Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 1001 posts

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#381

Post by silicon2401 »

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…

If I'm selling a house, why should you know how much other people are offering me?

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#382

Post by xedrac »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #367
throwaway894345 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping Canada from increasing its housing stock? Surely Canada has plenty of space for its 30M citizens, right? (Yes, I understand that much of the territory is uninhabitable, but even still...).

Sorry, but if we want to address climate change and protect the environment, then we need to do this without sprawling outwards.

Supply and demand isn't going to change. You can build up instead of out, but I think the point was there's insufficient supply.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#383

Post by didcot »

eldaisfish wrote: post #345
car_analogy wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only about 2% of properties in Toronto and Vancouver are owned by overseas investors. Yes, housing is priced at the margin, but this won't do anything at all to prices over the long term. I'm sure this will be wildly popular politically, because people LOVE the idea that some foreign boogieman is the reason their children can't afford homes anymore. Overseas investors may own only 2%, but Canada has 23% foreign-bor…

this is textbook xenophobia and you should be ashamed. Implying that the foreign born population in Canada are somehow less canadian or more foreign is not what anyone should be saying.

"this is textbook xenophobia and you should be ashamed." Keep things civil, I dont want HN to evolve into reddit.

car_analogy comment was benign, but honestly as a Canadian living abroad I am different than the other people I live around. I would not call myself X country adjective here (e.g. Swiss). That is not saying I'm not trying my best to integrate.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#384

Post by bombcar »

usrn wrote: post #215
refurb wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably they are buying up houses to rent. If they buy too many they can’t rent them out, they lose money. I’m not convinced it’s a problem. Again, all roads point back to supply. Build enough homes and the issue is moot.

It's both supply and demand. You need construction and limited immigration. That's why for example Tokyo is so cheap.

Technically you just need construction to outstrip people looking for homes.

One of the problems is people can move quite quickly from one side of a country to another, it's a matter of weeks. But from empty lot to new house is a matter of months at best, years at worst.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#385

Post by TomVDB »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #311
alistairSH wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only possible in a slow market. Right now, in DC metro, all contingencies are being waived, bids are $100k+ over list on moderately priced homes, and the seller is demanding a 2-month free "rent" back from the buyer. Both my home purchases have waived inspection. The second waived financing contingencies as well. This isn't uncommon, based on what friends and family have done.

You can still back out of the deal but you will typically forfeit your deposit or earnest money (sometimes in the $10’s of thousands). But I hear you with the seller’s market - we just purchased a couple homes in the Austin area, bid significantly over asking price, waived all contingencies, and offered free 2-month rent back.

I discussed this with our realtor: forfeiting your full 3% earnest deposit is apparently rare. It’s not automatic, and when somebody backs out due to a non-contingent reason, it’s usually for a fraction of the full earnest deposit. (At least, that’s for the SF Bay Area.)

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#386

Post by la6472 »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #367
throwaway894345 wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping Canada from increasing its housing stock? Surely Canada has plenty of space for its 30M citizens, right? (Yes, I understand that much of the territory is uninhabitable, but even still...).

Sorry, but if we want to address climate change and protect the environment, then we need to do this without sprawling outwards.

Nothing is better than sprawling outwards. Most of the white collar jobs can be done remotely , so commute is not needed. Most of groceries and other stuff can be delivered. A truck doing 100 deliveries is surely less traffic than everyone going to the supermarkets. And most importantly with sprawling outwards citizens can enjoy the outdoors and take care of their health. And even more importantly high density of population leads to increased crime , encourage homelessness and provide all sorts of administrative nightmares.I would say we have reached a technological inflection point where we at at last free to spread out and yet stay connected. Let us embrace it. This is the future. This is the way.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#387

Post by toss1 »

cik wrote: post #33

I love Canada - but our government has always been idiotic. The ban is against 'foreign investors'. But the thing is, Canada has a corporate designation called CCPC: Canadian Controlled Private Corporation. Directors of said corporation have to be > 50% resident Canadians. A corporation can be created for the purchase of this property, with a Canadian controlling, and being the director. This will literally do nothin…

If the CCPC has >50% resident Canadians as directors, how does that protect the buyer - what prevents the directors from deciding that the assets are to be used for their benefit instead of the foreign investor(s) funding the corp? Can the CPPC have different voting rights, or the ability to remove directors and undo prior actions?

But yes, this does look like a loophole through which one could easily drive a building...

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#388

Post by bern4444 »

This article also said

> The government will also impose higher taxes on people who sell their home within a year.

Why would they raise taxes on people who decide to sell? Raising taxes on sales will decrease the number of sellers. If the goal is to decrease the price of housing, they should want to increase the number of sellers (partly by reducing taxes on sales) to increase the supply of housing.

So backwards.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#389

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

chx wrote: post #117
iefbr14 wrote: post #4

So why don't they build more homes?

In Vancouver, the problem is rampant NIMBYism. We have single family homes in ton of places where there should be low rises but zoning doesn't allow for it. Indeed, the solution would be to take away zoning power from the city into provincial or even federal hands and let housing be more dense where the taxpayers already paid for rapid transit. Look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonds_station_(SkyTrain) this is no…

The city plan removed all the zones for single family homes

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#390

Post by Tiktaalik »

When British Columbia brought in its 15% Foreign Buyer tax (later raised further) it was at the end of a long campaign by activists to simply collect data on foreign buying.

The government shared this data as they were collecting it, and it was only a few weeks before they were so shocked by some of the buying trends that they brought in the tax. In certain municipalities, foreign buying was approaching 20%.

So all that experience has me wondering, why hasn't the Feds shared their data? Where is the troubling foreign buying trend?

The fact that they haven't done this makes me feel like maybe there is no foreign buying, that BC and Ontario's taxes have pretty much done the job, and that this is a disingenuous attempt to make it appear that they're doing something relevant around housing, while still fundamentally maintaining the status quo approach that has been ineffective for years and years.

Post reply on HN