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Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

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Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#451
post #321
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until there's mass defaults

That's when you have the government bail them out :)

And then the people who profited in the interim buy up all of the cheap surplus, sit on it for a few years and then trickle it back out as the prices return to normal, making massive returns on their investment, profiting off of the misery they created in the first place.

And you can't even be mad at them for it because there's no collusion, no intent to manufacture the disaster, no single person responsible for it all, this is just the consequence of economic torture by a hundred thousand cuts. Their hands are clean even though the damage is still done.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#452
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> eminent domain to seize unused property

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This explanation hides the actual problem in a way that almost feels like gaslighting. Yes, their ability to buy homes allows people who don't have money to live in them. ...except that their greediness of wanting to own everything is precisely what made houses explode in price in first place.

Blaming corporations is a cute meme, but it's not the problem. Corporations in this market are NOT monopolistic price-setters, they do not have remarkable market-concentration, and they are not colluding with each other to limit supply. They are competitive price-takers. If you want to fix housing prices (or if you just want to screw over these corporations for funsies, which is fine) then you want to increase the su…

This can improve the situation, but I'm not sure if it would truly solve it. I believe the proper solution is to simply ban buying non-commercial buildings as an investment. If you're not living on it, you can't own it. I can't see why one would be against this aside from greediness.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. IMO, blind bidding is suppressing prices not inflating them. Here’s why, as someone who has been on the ground and lost a few offers because we didn’t want to overbid. After the sold price was released, on multiple occasions we thought “damn! we’d have our that and $25K on top to get it had we known”. In a blind bidding system, you bid what you think the house is worth. In an open bidding system you start…

You say that, but the fact you didn't bid $25k+ initially tells us otherwise, no? Here in DC metro, people are massively over-bidding (relative to list price) because they've already bid/lost 5-10 homes in the last few months. So, they go in strong, $100-$150k over on a $600k list price isn't uncommon right now.

Blind bidding leads to more conservative offers because noone wants to grossly overbid on a house. The ceiling is basically what you think is "fair". The seller will then make a decision with very little back and forth - generally they will give you one chance to "improve" your offer.

Now, in an open bidding system, you are literally in competition for who can/is willing to pay the most for the home. The ceiling is what you can/willing to afford - back and forth with other bidders until literally the highest price is extracted.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that used to be the case and I would have argued as such as early as 2018 w.r.t NIMBY and San Francisco but I think it's becoming less true. Now sure you can buy a trailer in the middle of nowhere in the Nevada desert, but what were previously considered "cheap" houses in places like Des Moines are increasing substantially in price, and that's not just the cool spots either. You might say "Well just rent then…

> as energy costs increase (EVs won't save us) I don't really disagree with your larger point, but I can't help but explore this nit because it seems interesting. I don't think anyone is arguing that EVs will markedly reduce energy prices; however, there is an argument that renewables will decrease energy prices by virtue of being cheaper per unit power. Of course, it will take at least a decade before renewable ener…

Oh yea I definitely think EVs are the future and to the extent that we have vehicles, in the majority of cases they should be EV. I guess what I'd say here is that even at a reduced cost (which is arguable) for a "commute" (self-driving, etc.) you aren't going to get EVs cheap enough to offset b/c the very act of driving 10, 20, 40, miles to a job or driving a mile down the road to the grocery store is just incomparable to just better design. If your grocery store is within a half mile and you can walk or bike there, EVs could never compete. So it's kind of like we're improving the technology of something we shouldn't be doing, versus just not doing that thing.

If I had to completely armchair it here, if you looked at total impact to society, the environment, car accidents, you name it something like a gallon of gas in the US should really be about $20-$30/gallon but it feels like it's expensive at $5 b/c we're so used to the low prices. We are probably experiencing these costs through inflation and things like housing prices.

Renewables (should) drop overall energy costs by virtue of capturing natural movements (I'd throw nuclear in renewable as well IMO but I understand why you wouldn't) but people are going to focus on kWh being expensive because they're used to extremely cheap gasoline. I guess in other words renewables on paper will be more expensive "at the pump" but externality cost to society will be lower. I wouldn't be surprised if in the future as more EVs come online that energy costs to charge even at home are approximate to gasoline.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. IMO, blind bidding is suppressing prices not inflating them. Here’s why, as someone who has been on the ground and lost a few offers because we didn’t want to overbid. After the sold price was released, on multiple occasions we thought “damn! we’d have our that and $25K on top to get it had we known”. In a blind bidding system, you bid what you think the house is worth. In an open bidding system you start…

You say that, but the fact you didn't bid $25k+ initially tells us otherwise, no? Here in DC metro, people are massively over-bidding (relative to list price) because they've already bid/lost 5-10 homes in the last few months. So, they go in strong, $100-$150k over on a $600k list price isn't uncommon right now.

Confirm this is the same in Austin. We moved from a blue state last year and kept losing conservative bids. We decided to go all-in on the next place and got it. What a stressful situation!

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#457
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…

Bidders out-bid themselves?! That is messed up…

That happens, hard to say how often, but it happened to us.

On my current house they said there was another competing offer and it was a close choice, they asked if we wanted to increase our bid to be more competitive. We dropped it by $15k and it turned out the competing offer wasn’t even close to our initial offer. They just wanted to know if we’d throw in $5k or $10k more.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seems very plausible individuals or small groups are buying multiples, especially if the purpose is to store or move money.

Even if 2% of global HNW individuals bought a home in Canada in the last 5 years (and 2% sounds high to me), they'd each have to buy 50 Canadian houses per person to reach that 1,000,000 number.

So 10 houses a year per person of the %2? That still sounds very plausible for high net worth investors, again especially if the purpose is to move/wash/hide cash, which my understanding is, generally is one of those 3 for overseas investments.

If they are washing or hiding, they don't care as much about the profit, so it makes sense they would be buying in larger numbers if they can.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#460
The problem with housing costs going up, is that they need to be permanently higher or it will have a bubble burst like effect. Imagine if the state of California did something that cut the real-estate prices down 30%... Well now people who bought when real-estate was 10% lower than the original value are upside down and will panic sell.
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