Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#151

Post by tomatowurst » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

eptcyka wrote: post #91

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,…

Real estate is always a good investment (unfortunately), and capital flight from Asia is not a joke. It's happening in Europe too. Personally, I think governments in well developed countries should do their best to dissuade investment in housing as a financial instrument. Why should I compete with a millionaire, be it local or foreign, for a decent house to live in a city I've lived in for years?

No post body was provided.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#152

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

giobox wrote: post #59

Spivak wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

But at least in the USA, the left treats the rich pretty uniformly (no distinction is made between rich born-here citizen, rich citizen immigrant, or rich foreigner). Many don't even know Elon Musk was born in South Africa, nor do they really care.

Tax evasion is seen as a moral problem no matter how you accomplish (so hiding it with your other citizenship is just as bad as using a shell company).

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#153

Post by FpUser » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

AzzieElbab wrote: post #121

boplicity wrote: post #88

> During last year’s election campaign, Trudeau’s party also proposed a ban on “blind bidding” for houses -- the prevailing system by which offers are kept secret when someone is auctioning a home. This is such a huge deal. Anyone who has had to go through the process of buying a home through a bidding war knows how unfair and one-sided this process is. It take a high-pressure emotional situation, and gives all of th…

I think people are missing the fact that for many Canadians values of their homes represent their live savings. So while homeownership remains high in Canada doing something substantial about re prices would ruin peoples lives.

And ruin lives for everyone who did not manage to buy house when it was affordable. Fuck that.

Just in case, I do own the house.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#154

Post by ethor » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

chollida1 wrote: post #36

VincentEvans wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It would have been true if the supply side of the market was working. Low interest rates have increased demand but the market has not been apply to increase the number of available homes to meet the demand, hence existing properties have increased in price.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#155

Post by paulpauper » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

thrwy_ywrht wrote: post #108

I know HN is not the place for glibness, but literally: just build more homes. Everything else is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Zoning reform is the answer.

and also build more jobs, nicer neighborhoods and everything else that makes some areas more expensive than others

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#156

Post by paulpauper » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

"fuck!!" - someone who just bought a home before this was announced.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#157

Post by edent » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

DaedPsyker wrote: post #123

nly wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a similar scheme in the UK, where you can save £4000/yr and get a 25% top-up from the government if you use the pot to buy your first home. Everything invested in this scheme is tax free: income and growth. You're completely right, it just drives up prices further... but they're vote winning policies and using these pots makes conveyencers a nice profit.

You can't open a help to buy ISA any longer, the government honours existing accounts though.

You can use a LISA for a first property.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#158

Post by boplicity » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #126

sonicggg wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Canada, and the real estate business is such a mafia. They are leeches, and I'm not sure how much value these real estate agents are providing. It baffles me how this industry has not yet been disrupted by an outsider, like Uber did with taxis. I still remember when taxi licenses costed a fortune, and you had the exact same leeches exploiting it. They were seen as an investment in some cities, like NYC. I k…

In the case of real estate, the entrenched transaction businesses control both supply and demand, and hence are more able to block new entrants. In the case of Uber, supply (people who own vehicles) was effectively unlimited and independent.

Uber is an interesting comparison, because their primary competitive strategy was to ignore existing government regulations. Regulations, of course, are a huge issue in the real estate industry. Maybe someone can step in and invest a many billions of dollars in real estate -- while ignoring the red-tape regulations that often prevent building? This seems unlikely, but could certainly be a path towards disruption.

The difference, with Uber, of course, is their cost of capital was relatively low. They didn't have to buy vehicles, for example. (Imagine having to tear down a few multi-billion dollar real estate developments. Yikes.)

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#159

Post by lbrito » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

I live in metro Vancouver. The market is stupid right now (has been for years I guess). Its fairly common for houses to sell 200-400K over asking price, with sometimes one or two dozen offers.

Also as the article says, this is just a bandaid, won't fix things.

How about ending the bizarre zoning restrictions that result in a sea of SFHs with little islands of super highrise condos around transit hubs? Maybe that would untap a huge repressed demand for missing middle housing?

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#160

Post by mistermann » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

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.

>> 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.

Generally speaking I think you're mostly correct, but there are exceptions, and nuances.

I am one of the odd outliers who believes that much of the blame lies with voters, but at the same time it is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. It's ~true that voters "should" "vote for better politicians", but consider:

- what if the particular flavour of democracy that we practice does not make this possible?

- what if the public's ability to make optimal decisions is a function of the quality of education they received, which is largely a consequence of government policy (and other things, like culture)?

Take HN for example: observe how many comments there are in this subthread (or the overall thread) asserting that "The problem is X", as if the causality behind the situation is due to a single variable. Might this error be to some degree (perhaps even a large degree) a consequence of causality (philosophy, epistemology, logic, etc) not being first class subjects in school (and culture/society), on par with science, math, and language?

And if one's answer to this question is something along the lines of "Oh, they didn't mean that literally, they were just speaking loosely, or expressing their opinion, etc", then I ask: why is it that we have ~culturally normalized (if not worse) speaking (and I would say: thinking) so inaccurately and imprecisely about so many matters that are extremely important, be it housing prices, immigration, war, politics, you name it? Might it be possible that we (~everyone) are "doing it wrong", at massive scale?

If I was forced to nominate a single variable that lies behind not just this problem, but perhaps ~all problems (mostly excluding natural disasters), it would be the inability of the population of this planet to think and speak/listen/conceptualize/understand at a level that is adequate to rise above the local optima we find ourselves stuck in (note: there's substantial unaddressed complexity here: some things are improving on a relative basis, etc - I am speaking in an absolute sense, which includes that which is beyond our current knowledge, or ability to know).