Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#381

Post by djbebs » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 8:21 PM UTC

Majromax wrote: post #318

CountSessine wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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 grow…

> Do those foreign investors leave the house empty? Who cares if we can just build more? I'll note here that there is a legitimate complaint to vacant housing. Some expensive city infrastructure like transit is supported by people-density rather than house-density, so a community of empty homes doesn't justify a subway line in the way that a bustling, lived-in community would. Municipal funding that comes from the pr…

There is no legitimate complaint about empty housing, not just because empty houses pay the same tax as occupied ones, but because empty housing is a myth.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#382

Post by cuddlybacon » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

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”

As a Canadian, I agree with this.

Part of the problem is that the federal govt doesn't have jurisdiction over the actually issues causing the problem. I _think_ the provinces own it but delegate it to the cities. But for some reason, this isn't an issue in those elections. BC had an election less than a year ago and housing wasn't an issue outside of Reddit. And BC has the second worse housing market in the country (Vancouver).

EDIT: Actually, that BC election was a year and a half ago. I even looked that up before posting and got it wrong. The covid time warp strikes again.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#383

Post by the_optimist » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

nawgz wrote: post #191

bogota wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're right, let me make a good faith response to right-wing late-stage-capitalism propaganda, that's worth my time.

Doesn’t have anything to do with wings. This is just economic nonsense.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#384

Post by bregma » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 8:24 PM UTC

beebmam wrote: post #47

Why can't we increase property taxes for businesses that own homes? And, for individuals who own more than, let's say, two homes?

Property tax is on the property, not on the owner. The municipality doesn't know and can't know who actually pays the taxes on a property. To have each municipality create their own spy agency to determine who is making the e-transfer for each roll number on their list will cause more problems than it solves.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#385

Post by paconbork » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 8:27 PM UTC

gregable wrote: post #242

mperham wrote: post #20

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.

Folks here lean Bay Area, but I don't think Canada has the same issue of preventing construction. For example, in Toronto, you get about 30-40k new housing starts a year in a city of 3M. https://ycharts.com/indicators/toronto_on_housing_starts . >1% / year isn't terrible. Your statement isn't wrong, but I don't know how much it applies to Canada Real Estate particularly.

Isn't Toronto a pretty unique case in North America? If I understand this [1] correctly, then they're 4x the next largest city in terms of construction cranes. I thought I remembered reading that part of the reason why is that there's a regulation that developers use that let's them construct condo towers with substantially less regulatory overhead, but I can't seem to find it.

[1] https://www.rlb.com/americas/insight/rlb-crane-index-north-a...

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#386

Post by imtringued » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 8:28 PM UTC

CountSessine wrote: post #323

ch4s3 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stop championing scarcity by blaming scapegoats. Either we limit Canada's crazy-high immigration rate (1% of population every year) or we build more homes which is mostly gated by illiberal zoning laws passed by municipalities. But both of these policies are very popular so you'll be swimming upstream, politically. I'm all for building more houses in cities/high demand areas, but doesn't Canada only have a populati…

As a contractarian libertarian, I agree, and in fact I am in favor of open borders. And Canada's age-demographic profile is terrifying, given that the baby-boomers are heading into retirement. We can use as many tax-paying millennials and gen-x'ers as we can get. Perhaps you and I should get together and we can explain to a group of detached-house-owning baby-boomers/empty-nesters why liberalizing or eliminating zoni…

No, land is a tool to make future generations be in debt to past generations. No sane person would give up their power. Only insane people who want everyone to succeed actually step down after they had their turn.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#387

Post by tomatowurst » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 8:29 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #364

tomatowurst wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument makes no sense and its just playing into the xenophobic narrative. There is nobody looking to buy a condo under $1MM mark competing to purchase the 8 digit figure homes in West Vancouver. The rich people selling and buying them aren't hurting at all. Local Canadians are competing to expand their real estate portfolios and they aren't looking at homes in Langley because they sold their mansion in West Va…

housing markets aren't disjoint this way. people will consider moving up or down a couple tiers if it makes financial sense (or they don't have a choice). if the market for mansions is particularly tight, you will see rich people start buying condos instead, driving up prices in the midrange. some professionals that would otherwise be targeting those condos will be forced to consider more marginal homes in the low en…

> if the market for mansions is particularly tight, you will see rich people start buying condos instead

a west vancouver home easily costs above $10 million, you think they are going to move into a penthouse in Yaletown as their primary residence and thus driving condo prices up?

this makes no sense, people aren't selling their west vancouver home to downsize they are in a position to get even more leverage from the bank and expand their portfolio and likely own homes in North Vancouver and/or abroad already.

the people selling their homes for ~$1MM are downsizing because they can't buy a home at that price range anymore

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#388

Post by armagon » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 8:31 PM UTC

Majromax wrote: post #310

edgyquant wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can they not move to nearby cities and commute?

That's generally happened. House prices have notably increased not just in major cities, but also in smaller municipalities within commuting distances of Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Montreal. Truly "cheap" housing is historically limited to rural areas far outside the traditional commuting area of the big cities, but the covid shock has put even that in question through remote work. Even though a small number of…

Goodness, I live in a rural area, and the house prices are only insane, instead of egregiously insane. I don't know how I'd afford a home for a young family if I was just starting out today.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#389

Post by arrosenberg » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 8:33 PM UTC

tomatowurst wrote: post #207

arrosenberg wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not complicated, it's a second negative externality. Foreigners buying and not-occupying large amounts of valuable real estates drives up the cost of new housing, with no benefit the city, even if you squint really hard. A lack of new housing means high prices for the existing housing that the locals are "just bidding against themselves" on. It's a practice that should be taxed into oblivion.

Your argument makes no sense and its just playing into the xenophobic narrative. There is nobody looking to buy a condo under $1MM mark competing to purchase the 8 digit figure homes in West Vancouver. The rich people selling and buying them aren't hurting at all. Local Canadians are competing to expand their real estate portfolios and they aren't looking at homes in Langley because they sold their mansion in West Va…

It's not xenophobic, it's classist. I'd make a similar statement about domestic rich people, but at least they can make the argument that they contribute to the civics of the city in some way by actually being present and involved.

If you expropriated all of the unoccupied mansions and replaced them with normal-priced, mixed housing, the cost of housing in the city would broadly go down, as supply would massively increase. Pricing being bid up amongst specific classes of housing and people is a second order problem - the first order problem is that unoccupied mansions are a criminal misuse of land which must be remedied by taxation.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#390

Post by paconbork » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 8:33 PM UTC

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)?

A land value tax targets the land only, not the structures on top of it, so nobody is penalized for improving their property. It also means that within an expensive metro vacant lots are taxed at the same rate as dense residential buildings, making land speculation unprofitable. Rather, landowners are incentivized to either put their land to productive use or sell to somebody else who can.