Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#471

Post by 8note » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 9:44 PM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #322

macspoofing wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm not sure why "amount over reserve / list" is a meaningful metric. It's not. The salient part is that the current market is crazy and there is a large number of bids on any given house. >It's clear that in a lot of cases the list prices are intentionally below market to attract more bidders and produce the appearance of more competition at open houses and the like. Yes, list prices are intentionally below market…

> Yes, list prices are intentionally below market but you know what ... houses are going for crazy amounts because we are in some sort of a bubble Why? The last 40 years interest rates have continued to decline and inflationary pressures have hurt the value of every currency. What reason is there to believe this won't continue indefinitely (low interest + ~2% y/y inflation) and that the market is simply pricing thing…

People have the loans, at least.

Corporations and pensions might have the proper money

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#472

Post by jedberg » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 9:46 PM UTC

cameronh90 wrote: post #392

techsupporter wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comparati…

The population isn't the main factor, it's the density and percent who commute by car that matter most.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#473

Post by 8note » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 9:46 PM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #305

rsync wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: you can waive your inspection contingency … and then still go inspect the house. Just bring your inspector along to a showing or open house, etc. Owners won’t even be there.

You can inspect certain things. But you won't be inspecting to see if there's an oil tank buried in the yard, the quality of the chimney, if there's any radiation in the basement, and plenty of other things. But yes, you can probably inspect the construction quality and foundation pretty easily, a visual inspection of the roof and siding, and if you care the quality and age of utility appliances. You can also pull th…

Checking for radiation in the basement sounds like something you can do passively as you walk through? All you need is a Geiger counter?

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#474

Post by imtringued » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 9:49 PM UTC

manbackharry wrote: post #325

Ensorceled wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are at the point where foreign and Canadian speculation in housing is making housing totally unaffordable for the vast majority of Canadians. In a country of less than 40 million, it's pretty easy to swamp our markets. We need to take speculation out of the marketplace. I'd also like to see a ban on corporations purchasing private homes and significant tax increases on non principle residences.

Your last line is pretty much my exact opinion. I'm an idiot, but I struggle to see how significant taxes (and I mean SIGNIFICANT - something like having all rental income and cap gains on secondary residences taxed at the highest rate ~54%) in these cases wouldn't have extremely broad appeal. Make the sector unappealing as an investment class and you should stop seeing unfettered speculation. The idea of housing bei…

Rent control doesn't work because of liquidity preference. Rental income must exceed the liquidity premium of land or else it will be kept empty. Liquidity preference is effectively the concept that people prefer keeping assets exchangeable for other assets.

For real estate this means keeping the property ready to sell at any time. It is easier to exchange an empty apartment and even easier to exchange an empty plot than a rented out apartment.

The downsides of renting out, i.e. the inability of being able to quickly sell the property must be compensated and that compensation is part of your rent. If you cap rent, that compensation will be insufficient to "bait" the property owner into renting his property out. They would rather keep it liquid and wait for a better offer. To keep it simple, the owner has options, the renter doesn't, so the renter must go out of his way to attract the owner's attention by paying higher rent than if he had outright owned the property himself.

Eliminating the liquidity preference of land would require all land to be leased or a sufficiently high tax on owned land (so that waiting and doing nothing has opportunity costs).

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#475

Post by ashtonkem » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

exfascist wrote: post #461

ashtonkem wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? I can’t speak for Canada, but in America the answer is always cars. Car based transit is wildly land inefficient, and the main reason why all car based cities hit their limit at the same time. In particular there are two huge shortcomings with cars in urban design: 1. Par…

So I hate driving and actually moved to DC for work and also partly for the transit. Here's what I found: 1) Taking the metro many places (for example, from my apartment in an urban "luxury" apartment building a couple blocks from the initial station to my boat near the waterfront in downtown DC) doubled the time it took to get there. It was actually faster to drive there even during rush hour where you'll sit motion…

> Taking the metro many places (for example, from my apartment in an urban "luxury" apartment building to my boat near the waterfront in downtown DC) doubled the time it took to get there. It was actually faster to drive there even during rush hour where you'll sit motionless on the 395 bridge.

Depends a lot on where you live and work. My experience was the exact opposite in Chicago. Heck, for some of my jobs I could outrun car commuters on my bike pretty trivially.

One of the clear downsides to transit oriented cities is that you do need to pay attention to transit access when renting. A unit being “luxury” is no guarantee that it’s in a convenient place for transit, nor that the trip will be short.

> Yes I can redeem a lot of that time with my above average personal mobile computing set up

I find the need to make commute time productive quite an odd but common impulse. How about just making your commute suck less? Reading a book is better than driving in traffic.

> I couldn't get rid of the car entirely because I still needed it to move bulky things that I really can't take on transit.

Again, experience varies. For a lot of people it would be cheaper to abandon the car and pay for deliveries when necessary.

Regardless, do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you relegate your car trips to just when you need bulk goods, that is far more efficient than the current habit of using a car fo every single trip.

> Most wealthy people (many of my friends) start families and people who can afford it buy detached housing for that. You're not going to be taking transit to these places.

We could, but we’ve built our infrastructure with the opposite assumption in mind. Most other rich countries use a mix of regional rail, bus, and cars to solve this problem. The issue of “mass transit doesn’t go to the burbs, therefore I must use a car everywhere for everything” is an entirely self inflicted wound.

> Bringing me to the fact that I've been accosted multiple times on transit by people who were high, drunk, or just belligerent

Maybe we could solve that problem instead? Because that seems like a rather silly rationale for designing a transit system around.

Also, it’s not like all car drivers are sober. In fact, a drunk driver is almost certainly a far bigger risk to your safety than a belligerent drunk on the train.

> I'm a huge fan of transit but pretending it isn't a large sacrifice to give up a car is just going to get people to ignore you, because it is and for most people it isn't worth it.

It’s almost like I’m arguing that we should make public transit more convenient than using a car for urban transit or something.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#476

Post by voisin » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

djbebs wrote: post #381

Majromax wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Empty housing is a myth? Please explain.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#477

Post by jedberg » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

The law is so toothless it won't do much. Foreign investors will just find a local conduit to "buy" the house.

> The foreign-buyer ban won’t apply to students

People will send their kid to college and buy them a 5 million dollar house to live in while they are there. And presumably they won't be forced to sell once the student leaves.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#478

Post by WaylonKenning » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 9:51 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #452

Tiktaalik wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

worth noting that Aus and NZ don't have blind bidding and have severe housing issues as well.

New Zealand has deadline sales, which you sign a blind offer with whatever conditions you want, and then the vendor can choose any offer or change the rules or ask for more money or do basically anything they want. There are also tenders, which I don’t know much about. And I have seen auctions where they set the reserve at a ridiculously high amount, and then negotiate with the highest bidder. A few years ago, one pl…

I think a tender is really a blind bid. A bunch of offers from different people (the tenders) are received before a deadline, and then the vendor views them all and chooses whatever one they like (which is probably the highest offer).

I've just bought a house, and it's been interesting to see the selling method change as the market goes from hot to cold - Auction, Tender, Deadline, Buyer Enquires Over, Asking price.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#479

Post by imtringued » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 9:53 PM UTC

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?

That wouldn't be a big deal if the house was affordable to begin with.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#480

Post by citrusybread » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

cameronh90 wrote: post #392

techsupporter wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comparati…

Extreme car dependency.

Toronto is suffering from the same problem Dubai has. It suddenly became relevant when sovereignists gained power in Quebec and the business class were worried about Montreal being a liability. So they packed up and went down the 401 to Toronto.

It has the infrastructure for a much much smaller city, and one in the North American car-driven style (massive highways, occasional regional rail that is artificially slowed down by regulation, little to no metro service in most areas, etc)

Combine with NIMBYs blocking every form of intensification, and here we are:

https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6783092,-79.352227,3a,90y,68...

A metro station close to the downtown core. In Tokyo this is the kind of development you find on the far side of Saitama, bounded by mountains or poor soil. In Toronto, this is an area that has suffered population decline, as the locals went from having a nuclear family to being 2 or even 1 empty nesters, being replaced by DINKs.

It gets much, much worse the further out you go.

A lot of the city has a blanket ban on anything more dense than a single family detached home.

Just look at the city's size in sqkm. It will never scale like this, things need to change and density needs to be improved.

All other Ontario cities suffer the same paste-eating mentality, especially Ottawa and cities in the GTHA.