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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

#581

Post by slothtrop »

huevosabio wrote: post #493

These are boogieman policies that have zero influence on the root cause. Foreign investors jump into the housing market because the current system ensures that the supply of housing is limited so it is an attractive way to park your wealth. But that is not the root cause. The root cause is the system that is geared to keep houses always appreciating via supply constraints: aggressive zoning, discretionary permitting,…

It can't be reduced to just zoning. Corporations also buy up 30-50% of new housing. Also immigration rate doubles than of new housing starts.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#582

Post by clpm4j »

huevosabio wrote: post #493

These are boogieman policies that have zero influence on the root cause. Foreign investors jump into the housing market because the current system ensures that the supply of housing is limited so it is an attractive way to park your wealth. But that is not the root cause. The root cause is the system that is geared to keep houses always appreciating via supply constraints: aggressive zoning, discretionary permitting,…

Eliminating a subset of buyers, i.e. slightly decreasing demand, is an easy and obvious action to take. Will it have a significant and long lasting effect? Very likely not. But when examining the supply-demand equation, it's painfully obvious to say "foreigners who don't live here should not be allowed to buy residential housing". It's way, way easier than incentivizing developers to build affordable housing and dealing with all of the in-place bureaucracies and regulations and all of the hard stuff that comes along with constructing new neighborhoods and large residential buildings.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#583

Post by johnnyanmac »

weeksie wrote: post #542
johnnyanmac wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because there aren't enough homes for people to live in. I imagine there are enough homes in both America and Canada (they are two of the largest countries after all). But it's all about location. Very few can even afford to move out to the middle of nowhere just to own land. And not many people that can are willing to turn their potentially short commut…

There aren't enough homes _where people want to live_ and you solve that buy building more homes _where people want to live_. But that's difficult because cities have all these veto points. It takes forever to get new construction going, right? Exactly. That's why we aren't building enough, because in the current regulatory environment we can't. That's what people talk about when they talk about NIMBYism as the cause…

"you solve that buy building more homes _where people want to live_. But that's difficult because cities have all these veto points"

I'm not going to pretend there isn't some literal gatekeeping going on here that make this more difficult than necessary. But I'm also not exactly surprised that in cities as already densely packed as Los Angeles that there aren't exactly acres or hectacres of land just sitting around to be built "where people want to live". That's how we ended up with tiny studio apartments everywhere that still cost way too much.

Part of it is simply physical limitation. Land (unlike so many arbiturary policies nowadays) is a finite resource. Made more finite when the pareto principle kicks in.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#584

Post by hpkuarg »

idiotsecant wrote: post #566
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really should follow Japan on this: (a) National zoning (b) A culture that abhors second hand housing (so structures don't appreciate like land does). Housing that depreciates is no longer a sound investment. (c) Liberal definition on minimal standard housing to rent (central heating not required, toilets can be shared, no personal shower or even a shower at all in the building you are renting a room in, small spa…

In what sane universe is not requiring toilets and showers a solution to housing issues? I'm reasonably sure we can meet housing needs and still maintain basic human dignity.

For example, it would be nice to be able to build a dormitory- or barracks-style high-density, low-creature comforts housing, where multiple rooms may share a common bathroom and a kitchen, in areas with high homelessness to give those folks a place to call home. This is not currently legal in many jurisdictions due to building code limitations.

I might feel that a gigabit fiber connection is necessary to maintain basic human dignity ;-) but I don't think that should be enforced via law. One should be able to opt out for something more afforable.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#585

Post by andrewmutz »

idiotsecant wrote: post #566
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really should follow Japan on this: (a) National zoning (b) A culture that abhors second hand housing (so structures don't appreciate like land does). Housing that depreciates is no longer a sound investment. (c) Liberal definition on minimal standard housing to rent (central heating not required, toilets can be shared, no personal shower or even a shower at all in the building you are renting a room in, small spa…

In what sane universe is not requiring toilets and showers a solution to housing issues? I'm reasonably sure we can meet housing needs and still maintain basic human dignity.

Not all housing need to go to a 4-person family. In my late teens and early 20s I shared a bathroom and a bedroom and never felt my dignity impinged. At that age it was much more important for it to be cheap than for it to be good.

It should not be illegal for such housing to exist.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#586

Post by throwaway894345 »

ericmay wrote: post #518
throwaway894345 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Price per gallon is probably the wrong unit. You probably want $/mile. Car accidents get priced in via insurance. Environment isn't price…

> Electricity is already much less expensive than gasoline. How I'd phrase that is: "Electricity is currently much less expensive than gasoline "at the pump". What I think is likely to occur is that as we switch over to EVs (I own one btw if that helps here) there will be continued pure electricity demand which is going to cause prices to go up and up. Everything runs on electricity, and soon cars will too. So I thin…

Agreed that increased electrification of previously fossil fueled applications will create upward pressure on prices, as will the decomissioning of fossil fuel power plants. However, this will eventually stabilize as we (1) increase renewable capacity and (2) increase our efficiency (American energy consumption is decreasing gradually as we improve efficiency).

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#587

Post by oneoff786 »

idiotsecant wrote: post #566
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really should follow Japan on this: (a) National zoning (b) A culture that abhors second hand housing (so structures don't appreciate like land does). Housing that depreciates is no longer a sound investment. (c) Liberal definition on minimal standard housing to rent (central heating not required, toilets can be shared, no personal shower or even a shower at all in the building you are renting a room in, small spa…

In what sane universe is not requiring toilets and showers a solution to housing issues? I'm reasonably sure we can meet housing needs and still maintain basic human dignity.

One with a public bathhouse culture

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#588

Post by weeksie »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #560
weeksie wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't enough homes _where people want to live_ and you solve that buy building more homes _where people want to live_. But that's difficult because cities have all these veto points. It takes forever to get new construction going, right? Exactly. That's why we aren't building enough, because in the current regulatory environment we can't. That's what people talk about when they talk about NIMBYism as the cause…

> There aren't enough homes _where people want to live_ and you solve that buy building more homes _where people want to live_. You mean, if we had the density of Manhattan or Shanghai, our housing would be as cheap as Manhattan or Shanghai? I'm not sure people would like that (given that those places are more expensive in general). The best example in the states is Houston, but it is horrible sprawl (so housing isn'…

Manhattan (where I live) is extremely underbuilt. Lots of people want to live here!

But yes, the implication of a housing abundance agenda is that places will change. I think it's generally underrated exactly how much the cities we know today changed during the 20th century as they grew in population.

That said, you don't really need a lot of high rises to drastically increase density. Even row houses and low rise apartments make a pretty large difference and would be more than enough to meet demand for most cities that are experiencing a crunch.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#590

Post by la6472 »

trylfthsk wrote: post #404
la6472 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pop…

Service availability decreases with population density, and relying on subsidized last mile delivery for the economic elite is not a sustainable model for an entire society. The road network alone is a funding quagmire, to say nothing of hiding the infrastructure burdens of servicing sprawl into the eldritch horror that is the municipal bond market.

Service availability decreasing with population density is still old school thought. Rapid advances in technology over the years enable stretching infrastructure outwards. Who knows someday we may be extending our infrastructures to cover the whole globe and even to outer space. It is not subsidized and it is certainly not for the elite only. It is more about human aspiration. As a species we can look towards piling on top of each other or we can choose to expand and live a quality life according to one’s own aspiration. Look at the big picture.
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