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Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

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Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#741

Post by belval »

kache_ wrote: post #250
paulgb wrote: post #86

> Freeland will introduce legislation that allows Canadians under the age of 40 to save as much as C$40,000 ($31,900) for a home downpayment within a new tax-exempt vehicle, the person said. I'm not an economist but this seems pretty dumb? To the extent that it helps someone afford a home that they can save tax-free for it, the same is true of some of the people they're bidding against, driving up the price they ulti…

Ridiculous ageist policy. If you don't have a home and you're above 40, I'd argue you need the benefit even more.

Just so you don't get angry for no reason: the actual policy says nothing about a specific age. You could be 60 and use it to buy a house.

It also doesn't have to be your first one. If you had a house than sold it and lived in an apartment for 4 years you are eligible again. If you own your house but your spouse doesn't they can use this for your next house.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#742

Post by Alan_Dillman »

AzzieElbab wrote: post #284
LimaBearz wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it so far fetched to assume some realtors may be juicing the bidding to increase their own commission and to make their firm more uhh "prestigious" by being able to drive up the price for their own marketing purposes further down the line. Likewise if you dont know who you're bidding against, how do you even know the bidder is even real (foreign or not)? Transparency is good thing. While there may be some "scarcit…

Lets see. Assume I am a realtor, I earn outrageous commissions of 2.5%. Does it make sense for me to jack up price of 1M condo by say 15% above the market and spend a month trying to sell it or to lower the price by 10% below and possibly sell two similar properties in the same month?

Yes, it does. Because you don't know if it will take a month, and if you have any confidence (maybe too much) in your abilities, you will likely assume you will sell it quickly. And a second one too.

Its a poor sales person that thinks, "I might not sell one this month..." Not with that attitude.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#743

Post by exfascist »

pyuser583 wrote: post #740
aspenmayer wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's just a think that happens where people are, and the more people you run into in your travels, the higher the likelihood that you'll run into them. Public transit is one of the few public spaces we have left, ironically. Perhaps especially so post-Covid. I think that it's worth the investments necessary to make it usable. You can't blame public transit for the lack of effectiveness of homeless programs,…

It isn’t just a funding issue. In most countries what I described would be illegal. In America it’s protected. We have a jurisprudence that allows Neo-Nazis to March through Jewish neighborhoods. Our public sphere is extremely permissive. So permissive that avoiding the public sphere is necessary to avoid anti-social behavior.

Without that kind of protection usually some group gains power and becomes the only protected group. Neo-Nazis are an indication that even the most socially unacceptable groups still have a voice. They should be considered a canary and a good thing to see occasionally. I wouldn't want to live in a country where they were censored and if you feel so strongly about it I would suggest moving somewhere else (Germany censors Nazis pretty aggressively for example.)

For example: You're upset that Nazis marched through a Jewish neighborhood. Are you upset about the violent BLM protestors marching through White neighborhoods? I would guess not but there's little difference between the two.

I've moved to places to see if I thought the changes improved things, you learn a lot about yourself and the world by doing that.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#744

Post by exfascist »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #715
dijit wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. But the problem is that the US is about 80-100 years behind Europe in this. Personal economies are literally built on the idea of driving, it will be painful to solve that, but unfortunately it’s necessary to solve it otherwise you end up losing enormous amounts of your life to traffic and the infrastructure cost grows exponentially.

America is simply too big for public transit to replace cars to any great extent. There's an old cliche that goes something like, "In America, people think 100 years is a long time. In Europe, people think 100 kilometers is a long distance." It's pretty much spot on.

I'm not convinced the physical size is the problem.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#745

Post by boplicity »

Spooky23 wrote: post #218
boplicity wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is an interesting comparison, because their primary competitive strategy was to ignore existing government regulations. Regulations, of course, are a huge issue in the real estate industry. Maybe someone can step in and invest a many billions of dollars in real estate -- while ignoring the red-tape regulations that often prevent building? This seems unlikely, but could certainly be a path towards disruption. The…

Uber was just an obvious con that demonstrated the danger of unrestrained capital and an era of ineffective government. Real Estate isn't a regulatory trap; it's an information trap. You can buy and sell property direct. All of the legal stuff is (nominally) done by attorneys. But the association of realtors controls the listing service and makes discovery easy. Like all salespeople, realtors add "value". When you've…

> Real Estate isn't a regulatory trap; it's an information trap.

No -- you're confusing real estate sales with real estate. Real estate is one of the most highly regulated industries out there. You literally can't make any significant changes to most properties without a significant permitting process that goes through many layers of regulations. Not to mention the many real estate developments that are never even a possibility because of regulation. I'm not against regulation -- it can be a very good thing -- but it is clearly at the core of the real estate problem. Society has decided, via regulations, to starve the supply of housing.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#746

Post by RocketOne »

passerby1 wrote: post #680
nradov wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is required to pay a 5-6% commission. Use a discount real estate broker. You won't get much in the way of marketing or staging service, but in a hot market that hardly matters.

Looks like a valid for a non-canadian, why is this downvoted?

Because there are realtors here?

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#747

Post by RocketOne »

bawolff wrote: post #665
maxsilver wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the real reason that housing is so expensive in popular cities, which is scarcity. This isn't really true though. Housing is expensive everywhere, even in unpopular cities, even in cities losing population. (Except for a few specific cities), housing is not scarce, we just pretend it is because we pretend all these fake financial transactions count as valid 'demand'. > we're focusing on foreign buyers in 2022. And…

> This isn't really true though. Housing is expensive everywhere, even in unpopular cities, even in cities losing population. Calgary? Its a hugely popular city, with a similar growth rate as vancouver and yet housing is much cheaper (relatively speaking)

Very true. The same house I just sold in Calgary for 400k is worth 1.2M in Vancouver and area. Which is why there is so much money coming from Vancouver and the GTA to Calgary and Alberta.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#748

Post by RocketOne »

michael1999 wrote: post #282
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…

Canada is a big country. But immigration goes where the jobs are, and those are concentrated in 3-5 large cities which are hitting the limits of sprawl (congested highway commute time) and geography (water and mountains). Densification is unpopular with existing municipal voters, and bankrupting CPP would be unpopular with federal voters.

Not so much where the jobs are, but where there is already a community of their own people. We have lots of jobs out west (that fact goes unrecognized by ON and QC) but hardly any immigrants in comparison to cities like Toronto.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#749

Post by TuringNYC »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #649
TuringNYC wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> All the market efficiency in the world won't stop the continual increase in prices from bad zoning and missing middle housing. I disagree. Depending on the jurisdiction (in the US), part of the issue is the 10% net loss you end up with. 5-6% on the agent fee(s), another 1% on "mansion tax", in NYS/NYC there is a 1% and 1% transfer tax and 1/2% mortgage tax. Different jurisdictions are less (or more). Throw in more…

If the broker fee isn't worth it, then sell your house yourself. It's not that hard, but it's not zero work either. In addition, it's increasingly likely that many modern transactions involve a buyer and a seller broker, reducing their commission to half of whatever you pay. I've sold 3 houses myself, and bought 3 without a broker.

In the US, The buyer AND the seller fees are paid by the seller. Even if you have no seller agent, you lose practically every buyer without a buyer agent because many agents will not show you a home not offering a fee. Its a shakedown.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#750

Post by CocoCount »

Would it ever make sense to have a tiered purchasing system? First prioritize first time homebuyers then if no first time homebuyers are bidding then open the net wider and wider. It's probably a very socialist idea and would never be given a serious though in Canada.
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