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

401–410 of 817 posts

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#401

Post by loceng »

dane-pgp wrote: post #290
loceng wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 20% of Canadians voted for Trudeau, and the majority of Canadians are being misled by our mass media channels - CBC which got $1.2 billion of government funding last year, and they are now being rewarded with an additional $100 million per year for the next 4 years. E.g. our electoral system is designed to be unfairly balanced towards the duopoly, so we've been stuck in a cycle of voting for the lesser of two ev…

I agree with you that the voting system is letting down Canadians, but I also think you are using an unfair framing with your "20%" figure which risks undermining the legitimacy of coalition governments (and thus efforts to introduce a more representative voting system where coalitions between smaller parties might become more common). In particular, I want to point out that the NDP have agreed to help the Liberal go…

And 30% making decisions for all of Canada is being argued as a good thing and fair, that my framing is unfair?

Thank Goodness we have the Senate that requires passing these measures, these harmless ones like this one because it basically does nothing, but thankfully would have voted down the Emergency Act being extended for a month - which is why Trudeau the night before revoked it himself.

I hope you're against Bill C-11 - the internet censorship bill as well? Did you hear their illogical conclusion for why they're doing it?

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#403

Post by andrewstuart »

resalisbury wrote: post #396

Housing Policy Nirvana: 1. ban supply (1920s - today) 2. ban demand (today - future) problem fixed! Srsly, why can't we concentrate on policies that unlock supply. nothing else matters.

"Supply is a lie".

You know who calls for "more supply"? Real estate developers, speculators and investors.

This is how they distract from fixing the real issues in housing prices.

Adding more supply won't bring house prices down, it will just give housing stock for investors to buy.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#404

Post by chasebank »

dboreham wrote: post #93
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.

It's very easy to build housing here in Montana but that hasn't stopped property prices from rising significantly.

Idaho is the same way.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#405

Post by dfas23 »

joshlemer wrote: post #164

We need to end or put limits on the Primary Residence Capital Gains Tax Exemption which is uncapped in Canada, unlike the cap of 200k in USA. It is unfair to renters and it is leading to insane housing prices. It is unfair to renters because renters do not have an equivalent 100%, completely unlimited tax-free investment vehicle. We have Tax-Free Savings Accounts, limited to ~$5k contribution per year, and we have RR…

This is terrible, people would just never sell their homes.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#406

Post by joshlemer »

jl2718 wrote: post #399
joshlemer wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well I guess in that framing, I as a renter am expressing that I am not willing to bear this tax burden, and so will be voting accordingly.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#407

Post by mistermann »

ceeplusplus wrote: post #296
mistermann wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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, a…

We can't even get people to consistently pass basic mathematics at a college 101 level, what you're asking is impossible. There is fundamentally a culture of anti-intellectualism in many American subcultures and the left tries to paper over it by shouting about racism and the right straight up supports it.

What of the errors in this comment section? Could the people here do no better? When the topic of discussion is related to computing, rarely do I see this many errors - assuming this observation is correct, is that interesting?

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#408

Post by joshlemer »

dfas23 wrote: post #405
joshlemer wrote: post #164

We need to end or put limits on the Primary Residence Capital Gains Tax Exemption which is uncapped in Canada, unlike the cap of 200k in USA. It is unfair to renters and it is leading to insane housing prices. It is unfair to renters because renters do not have an equivalent 100%, completely unlimited tax-free investment vehicle. We have Tax-Free Savings Accounts, limited to ~$5k contribution per year, and we have RR…

This is terrible, people would just never sell their homes.

Real estate investors have to pay capital gains on properties they sell, do they never sell their properties?

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#409

Post by slg »

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…

I never said it was an "elaborate scheme orchestrated by all the homeowners." It is a natural result of people independently acting purely based on their personal incentives.

Homeowners don't need to orchestrate and elaborate scheme, they just vote for the politicians who will prioritize increasing home values because that will help them financially. That politician will enact policies favorable to homeowners because that is what their constituency wants. That will encourage more people to become homeowners because people see homeownership as a financially beneficial endeavor. That will increase the power of homeowners as a constituency which will lead to more politicians courting homeowners with favorable policies making homeownership more attractive. And on and on the cycle goes until it isn't "feasible and profitable to build new homes" because we have made it difficult and expensive through all our pro-homeowner policies.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#410

Post by jl2718 »

rekabis wrote: post #320

Focusing on foreign buyers is a distractionary tactic. The primary cause of housing value spiking comes down to investors and speculators. Combat those, and the marketplace will return to sane valuations: • Speculation tax of 50% of the assessed or sold home value (whichever is greater) of any home held for less than two years, decreasing on a daily basis to 0% over years 3 through 8. Exemptions can be had due to ext…

This will just create complicated sales contracts, and advantage bigger landlords. The simple solution is market-valued property tax, because it’s basically unavoidable.
Post reply on HN