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

271–280 of 817 posts

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#271

Post by FpUser »

AzzieElbab wrote: post #222
FpUser wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have a mortgage too? Would you be happy owing the bank more than your property is worth?

Government with their policies and regulations has brought us into this mess and it is up to them to figure out graceful exit. Somebody is going to get hurt either way. But if you leave things untouched you will end with two castes eventually. If this what happens what is the fucking point of our "advanced" system where everyone can pursue a "happiness".

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#272

Post by [deleted] »

ipaddr wrote: post #265
giobox wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People were being taxed 90% income tax when this shift happened in the 70s.

[deleted]

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#273

Post by actuator »

dionidium wrote: post #248
actuator wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think these drive up prices higher. LISA specifically mentions that it has to be your first house anywhere in the world, so it is targeted at home ownership. People speculating shouldn't be able to take advantage of this. Though LISA is pretty much useless in London. Good luck finding even a good 1 BHK under 450k inside Zone 4

That doesn't matter. It increases the amount the first-time buyer can bid from $x to $y, which just means the investor has to bid $y + 1 instead of $x + 1. Since $y is higher than $x all that's happened is prices have risen.

Yeah, but the idea is to try to give buyers a leg up from investors. It is another story that most investors have way more money to be outbid this way.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#274

Post by francisofascii »

joshlemer wrote: post #201
knownjorbist wrote: post #94

Would've been better to just implement a land value tax.

How would this be any different to what we have now (a property tax)?

Well for one, it would be higher than low < 1% tax rates that exist now. That is just asking for foreign investors. And it would be based on the the land value, not the property (house) value.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#275

Post by corpMaverick »

Increase Property Taxes and channel this money to better services in the community and increase infrastructure for new housing developments. Build 20 minute neighbors where people do not depend so much on their cars. https://www.eugene-or.gov/1216/What-is-a-20-Minute-Neighborh...

It will also help to keep the prices lower.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#276

Post by ipaddr »

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.

The level of immigration is over 1%. Pretending people are just blaming foreigners misses the reality.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#277

Post by actuator »

nemothekid wrote: post #258
actuator wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think these drive up prices higher. LISA specifically mentions that it has to be your first house anywhere in the world, so it is targeted at home ownership. People speculating shouldn't be able to take advantage of this. Though LISA is pretty much useless in London. Good luck finding even a good 1 BHK under 450k inside Zone 4

> I don't think these drive up prices higher. It's a demand-side policy to what is a supply-side problem. If the demand is already there, and you induce more demand by providing subsidies, prices will go up. If you want to reduce prices you must either increase supply (building housing) or decrease demand (remove someone, hopefully speculators, from the market). However, given housing has become a defacto investment…

> housing has become a defacto investment asset for Americans and Canadians

Is there a major economy where this is not true? In fact it becomes comical in some developing countries.

Cities in India have NY/London like prices for much worse infrastructure and much lower purchasing power.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#278

Post by CountSessine »

LimaBearz wrote: post #252
CountSessine wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it so far fetched to assume some realtors may be juicing the bidding to... Of course not, and I didn't say that I'm completely against reforming the real estate industry and the bidding process. But it won't fix expensive housing. It's all bullsh*t if it doesn't address scarcity. In 2016 we had had 10 years of 2% population growth in Vancouver and 1.2% housing stock growth and we wanted to blame foreign investors,…

Well I share your feelings toward the whole situation for sure but I'm not sure that just building more will do much of anything. As long as we have folks buying with the intention of parking money or using homes as an "investment" you're going to have competition with much deeper pockets. This outside competition detaches local prices from the local economy. Likewise the speculation sets an anchor(comp) for neighbor…

...but I'm not sure that just building more will do much of anything

As long as we have folks buying with the intention of parking money or using homes as an "investment" you're going to have competition with much deeper pockets

Why do you think foreign investors want to overpay for a Vancouver Special? And what do they do with it once they buy it?

Do they live in it? If so, what you're upset about is population growth. Sounds like scarcity!

Do they rent it out? If so, that's a social good in a city with a 1% rental vacancy rate and sky-high rents are as bad as high housing prices. Sacrificing the rental market to save home-buyers sounds like scarcity!

Do those foreign investors leave the house empty? Who cares if we can just build more? And we know (https://doodles.mountainmath.ca/blog/2022/02/14/unoccupied-c...) that Vancouver doesn't seem to have more empty homes than most cities it's size. But of course we can't "just build more". Scarcity!

The truth is that we've seen developers market condo pre-sales in China playing-up the region's dysfunctions - pointing out our 2% population growth rate and the difficulty in building new housing. Investors come to Vancouver because they know the game is rigged - they know that housing prices are mostly one-sided and hedged by political interference. Canada's real estate is "too-big-to-fail" and is mostly up-side.

Don't talk to me about housing prices unless you deal with scarcity.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#279

Post by temp8964 »

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,…

Apparently you don't understand economics. Without the massive investments, housing will be even more expensive.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#280

Post by ethbr0 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #218
boplicity wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Uber was just an obvious con that demonstrated the danger of unrestrained capital and an era of ineffective government. Real Estate isn't a regulatory trap; it's an information trap. You can buy and sell property direct. All of the legal stuff is (nominally) done by attorneys. But the association of realtors controls the listing service and makes discovery easy. Like all salespeople, realtors add "value". When you've…

> or integrate with the existing players and add some value

Since 1973. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RE/MAX

Post reply on HN