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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

#661

Post by wnolens »

car_analogy wrote: post #358
eldaisfish wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes yes xenophobia - but is it true ? Did Canada's past immigration policy contribute to current home prices? And more importantly - will the current immigration policy contribute to future high prices? If the goal is affordable housing, why is immigration the one policy that must not be adjusted to meet that goal?

Downvotes?

It's a major component of the supply side of the equation, and one which is controlled by policies. And it's not like you proposed "close borders completely!" or "send people back". There's a limit as it is. How is changing that limit going forward any more xenophobic than blocking foreign investors?

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#662

Post by tomc1985 »

MAGZine wrote: post #597
cosmiccrisp wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The root cause is the system that is geared to keep houses always appreciating via supply constraints: aggressive zoning, discretionary permitting, NIMBYism. I don't agree that this is the root cause. The root cause is the artificial demand on housing created though our mass immigration policy. Canada accepts _at least_ 500,000 people per year through various channels, "temporary" foreign workers, international stud…

In what world are "temporary" foreign workers buying homes in Canada? With what salary? Same with Refugees, students. Funny how in the first hundred years in Canada, we didn't have any issue with housing costs, despite accepting vast amounts of refugees. I'm not saying it's not making the problem worse, but to SOLELY pin it on them is IMO willful ignorance. if we banned all immigrants, of any kind, tomorrow, would Ca…

If you pour water into a bathtub it will handle all the water... until it can't, and then it overflows

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#663

Post by wizee »

alex_sf wrote: post #400
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...).

There is plenty of housing for plenty of people in most parts of North America. The 'problem' is that what people _want_ is cheap housing in urban centers, a.k.a cool spots. Because that doesn't exist, we claim to have a housing shortage.

Very ordinary detached family homes in decent shape pretty much anywhere in Ontario are near a million dollars or more. If people could buy a family home for vaguely affordable prices in even the most remote parts of the province, people would flock there. There's plenty of land, but getting permission to build anything in much of Canada is a difficult and slow process, even in remote areas.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#664

Post by kelnos »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #612
weeksie wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ap…

Don't get me wrong, I'm pro density. However, it seems like they are kind of like building new freeways, which rather than reduce traffic, simply induce more demand. By say taking Seattle and making it 4X dense...I doubt it would become much cheaper...instead it would just become more popular (still, I would love to live in a more dense Seattle, but I don't think I would save money by it).

I'm not sure you can draw a parallel between those two things. Is there any evidence that induced demand applies to housing as well?

I would think it might to some degree, but there would be several cut-off points, as living conditions change with more density, and people who previously wanted to move to a place might not like how a place changes as density increases.

With a highway, you can add as many lanes as you want, and the experience of driving on it isn't changed much.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#665

Post by FredPret »

rockbruno wrote: post #453
fennecfoxen wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Great, so every poor person or student or new worker will have to come up with downpayments and bank loans, or be homeless. Brilliant solution.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#666

Post by freeone3000 »

alar44 wrote: post #637
fizzizist1 wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Toronto, and there is no way that I could buy a small (not even average size) home built in the 60s for less than a million dollars, unless it's in a really bad neighborhood or needs so much work that I will end up spending that much anyway

That's true, but it's generally people from LA, Toronto, and NYC that really have a problem. They are massive metropolises. Extremely high demand and very little undeveloped land. Supply and demand. For everywhere else that isn't adjacent to a megalopolis, I think the housing "crisis" is massively overstated.

Yes, for the minority of people who live outside of a major city, they likely aren't seeing huge increases. But for most people, affordable housing is an issue.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#667

Post by johnnyanmac »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #606
johnnyanmac wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 t…

> cities as already densely packed as Los Angeles I live in Manhattan. LA is far from densely packed. It’s idiotically packed, seemingly to maximise time spent in traffic and minimise the number of bars, restaurants and essentials within walking distance of the average resident. But visit Tokyo or Paris if you want to see true density.

>I live in Manhattan. LA is far from densely packed.

Depends on what you consider "LA". the "LA county" that extends from Lancaster to Long Beach (some 90 sq Mi) is extremely sparse. But good luck convincing someone doing business downtown to go all the way out to Lancaster to buy homes.

The "City of Los Angeles" that makes up the 10 square miles of Downtown and some immediately surrounding suburbs is densely packed IMO. There's not exactly acres of fields waiting to be tilled for living quarters, and it's not like there already isn't skyscrapers of studio apartments to reside in (that ofc is still way too expensive).

Maybe not to NY levels, but it's not a competition and I don't see that as a positive personally. especially when we can both admit which city has superior public transportation. I avoid driving downtown at all costs, but there's not really any good alternatives when I do need to do business there.

I question which issue between the two of land and transportation would take longer to resolve. I feel they've both been mutli-decade crusades at this point.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#668

Post by [deleted] »

munificent wrote: post #555
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…

Given that "want to live" is a factor that is fluid and changes more quickly than building homes (which is how we ended up in this situation in the first place), it's probably also good to invest in making existing places that people are currently fleeing more desirable. The jobs left quickly enough that our physical infrastructure couldn't keep up. That implies that jobs are more fluid than building and that therefo…

[deleted]

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#669

Post by tromp »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #606
johnnyanmac wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 t…

> cities as already densely packed as Los Angeles I live in Manhattan. LA is far from densely packed. It’s idiotically packed, seemingly to maximise time spent in traffic and minimise the number of bars, restaurants and essentials within walking distance of the average resident. But visit Tokyo or Paris if you want to see true density.

> But visit Tokyo or Paris if you want to see true density.

The developing world has even denser examples [1], e.g. the #2 entry of Manila is about twice as dense as Paris.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_cities_by_popula...

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#670

Post by brewdad »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #462
belval wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a sense you are both right, you just don't set the threshold at the same place. The bank will look at how much you earn and how much you owe and say "We can pre-approve you for $X at Y%". They consider that you can pay that rate and they are most likely right. Now if you do take $X, you have effectively leveraged your entire earnings, which for most people is a pretty bad idea because stuff happens and you can end…

In the US, most lenders will do between 36 and 43% of your earnings pre-tax. Assuming you pay another 25 to 30 in taxes, this should be half of your disposable income, leaving 50% or cars food Etc. For a $5,000 mortgage, that's a $5,000 a month buffer

Um. Look at your numbers again. Assuming your 36-43% is correct (I haven't shopped a mortgage in almost 15 years), that puts the combined total at 61-73%. Also, that combined tax rate feels really low for anyone with the income to effectively bid in this current market. Add up SS and Medicare taxes, federal income taxes, state income taxes, and sales taxes and 30% feels like a floor rather than a ceiling.
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