Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#811

Post by sacrosancty » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 6:37 PM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #629

sacrosancty wrote: post #626

New Zealand did that years ago. It did nothing for price increases but at least it shut up some of the populist screeching. Price increases seem to have finally stopped and you know how? The government tightened the lending rules so regular first home buyers and owner-occupiers can't get such a big loan anymore. Those people were the problem all along but nobody wanted to blame them. They were supposed to be the vict…

Because there’s no reason for prices to drop yet. There’s 3 issues. Foreigners buying houses. Locals buying multiple properties. And supply. 1 of those issues is resolved. The government promised 10k houses. It’s done something like 500? There’s no houses on the cheap for people to buy to push prices down. But many people trying to buy and rent that sellers and landlords are upping prices. Atleast locals will haggle…

No, it really was locals buying a house. Of course there are now more locals than before, and I think our lifestyle has us less willing to share houses, and construction and relaxed zoning lagged, but it's still locals pushing up prices. If we weren't so obsessed with having our own little castle, we would buy apartments or rent instead. Everyone does still live somewhere, it's just often not as luxury as they desire so they want to pay more for more luxury.

No cheap houses to push prices down? That doesn't make sense. Prices are falling now, so houses are getting cheaper.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#812

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 6:54 PM UTC

bscphil wrote: post #632

sacrosancty wrote: post #626

New Zealand did that years ago. It did nothing for price increases but at least it shut up some of the populist screeching. Price increases seem to have finally stopped and you know how? The government tightened the lending rules so regular first home buyers and owner-occupiers can't get such a big loan anymore. Those people were the problem all along but nobody wanted to blame them. They were supposed to be the vict…

> The government tightened the lending rules so regular first home buyers and owner-occupiers can't get such a big loan anymore. I know nothing about the situation in New Zealand, but taking what you say at face value, they are the victims. It's just that now, as opposed to bidding high on houses they could barely afford, they can't afford to enter the market at all. So things are even worse for them.

[deleted]

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#813

Post by hnlmorg » Sun, Apr 10, 2022, 10:47 PM UTC

exfascist wrote: post #768

hnlmorg wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DC isn't unusually dense. It's only the 6th most dense city in America and not even in the top 100 for the world. It doesn't even have an districts that are in the top 100 (Paris, on the other hand, features several districts and still has good public transport networks). And this is just looking at density in terms of population. There's also building density, London would rank very high up there and has excellent p…

>6th most dense city in America Then both in terms of any arbitrary area in the US or any arbitrary city in the US, it's unusually dense (much more dense than the mean density.) >Park and ride Many places in the US have these and both DC and the suburbs around it are full of them.

> Then both in terms of any arbitrary area in the US or any arbitrary city in the US, it's unusually dense (much more dense than the mean density.)

I haven’t visited DC so I’ll have to take your word for it. But it should be noted that I can’t find anything online that supports yours assessment of DC being unusually dense.

And even if it is, that just makes a stronger case for the need of better public transport services.

> Many places in the US have these and both DC and the suburbs around it are full of them.

I’m sure they are but having a park and ride scheme is only of benefit if you invest in public transport, which, by your own admission, DC doesn’t.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#814

Post by earth_walker » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 7:27 PM UTC

52-6F-62 wrote: post #467

paulhart wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow Hamiltonian here... Council wasn't for intensification until they got the results of the poll back (and even then, the likes of Ferguson continue to be aghast at the idea of not being in the pockets of suburban developers). We can see that with the kneejerk response to Bill 109, and the fact that only one Secondary Housing Unit has been approved by the city so far, the rest denied for what seem like vague reas…

Man, that gets hard to swallow. Especially seeing old photos of Hamilton. I grew up nearby and for as long as I've been alive it's been large swathes of parking lots. There's still so much promise, but old downtown looked so much more alive before the sprawl took over.

Another displaced Hamiltonian here.

Back in the 90s they had a plan called "Vision 2020" that painted a dense, people-friendly Hamilton.

Now that 2020 has come and gone, the sprawl is crazy, downtown dead, transit gutted, and commuting by bike a near impossibility unless you're in the west end.

Some fun Hamilton transit facts: 1. There's an abandoned subway station underneath downtown. 2. There used to be a Funicular going up and down the escarpment. 3. When I was a kid many of the buses were electric, with overhead lines criss-crossing the streets like other cities have for trams.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#815

Post by smsm42 » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 10:14 PM UTC

boplicity wrote: post #88

> 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…

Why do you think there's such thing as "real price of the house"? I've sold a house recently. I had 4 offers, all for different prices. Which one of them were "real"? Should I have rejected the highest offer because it's "unreal"? Should I be forced to accept the lowest price - I am sure the highest buyer would appreciate to pay less? Why?

And BTW I also bought a house before (no wonder, since I am not that handy, to sell a house I had to buy it first ;) - and if you hire RE agent, which at least in the US most people do, and they are worth anything, they'd get you at least the rough information on how high you should go, and sometimes even the exact numbers. There were situations where we knew exactly how high the highest bid is, and more when we had decent idea if not exact figure. So it wasn't exactly blind.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#816

Post by nawgz » Mon, Apr 18, 2022, 9:23 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #565

liketochill wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landlords don’t buy properties to rent at a loss. Before they buy they make sure they will be able to charge the rent they need to cover costs. Or at least I do.

Exactly. Corporations are buying houses because rents are high. Rents are not high because corporations are buying houses. Rents are high because there are not enough houses on the rental market, because not enough houses are built.

You talk about supply and demand in your comments, and then somehow the idea that corporations controlling the supply lets them manipulate and ignore demand just goes over your head. Strange.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#817

Post by eru » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 11:17 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #520

CountSessine wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You're fighting scarcity. No, they're fighting market inefficiency. A free market requires accurate and timely information to be efficient. This is literally people putting constraints on the market for what they are selling so the information is not available to one side, and the price is inflated. A rational actor should walk away from a system like this, but if that's all that's available around you because of s…

A free market doesn't require laws to enforce bans on bidding systems some people happen not to like..