Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#301

Post by Workaccount2 » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

usrn wrote: post #296

Workaccount2 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is selling real estate as "Surefire gains that never go down" and people pinning their entire life to the value of their home. This leads to people who rabidly defend the systems that increase their property value, and these people also tend to be the local voting majority, so they can shoot down anything that they don't like. The solution is declaring emergency powers to use eminent domain to seize unuse…

Before you do that you better make damned sure you're doing the right thing. You're literally kicking people out of their homes and forcing them to move. We did that to the Indians a couple centuries ago and the consequences for both sides were not great. We did that to Mexican migratory workers last century and the result was the almost complete destruction of a country that shares a large land border with us. We're…

You're not kicking anyone out of anything. Uninhabited properties are bought by the government. Houses up for sale are gov purchased and turned into mutli-family.

Basically the government is turned into the sole buyer who can also ignore zoning and resident complaints.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#302

Post by gbasin » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

car_analogy wrote: post #276

NamTaf wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s largely understood (I am in a pub halfway across the world and have no specific citation) that the FHBG just bumped the purchase price up by that amount. In Australia, many new buyers’ max purchase prices are dictated by their total borrowing capacity (in that, few limit themselves to less), and many FHBs are competing against each other for a similar cross-section of the market, so grants are easily absorbed by…

> In Australia, many new buyers’ max purchase prices are dictated by their total borrowing capacity That's the wonderful part about lending - it's an arms race, where the lender always wins.

Until there's mass defaults

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#303

Post by data-ottawa » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #115

pards wrote: post #98

I'm a homeowner in Toronto and I don't think this will help. They've eliminated a small number of buyers from the market but have added other incentives like a first home buyers tax credit that will only fuel the fire - Australia tried this with tragic results. >> working with provinces and territories to develop and implement a Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights and bring forward a national plan to end blind bidding. Blind…

> IMHO blind bidding is an unethical practice that should be outlawed regardless of its impact on housing prices. Why? There’s no special virtue ascribed to the purchaser v.s. the seller. Nothing stops the purchasers from standing in front of the property and publicly announcing their bids (outside of game theory). If they’re bidding less than they are willing to pay, then de facto they’re low balling the seller. The…

I suspect real estate markets are a lot less efficient than we think.

We take people who know nothing about pricing homes, put them in a high stress time sensitive situation, advised by realtors who are incentivized to close deals quickly and at higher prices, and then expect them to make reasonable bids.

In my opinion real estate assets are likely overpriced and inflexible from what they should be due to the current regulatory situation.

The “money on the table” argument is weak, because the first bid is when people are most rational, it’s only after human psychology takes over that they start bidding higher.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#304

Post by usrn » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 1:56 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #301

usrn wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before you do that you better make damned sure you're doing the right thing. You're literally kicking people out of their homes and forcing them to move. We did that to the Indians a couple centuries ago and the consequences for both sides were not great. We did that to Mexican migratory workers last century and the result was the almost complete destruction of a country that shares a large land border with us. We're…

You're not kicking anyone out of anything. Uninhabited properties are bought by the government. Houses up for sale are gov purchased and turned into mutli-family. Basically the government is turned into the sole buyer who can also ignore zoning and resident complaints.

That's not what your comment said.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#305

Post by kmlx » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

kucukkanat wrote: post #109

We need this so bad in the Netherlands right now! Listing price of a house in Amsterdam 525K, bidding price 641K, someone else with 660K comes and takes it away. Cries in pain after 10th bidding war lost :(

NL can easily implement this. and nothing will change.

what actually needs to happen is to change planning laws in order to tackle the massive Nimby-ism holding down society.

good luck with that! every time a government proposes taking away some of those Nimby rights there is a massive backlash across the country.

so no politician will dare approach this issue because they’ll be out of a job.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#306

Post by dale_glass » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 1:57 PM UTC

tryauuum wrote: post #300

dale_glass wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, just a few things that come to mind: * Speaking the language -- in some places they don't speak much English, and certainly don't do official paperwork in it. * Local laws * Safety * How much stuff you need is going to be nearby * Internet access * Local culture * Employment * Friends and family Like, I don't know much about Serbia (just looked up where housing is cheap), but from what I hear I could get a pret…

some nitpicking: internet in Russia is very fast and stable. But you are right when you say "restricted". The retarded government tries to ban some websites.

How fast of a connection can you get?

I'm on 1Gbps fiber, and can get 10G/10G fiber for cheap at my home right now, and just finished with the preparations.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#307

Post by DangitBobby » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 1:58 PM UTC

NamTaf wrote: post #255

michaelje wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Australia tried this with tragic results Australian living in Canada here - unsure what the tragic results were? It’s helped a number of my friends buy their first home - with a small (~$10k) credit /reduced stamp duties and taxes on the first home owned and lived in (ie not an investment). Negative gearing has been far more impactful in increasing the cost of housing, with people buying multiple homes for investm…

It’s largely understood (I am in a pub halfway across the world and have no specific citation) that the FHBG just bumped the purchase price up by that amount. In Australia, many new buyers’ max purchase prices are dictated by their total borrowing capacity (in that, few limit themselves to less), and many FHBs are competing against each other for a similar cross-section of the market, so grants are easily absorbed by…

Not everyone is a first time homebuyer though. Why would the market bear that price bump?

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#308

Post by usrn » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 1:58 PM UTC

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #65

jnmandal wrote: post #43

Having your housing stock bought up as holdings by nonresidents is not great. It hollows out the communities by having choice housing sit empty and it raises the cost of living for everyone who is actually there. I'm interested to see how this plays out. It seems pretty heavy handed. Zoning denser housing or placing limited restrictions on square footage may proved smarter in the long term. That said, two years is pr…

Prediction: barely anything happens and problems continue to rise as population numbers have yet to peak and the people who are struggling most with this problem, the working class, continues to lose wealth relatively to the upper classes. Almost every country with these problems has similar symptoms and the problem could've been seen coming from decades away. Tackling these things requires far, far more input from g…

Domestic population in developed countries hit their peak a while ago. The demand side here is all immigration and I wish people would talk about that before they talk about bulldozing neighborhoods.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#309

Post by Aunche » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

franciscop wrote: post #175

rch wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not progressively increment after the second? (not mutually exclusive with other measures)

I've been thinking a lot about this, and I think to promote everyone's owning a house, and even small-size investments, but to avoid megacorps the ideal would be something like: 1 house - tax breaks 2 houses - same taxes as currently for 2 houses 3+ houses - incrementally more expensive with each extra house Also there's a really nice law in Spain, born for the wrong reasons, that makes you pay more taxes if the hous…

Why should I, a small time REIT holder, pay more proportionately in property taxes than a celebrity in a Beverly Hills mansion, or even my landlord who only rents out a few, million-dollar units for that matter? I think every individual should be entitled to 500k in preferential property tax (1 million for couples), and every dollar above that should be taxed a lot higher. In places where there is high demand, new housing can also be taxed at the preferential rate some number of years to incentivize development.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#310

Post by ErikVandeWater » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 2:00 PM UTC

pards wrote: post #98

I'm a homeowner in Toronto and I don't think this will help. They've eliminated a small number of buyers from the market but have added other incentives like a first home buyers tax credit that will only fuel the fire - Australia tried this with tragic results. >> working with provinces and territories to develop and implement a Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights and bring forward a national plan to end blind bidding. Blind…

One nuance to this is that the "bid" is much more than just the number of dollars to be exchanged. It's credit quality, cash offer/not, and subjective things ("I want to sell my house to a family with kids, not a real estate developer")

So even if someone is told which bid is currently in the lead, the subjective elements may mean out-bidding that offer would not put them in a winning position.

Not to say eliminating blind bidding wouldn't be a good idea.