Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#791

Post by GLGirty » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 8:24 PM UTC

incomingpain wrote: post #61

The data is public, less than 5% of homes are going to foreigners. Don't see how they even accomplish banning foreigners when there are free trade and free investment agreements. The problem is that bonds have negative yields. Retirement funds are forced into buying real estate, because housing is a safe investment right? The federal government knows this and knows they can't do anything. If they targeted retirement…

> They are busy attacking the oil industry

What attack? Have they rolled back any of the billions of subsidies?

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#792

Post by zanethomas » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 8:37 PM UTC

thehappypm wrote: post #671

zanethomas wrote: post #599

That's a start. Next we need to ban the Chinese from buying more than the $2B worth of farmland they already own in the US.

$2B of farmland doesn’t sound like much for a continent.

maybe but it's more than enough :)

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#793

Post by rapind » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 9:56 PM UTC

chii wrote: post #712

rapind wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even remotely. Immigrants can buy a home. This is about foreign ownership (not a primary residence). Foreign ownership is just one problem though, and IMO a smaller one than both cheap debt and lack of supply.

Which is exactly the point of the parent post - blaming joblessness on immigrants stealing jobs is the same as blaming foreign ownership for making property too expensive for the ordinary citizens to buy! Both are incorrect in the same way, and incite an emotional response of hating some "other" for causing the problem at hand!

Went over my head I guess :)

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#794

Post by liketochill » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 11:50 PM UTC

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #780

wnolens wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think that's it. There's not many places to actually live in Canada, so demand is sky high anywhere within a few hours of the major city centres. Then long stretches of nothing. Yukon is cool, but it's not super cheap if you were hoping so. Rent is high compared to home prices though, so being a landlord is easier.

Nonsense. There's hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of places to live in Canada, it's primarily a humid temperate climate (in Ontario and southwestern Quebec) no different than the midwest or other parts more like the US northeast and with huge sections that are prairie or poplar "parkland" like the Dakotas etc. You have to go really far north to find anything "uninhabitable." Southern Ontario (where almost…

How many hours are you willing to drive to get to a crappy grocery store with no fresh produce?

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#795

Post by pseudo0 » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 11:51 PM UTC

542458 wrote: post #545

pseudo0 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger issue is the multitude of exceptions. A ban on foreign buyers except for permanent residents, students, and recreational properties isn't much of a ban at all. Canadian permanent residency is incredibly easy to obtain, and students are frequently used as straw purchasers for their foreign parents (just look at the number of UBC students who own multimillion dollar homes despite having zero income). It also…

> Canadian permanent residency is incredibly easy to obtain I don’t feel this is broadly true. I just watched a friend jump though ridiculous hoops and inefficient bureaucracies to get her PR. Is there a particular method for getting a PR that you feel is too easy?

Just visit any forum or discussion board related to immigration and you will see Canada mentioned as the fallback for people who can't get into the US.

In particular, there has been pretty widespread abuse of investor visas, region-specific incentives, and student work visas. Investor visas have an extremely poor economic return, and most of the people who benefit from regional programs immediately move to the GTA. There are also a plethora of degree mill community colleges that count as "Canadian postsecondary institutions" for immigration purposes. In reality, their students do a few hours of academic work a week to keep their student work visa and moonlight as a trucker or in some other blue-collar field.

Canada's approach to immigration, with over 400k people last year, is to take whoever as long as it keeps wages down and property prices up.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#796

Post by hackerfromthefu » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 11:52 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…

The comments pushing for urban densification and public transport are largely theoretical and abstract, while your comment is personal and subjective.

To all those thinking about is as 'policy' - you have to solve ways for making the subjective experience actually better if people are going to go for it.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#797

Post by medvezhenok » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 12:15 AM UTC

jl2718 wrote: post #785

medvezhenok wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that there are moral positions where you should vote for more taxes on yourself (and others like you), not less. Because always voting for less taxes for yourself is a zero sum game where everybody loses, since the government has to be funded somehow (and I prefer it to be done via taxes versus inflation, which is much more regressive).

1. Price inflation is almost unrelated to monetary inflation. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=O2ZH 2. Tax collection does not change a governments ability or willingness to incur debt. 3. Government spending may not be related to ‘needs’ of the citizens. It’s just a collection of organizations and employees. They get promoted based on spending. Effectiveness is impossible to measure.

1. Sort of - the connector between the two is fiscal policy. We had tight fiscal policy in 2008 - that's why we saw no/muted general inflation after the crisis. We had comparatively loose fiscal in 2020 - hence the inflation now - it's not explained solely by supply chain problems and demand shifts from services to goods (though that's also a significant part of it).

Monetary inflation builds the potential for price/goods/CPI inflation - whether than potential is realized depends on fiscal policy and the supply response (more redistribution => more inflation - if productive capacity can't catch up, or if we limit supply - for example ESG / anti-oil stance).

2. Governments employ debt because of the political price of raising taxes. Issuing debt is basically taxing savers via inflation over the medium term - it's more "invisible", since the government will eventually have to devalue or default on its debt in real terms (the U.S. has done it twice in the last century - in 1934 and 1971, and it's possible that a third one is coming in the next decade. It's a little trickier since the currency is no longer gold backed, but it's de-facto oil-backed. If oil goes to $10K / barrel (hypothetically), that's as good as US defaulting on its debt as far as foreign creditors are concerned).

3. True, though there are transparency measures that monitor government spending and we have rough measures of effectiveness. Government is to people what the FED is to banks - the provider of needs of last resort. It might not give you the best service or work efficiently, but it will be there when everything else goes bankrupt or refuses to work. There are things that are unprofitable and unenviable to do in a capitalist system - and we rely on the government to do them.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#798

Post by gideon_b » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 12:30 AM UTC

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.

If you have all the cash you need and a bare lot in Vancouver with services set up, you're still two years away from getting shovels in the ground. The permitting is straight out of a Joseph Heller novel.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#799

Post by medvezhenok » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 12:30 AM UTC

hello_moto wrote: post #773

medvezhenok wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Properties are one of the top income generator for (pure) retirees Yes, and that's part of the problem - holding property shouldn't be a viable retirement plan. If they want retirement income they could sell the houses and buy an annuity or invest in productive enterprises (or buy government bonds back in the day - which is no longer an option, unfortunately). Extracting surplus income from workers via property ren…

> Yes, and that's part of the problem - holding property shouldn't be a viable retirement plan It's how many retirees in high living cost around the world fetch their income (when their retirement I don't see that as a problem for those who work hard and made good decisions throughout their life. > If they want retirement income they could sell the houses and buy an annuity or invest in productive enterprises (or buy…

What about people who inherited a property and then can retire off the rent that someone pays for it? Do they deserve it for the work their parents put in? How many generations does that extend to?

The point is that this eventually devolves into a feudal system of landowners and workers - it's been tried in Europe, and while it's great for the landowning class, it's not as great for the workers.

> Riskier. Why should they?

Yes, my point is the fact that owning/renting houses is the safest retirement option is a political choice, not a law of nature. And that political choice is specifically benefitting retires as a whole at the cost of the working population.

I believe that people should be able to finance their own retirement, but via real contribution to society - yes, I have problems with stocks and other methods of passive income as well. I think they should exist, but that they should be much less advantageous than they are now.

The fact that these methods are the ones chosen to promote to achieve financial independence is a large part of what leads to moral rot in America today. People see that hard work is not rewarded - financial speculation, holding real estate and other unproductive work is what is really rewarded, and that calls into question the whole American dream.

So yes, I believe things need to change - and a land value tax is a step in the right direction. Also increasing capital gains to the level of the income tax.

I understand how to play the current system, but I interact with lots of people (and have friends) at different income scales from the homeless to middle class to centi-millionaires and so I've seen how unfair the system is and how unequal the opportunities at the different ends are. There's also way less options for making big money in a moral way - as a society, we seem to have chosen to reward inherently immoral actions higher than moral ones.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#800

Post by elevaet » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:04 AM UTC

Dracophoenix wrote: post #770

elevaet wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a close family member who works in municipal planning, and it's exactly what you describe. Wealthy-ish, semiretired older local people, or non-locals with vacation property who do everything they can to shut down any kind of housing project. Their methods include suing the town at great expense to the taxpayers and floating their own and sympathetic friends into town council. It's extremely frustrating when a…

> Their methods include suing the town at great expense to the taxpayers and floating their own and sympathetic friends into town council. Those very same people are the taxpayers. They have and should have the right to represent their interests in a court of law. If the town ends up being a victim of it, so be it.

Actually funny you should mention that because one of them actually is not a taxpayer in the municipality that she sued (and lost). So no, they are not all taxpayers, but some are, it is true.

Yes, of course they have this right, I don't dispute that. But when a single case like this eats up literally 10% of a small town's yearly budget, and the same small group of people repeatedly behave in this way, I also have the right to call them assholes.