to blame that they will perform such mental gymnastics.

The Myth of 1.3 Million Vacant Investor Homes in Canada:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evYOhpjMql0&t=6s

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#79

Post by gorjusborg »

incomingpain wrote: post #61

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 don't know how real estate market works in Canada, but I can totally see how 5% of buyers could mess up the market in the U.S..

House pricing is set based on 'comps' (comparable homes and the price they sold for). That means that a small percentage of buyers can essentially bump (initial) pricing for all homes.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#80

Post by bogota »

the_optimist wrote: post #34

Do this in the US too, please. Also farmland.

How about we just make it easier to build more houses on the vast amount of land we have in the US?

Do you have data that makes you think banning foreign buyers would actually make a significant impact? I haven’t seen any indications that this is the case in the city I live in.

Post reply on HN