Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#801

Post by hackerfromthefu » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:27 AM UTC

CountSessine wrote: post #395

imtringued wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, land is a tool to make future generations be in debt to past generations. No sane person would give up their power. Only insane people who want everyone to succeed actually step down after they had their turn.

When I hear baby-boomers arguing against the numbers, statistics, and facts and saying things like, "don't touch my equity! You just have to be patient! It'll work out for you, too!", I sort of think about this - that this is a huge intergenerational transfer of wealth. Of course some millennials will enjoy a windfall when mom and dad eventually downsize. Not all, by any means - but some. I hope you're lucky enough t…

To be fair, mostly the homeowners of that generation scrimped and scrimped and saved for their productive decades to get their home.

Without holidays, iphones, food delivery, cafe coffees, gap year, 'finding myself', international travel etc.

That generation (of which I'm not part, but have taken the time to hear the stories of) lived week to week scraping by on bare subsistence living so they could pay the mortgage, with interest rates of 7-18%.

So they strove and sacrificed for the defining decades of their life for that equity, and of course they want to keep what they worked and sacrificed so hard for.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#802

Post by jl2718 » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 9:26 AM UTC

medvezhenok wrote: post #797

jl2718 wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/…

1. Yes, broad redistribution of money (demand) and poor productivity growth (supply) creates price inflation. ‘Fiscal Policy’ seems like a meaningless term, so I can’t comment. But you know what is both designed to redistribute money and massively hampers productivity? Taxes.

2. You’re assuming that the budget is constant. It is not. Governments employ debt because they can. Governments tax because they can. If anything, the relationship is the opposite of the way you state it. Taxation allows them to take on more debt. Debt forces them to increase taxation.

3. Good theory. It is what I would have believed before spending over a decade in the bureaucracy. It’s neither right nor wrong, but irrelevant to the actual functioning of the system.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#803

Post by wnolens » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #775

leetcrew wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're missing the part where the renter is continually investing the difference between their current rent and the mortgage they would be paying. but yeah, if you're prescient enough to know ahead of time that you're going to live in the same building for 35 years, you'd be foolish to rent.

Yeah but as you said in another comment, in some locales, the rent and a mortgage payment are equal. There would be no difference to invest. And considering a mortgage payment is constant while rent continuously goes up, in a few years, rent would EXCEED the mortgage payment. When I bought my house in the end of 2015, I paid $338K. Mortgage + property tax was $1800/month. Zillow estimated the rent value at $1700/mont…

Before you bought the house, were you renting previously at 1800/mo?

Rent and mortgage may be similar for the same exact space, but rarely in cities do people rent entire houses. There is usually significant lifestyle inflation that comes with buying.

In any case, where do you live? 615 is so cheap that I suspect the economics here aren't comparable to my situation. Maybe I'll move! Haha

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#804

Post by wnolens » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 2:38 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…

I didn't mean it's literally barren land or that it's impossible to inhabit.

I meant there are few desirable places to reside (to me and anyone I've ever known) on the basis of access to jobs, culture, major hospitals, higher education, etc.

Yes some people can live full and happy lives in Timmins, Ontario. But is anybody moving to Timmins from Vancouver because they're tired of housing prices? Not really. Thus, demand to live in places like the GTA are sky high (and I argue, deservedly so)

In the US there's at least one city in every state that I'd voluntarily live in. Most have several. The amount of choice there is insane.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#805

Post by 0ldskool » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

msie wrote: post #69

stephenhuey wrote: post #12

I’m mostly familiar with Vancouver since my wife has relatives there. About half a dozen years ago they imposed a 15% tax on foreign real estate investors. I heard 2015 figures suggesting foreign Chinese investors accounted for one third of the $29 billion market in 2015. Vancouver real estate prices had been rising a lot for a long time but I think they felt the foreign investors exacerbated the problem for locals,…

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.

Well my anecdotal evidence from certain real estate agent says otherwise. She told me she would regularly show foreign buyers around new low/high rise developments only to have them buy entire floors in the Vancouver area. There was once where she had a foreign buyer who didn't know what he wanted. She showed him around at houses, condos, etc... and got no visual indicators he was happy with anything. When she was done and finally asked him if there was any he was happy with he said he would take them all. All foreign buyers she worked with were from China (as she spoke fluent mandarin).

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#806

Post by 3qz » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #617

3qz wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not population growth, just immigrantion. 1.3 million in the next 3 years and 430k this year when the population is not even 40 million. That’s not even including the hundreds of thousands of foreign students and temporary workers. There are several cities where the majority of residents were not born in Canada so it obviously has an enormous strain on everything.

1. So, it's a mere 1% of the population/year, in a country that has below-replacement fertility. 2. Of course you shouldn't count foreign students or temporary workers, they get counted if they choose to stay . If you were counting them, as well as immigrants, you'd be double-counting the same people. 3. I didn't realize that the singular suburb of Vancouver called Richmond, BC (Population: 216,000) can be referred t…

Toronto is >50% foreign born. idk what stats you’re looking at

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#807

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 6:58 PM UTC

wnolens wrote: post #803

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but as you said in another comment, in some locales, the rent and a mortgage payment are equal. There would be no difference to invest. And considering a mortgage payment is constant while rent continuously goes up, in a few years, rent would EXCEED the mortgage payment. When I bought my house in the end of 2015, I paid $338K. Mortgage + property tax was $1800/month. Zillow estimated the rent value at $1700/mont…

Before you bought the house, were you renting previously at 1800/mo? Rent and mortgage may be similar for the same exact space, but rarely in cities do people rent entire houses. There is usually significant lifestyle inflation that comes with buying. In any case, where do you live? 615 is so cheap that I suspect the economics here aren't comparable to my situation. Maybe I'll move! Haha

> Before you bought the house, were you renting previously at 1800/mo?

I was renting a 2-bedroom, 1 bath, 800 sq foot apartment for $900/month which would have been going up to $1,100/month if I had signed a new lease instead of buying the house.

The house is 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 1850 sq feet.

> In any case, where do you live? 615 is so cheap that I suspect the economics here aren't comparable to my situation. Maybe I'll move! Haha

Suburbs just outside of Portland, OR.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#808

Post by brimwats » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 12:09 AM UTC

definitelyhuman wrote: post #485

michael1999 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Waterloo region is building density, despite complaints (1), because there’s no supply. People claim to want all of: affordable housing, no sprawl, no community impact - but that’s not possible. Glad they prioritized units, although a lot are still condos which are not quite ‘affordable’, but the supply will help (1) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/belmont-vi...

BC seems to be doing similarly, with the NDP playing hardball and threatening transit and other concessions to holdout municipalities

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#809

Post by cmrdporcupine » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 3:35 PM UTC

wnolens wrote: post #804

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I didn't mean it's literally barren land or that it's impossible to inhabit. I meant there are few desirable places to reside (to me and anyone I've ever known) on the basis of access to jobs, culture, major hospitals, higher education, etc. Yes some people can live full and happy lives in Timmins, Ontario. But is anybody moving to Timmins from Vancouver because they're tired of housing prices? Not really. Thus, dema…

No, I still think you're wrong, and the thing you're saying isn't happening (people relocating from major cities to remoter areas) is clearly happening in pretty much all Ontario and BC. At least right now because housing prices have skyrocketed everywhere, not just in the GTA or lower mainland. The pandemic actually drove people out of urban areas and drove up prices all over the province. Especially places like Squamish or Collingwood that already had cachet for upper middle class people (but were previously affordable because of the difficulty of commuting from them).

While this is most obviously the case for southern Ontario, I think you'll find actually Timmins or Sault Ste Marie, etc. have gone up at precipitous rates as well. And elsewhere in the country:. Lots of people relocated to Nova Scotia during the pandemic, because housing was cheaper there, they handled COVID better, and they figured they could work remote forever. Housing prices have skyrocketed there, too.

The only place where this didn't happen is in Alberta, where low oil prices and other factors. caused a bit of a net emigration and lower housing prices for a bit and things were quite affordable there. That's now changing as the price of oil goes up.

In the end, there's boatloads of places for people to live in Canada, those places are growing, in some ways regaining a bit of the demand they had prior flattening out in the 1990s & 2000s. The problem is in general that industry and good paying jobs aren't necessarily coming with the people and they're creating an affordability problem for the existing "locals".

In the past people concentrated in the GTA and the lower mainland BC because of jobs jobs jobs. Remote is changing that a bit. For now.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#810

Post by michael1999 » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 4:04 PM UTC

RocketOne wrote: post #748

michael1999 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You need to be more specific. The “west” means nothing. Calgary is just coming out or a terrible crash and still has dozens of empty buildings. Vancouver and Victoria are growing madly and have the housing pressures to match.