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

391–400 of 817 posts

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#391

Post by imtringued »

vkou wrote: post #314
CountSessine wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're fighting scarcity. You still won't win the bidding war - it just won't be as one-sided. 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. While yo…

1%/year is not a crazy-high rate, considering that Canadian fertility is below replacement. If the country can't figure out how to deal with a population growth of ~1%/year, the problem is not the growth, the problem is somewhere else.

The problem is the allocation of jobs in a handful of city centers.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#392

Post by cameronh90 »

techsupporter wrote: post #309
edgyquant wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can they not move to nearby cities and commute?

No, that's what the person you replied to mean when they wrote: > hitting the limits of sprawl (congested highway commute time) There's only so far you can bus, train, drive, bike, walk, seaplane, helicopter, hyperloop, or transporter in to go to work. Canadian cities are, just like cities in the US, hitting this limit rather aggressively. In cities where sprawl isn't physically prohibitive, like Calgary or Toronto,…

> There's only so far you can bus, train, drive, bike, walk, seaplane, helicopter, hyperloop, or transporter in to go to work. Canadian cities are, just like cities in the US, hitting this limit rather aggressively.

Canada's largest urban area is 5.6 million people. London, Paris and Seoul are around double that, NYC is 19 million and Tokyo is 37 million.

Why are Canadian cities hitting this limit at such a comparatively low population compared to other cities in the world? Why are all the major cities in the western world seemingly hitting this limit at the same time, even though they all have different populations?

It seems to me that we've just become less aggressive at building the infrastructure necessary to support population growth.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#393

Post by Element_ »

Canada's immigration rate is over 1% it is very easy to get citizenship. There are already tons of front people with citizenship buying real estate on behalf of foreign investment pools. These measures are just PR, with 68% home ownership rate any measures that cooled home prices would be political suicide.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#394

Post by bennysomething »

slg wrote: post #189
bennysomething wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the root cause is supply, demand, the salaries of buyers, interest rates and multiple of salary for mortgages permitted by law.

Those are downstream effects of the problem with housing being an investment. We don't want prices to go down so we don't build enough supply. The policies that make housing a good investment increase demand from speculators and investors above the natural need for housing. There are all sorts of subsidies that exist to give people more money to buy housing instead of trying to make housing actually cheaper. Interest…

I doubt there is a conspiracy to stop house building, there's just planning laws that prevent and slow down development. The public want to two contradictory things, homes their children can afford and banning anything that could reduce their house price. Hence politicians look for scape goats like foreign Investors. Two conservative governments in the uk have tried to simplify planning law , and failed. We try all sorts of hacks like "affordable housing" legislation. The fact is, we make it hard to build where demand is greatest.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#395

Post by CountSessine »

imtringued wrote: post #386
CountSessine wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I hear baby-boomers arguing against the numbers, statistics, and facts and saying things like, "don't touch my equity! You just have to be patient! It'll work out for you, too!", I sort of think about this - that this is a huge intergenerational transfer of wealth.

Of course some millennials will enjoy a windfall when mom and dad eventually downsize. Not all, by any means - but some.

I hope you're lucky enough to have some house-rich parents! It's always good to be an aristocrat!

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#397

Post by richbell »

rank0 wrote: post #380
slg wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think that blind bidding is a bit of a scape-goat here: Almost everything mentioned in the various comments here is a scapegoat. These all might contribute a little to the escalating prices at the margins, but they are not the root cause. The root cause is that many capitalist societies have decided that purchasing a house is the most expensive and important investment most people will make in their lifetime. Ther…

Speculation isn’t great, but let’s not pretend this is some elaborate scheme orchestrated by all the homeowners. If it’s feasible and profitable to build new homes, then developers will do so. Everyone loves the simple solution of “build more houses”. Very few actually consider the execution of the master plan. What would it take for you to start building homes? It’s an enormous risk, requires tons of upfront capital…

> What would it take for you to start building homes? It’s an enormous risk, requires tons of upfront capital, specialized labor and supplies.

There's also no incentive to build affordable or well-constructed homes. Many builders will try to maximize profit by investing the bare minimum (i.e., cutting corners) and creating the largest number of dwellings possible. Mattamy Homes is infamous for developing large neighborhoods with pretty homes that practically fall apart in a matter of months if you look at them wrong.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#399

Post by jl2718 »

joshlemer wrote: post #377
jl2718 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exact problem are you trying to solve? I can think of a lot that this would cause. Analyze any specific tax policy deeply enough and you’ll find that there is no way to fix something that starts off as unnecessary and harmful.

The problem is that poorer people or renters generally are subsidizing richer people or homeowners generally. Depending on if your view is that Canadian governments are too big or too small, you'd say that renters are being unfairly overtaxed and should be given a break, or that homeowners are not paying their fair share and should be taxed more.

A lot of home owner occupant tax advantages were specifically introduced to disadvantage landlords. If you get rid of them, it may make the problem worse because there will be no way out of the rental trap. Separately, there are many tax laws that are written specifically to benefit landlords, and these disadvantage renters directly. The whole ‘fair share’ of taxes argument presumes that the aggrieved group would pay less if others paid more. This wholly unsupported. Government extracts what citizens will bear.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#400

Post by joshlemer »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #269
peepop6 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most of the land is useless and completely unviable for building anything. Seriously. Almost all of British Columbia is mountain. We flooded many of the river valleys for hydro power in the 1950s. Can't build on the side of the mountain that easy. Huge swathes of Canada are muskeg bog and tundra. etc.

IMO British Columbia is way under-developed. There is literally 15 or so Switzerlands worth of some of the most beautiful and desirable real estate North of Vancouver that could be developed in similar way to the cities in the Swiss Alps. The Okanogan is not really all that mountainous but is basically unpopulated, etc.
Post reply on HN