721–730 of 817 posts
Why can't we increase property taxes for businesses that own homes? And, for individuals who own more than, let's say, two homes?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This, 100%. The rules can be whatever they are, but the participant with the most market power will always end up having the upper hand somehow
Sure! But still or even more then, wouldn't hurt to remove this intransparency aspect and what feels very unfair? Or what's the downside?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well it's complicated. Foreign investors would be buying mansions that locals couldn't afford anyways. And the locals are just bidding against themselves for the cheaper stuff armed with low interest rates and bank of Ma and Pa. My statistic says that only 20% of RE is foreign owned.
> Foreign investors would be buying mansions that locals couldn't afford anyways. If nobody is around to buy that mansion, it would eventually be sold to a developer who either turns it into apartments, or tears it down and builds an apartment building there. I've seen this happen numerous times in my neighborhood. Also 20% is huge.
zoning makes each class of property non fungible between other classes , it is like price gold doesn’t much have impact on say price of diamonds.
Rezoning benefits the economy and improves the wealth of everyone, even if NIMBYs don’t see it, however it will affect the quality of life of people who don’t want to live in “cities” proper but want the sweet spot where enough density enables them to have niceties of civilization like say neighborhood coffee shops , good schools , hospitals, art /culture/social activists without all the negativities of large cities like homelessness/high crime / poor noise /environment/pollution etc.
There is a racist angle too typically people of color, immigrants and any economically disadvantaged groups will not be able to afford to live in these neighborhoods .
[1] not strictly true for commercial as it can impact demand even if supply is not impacted , i.e. a new big office building is going to draw a lot of workers want to live near by competing for the same housing .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Market inefficiency would add an x% overhead on the price, but it doesn't uncontrollably increase the price. That's scarcity.
I mean scarcity defines value -- the reason gold or platinum are "valuable" is because of scarcity. That is it. Market inefficiency leads to unstable pricing, which for instance would be an "uncontrollably increase [of] the price." For given supply and demand if market was efficient the price of housing should have been a constant. I am guessing of course here there is an increase in demand also. (Which is what you p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ironically, that quoted excerpt inserted its own "convenient boogeyman" of housing undersupply caused by local opposition. Also, institutional investors do have a reputation for inciting bubbles and that possibility absolutely needs to be carefully scrutinized, particularly for something as essential and socially compounding as housing.
It's not "convenient" though. People desperately want to believe that there is some remote "other" that is causing the problems, not their otherwise kind, friendly neighbors. And yet, at every hearing I've attended about housing, ever public comment period for a project, it is my "neighbors" opposing the homes. The editorials in the local paper about how re-legalizing fourplexes would lead to (I'm paraphrasing) "thos…
There are some very real concerns that people have. Violence. Drugs. Noise. School quality. People want a good environment in which to bring up their kids and these are all crucial. Fortunately they could be solved in other ways than expensive housing. Unfortunately people have a very justified fear that they wont be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This, 100%. The rules can be whatever they are, but the participant with the most market power will always end up having the upper hand somehow
Sure! But still or even more then, wouldn't hurt to remove this intransparency aspect and what feels very unfair? Or what's the downside?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In parts yes and in parts no. There’s indeed an order book that’s “public enough”, but not every trading system enters every intent into the public order book. (Even as a retail nobody, I can create contingent orders that only become public orders once the trigger conditions are met.) I also don’t believe that individual bid/asks can be traced to a specific bidder. Further, block trades are negotiated off-order-book…
I'd like to know more about all of this. Do you have any links? > Even as a retail nobody, I can create contingent orders that only become public orders once the trigger conditions are met. Do different brokers implement this differently, or is this an a property of the exchanges themselves?
In terms of links, I don’t have a ready primer to vouch for. I worked 6 years in online broker tech, but it was decades ago.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have a similar scheme in the UK, where you can save £4000/yr and get a 25% top-up from the government if you use the pot to buy your first home. Everything invested in this scheme is tax free: income and growth. You're completely right, it just drives up prices further... but they're vote winning policies and using these pots makes conveyencers a nice profit.
You can't open a help to buy ISA any longer, the government honours existing accounts though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It’s a lazy slogan that gets us nowhere. “Cars are land inefficient” isn’t a slogan, it’s literal fact. > I live in NYC and we’ve built three brand new subway stations in the last fifty years Ah, the stereotype of New Yorkers not paying attention to other cities strikes again! Yes, New York has its own problems, but for the vast majority of other cities GP’s comment is true. New York is one of the very few exceptio…
Environmental impact reviews are car culture? Public notice and comment processes are car culture? Kafkaesque public bidding processes are car culture? Decade long litigation needed to exercise eminent domain is car culture? Union work rules are car culture?
> During last year’s election campaign, Trudeau’s party also proposed a ban on “blind bidding” for houses -- the prevailing system by which offers are kept secret when someone is auctioning a home. This is such a huge deal. Anyone who has had to go through the process of buying a home through a bidding war knows how unfair and one-sided this process is. It take a high-pressure emotional situation, and gives all of th…
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…
In the last year, we've ended up #2 in 6 bidding wars (as disclosed by the listing agents) in one particular area of the GTA. In each case we reached our absolute max and wouldn't have paid any more.
Several times we lost by $100-200k, and once by $250k. These overpayments set new price benchmarks for the area which became sticky. To continue to be competitive, we had to make hard sacrifices to increase our budget throughout the year.
The fact that houses continued to move at the prices determined by these over-payments indicates there are some buyers at the higher prices. However, the market is very thin and the pace of price growth in this speculative market would've been slowed with open bidding.
Beyond the blind bidding issue, I don't know why people focus on foreign and large corporate buyers. Yes, they're scary because they represent potentially large sources of demand. But are they actually buying a large percentage of the homes? No. It's the smaller investors who speculatively bought 40% of homes last fall.
But we should definitely protect mom and pop investors, such as our housing minister wink
Real solution? Reduce the incentive for speculation among these groups by treating all gains on non-primary residences as income.