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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

#741

Post by seanmcdirmid »

zip1234 wrote: post #630
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes should be doing that already, maybe we just need a national property tax? I'm all for basic income as a form of wealth re-distribution (as long as the money does't come from nowhere and stoke inflation).

Land value tax would prevent people from buying land without a plan to make it useful. IE ending land speculation and encouraging productive uses of land.

> Land value tax would prevent people from buying land without a plan to make it useful.

Ya: a land value tax is just a property tax that ignores improvements (charing based on what could be built rather than what is built). But it would totally destroy the low income housing market (since property owners of old run down low-end rentals would be seriously penalized for not building new luxury apartments).

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#742

Post by rybosworld »

ejb999 wrote: post #450
rybosworld wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not unreasonable to want to protect your hard-earned money. Inflation forces people to invest in assets. We have reached a point where everything is overpriced (stocks, homes, etc.) and inflation is rampant. So unless you want to have less purchasing power than you did last year, you invest in what you think gives the best return. Placing the burden on the individual to "do the right thing" is scapegoating in th…

But this is the comment I was responding to: " I think it would be fine if my taxes were helping others to start out. " so that poster was saying having his taxes jacked up to help someone out is 'ok with them', and yet he has the power to help others out already - without the law forcing him/her to do it - he obviously thinks he can afford it, and is in favor of it - but he is not going to do it without the law requ…

Because as I alluded to, that person would fall behind in terms of purchasing power. Allowing your money to erode away is not going to affect the greater good. The incentives (taxes) need to be changed.

Suggesting a change that you think is positive but not acting on it in the meantime is not virtue signaling.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#743

Post by weeksie »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #722
weeksie wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. There's tons of unused vertical space in LA. 2. They make more land all the time. Look at a map of Boston in 1800. In fact, look at an old map of almost any city near a large body of water and compare it to today and you'll find a lot more land being used.

> They make more land all the time. It is true that many cities have filled in shorelines to create more buildable/usable surface. It is not true that cities do this all the time.

I suppose that depends playing definition games with "all the time", but we are doing it right now in NYC with the coastal resiliency expansion. Battery Park city was created in the 70s from the excavation done to build the WTC. And right now there's a proposal to expand the southern tip of Manhattan to reach Governor's Island. Suffice to say that "all the time" is correct in this context.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#744

Post by 3qz »

jejeyyy77 wrote: post #341
3qz wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“what it’s worth” is just the maximum you can possibly afford when the alternative is never owning anything.

If your perspective is that people will sacrifice anything to own a home, then home prices are quite undervalued and have been for a long time.

It’s kind of like how insulin is undervalued when there’s supply chain issues

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#745

Post by werber »

I remember friends squatting in foreign bought apartments in downtown Vancouver 15 or so years ago. Like, floors of luxury buildings empty because it was all a parking space for cash. I have no idea if this will have a significant effect, but, it was so bizarre for me (I'm originally from Detroit) to see these basically empty luxury buildings. It was such a topic when I started University in Vancouver, I can't count the number of times it came up. I personally think the city looks depressing, and Toronto isn't far behind. This is just a personal opinion based on my experiences, but it's so strange when a "dense" area is empty, it feels like a ghost town, like the amount of residential space in Vancouver and the way the streets felt was just so bizarre to me.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#746

Post by seunosewa »

munk-a wrote: post #726
seunosewa wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why bother cutting off foreigners if you want your real estate to keep appreciating in value?

To slow the value gain - I think ideally the government would like to sort of stabilize housing prices in BC & ON for a few years then re-start a slower more reliable growth pace... exploding the housing market fully could cause a value loss - so this is like opening one pressure release valve to slow the build up a bit.

Liberalizing the housing market is a slow process that will be heavily contested politically and in courts, so it won't lead to an instant explosion of the housing market. The political will to continue liberalizing the housing market will evaporate as soon as housing prices become reasonable as a result of it.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#747

Post by dmoy »

megablast wrote: post #733
munk-a wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a healthy long term outcome but a lot of people have a good portion of their value parked in their home - if there is a sudden oversupply how will you cousin the economic and social shock as millions of middle-class folks suddenly lose their wealth while upper class folks mainly invested in the stock market come out the far side with even more wealth? This is not an easy problem - and as soon as you try a…

People dont lose anything until they sell. Most people aren’t selling. So they haven’t lost. And how would you limit the effect if housing dropped for the many other reasons prices drop?? You don’t.

What percentage of pensions and 401ks are tied up in mortgage backed securities, etc?

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#748

Post by chipsa »

titzer wrote: post #725
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,…

> The root cause is the system that is geared to keep houses always appreciating via supply constraints: aggressive zoning, discretionary permitting, NIMBYism. These are contributing factors, but the energy that drives the bubble is capital, and bubbles have a way of becoming self-perpetuating. When a bubble becomes critical, you can't "build out of it", unless you think you can actually produce 10% more houses in a…

You can pull capital out of it by making it expensive to leave a home empty. Then capital will go where they can get better returns. Bonus tax when the average occupancy of the property drops below a certain percentage, say.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#749

Post by vkou »

qiskit wrote: post #714

What's a foreigner to a country that allows more than 1 citizenship? What's a foreigner in a country that has a "foreign" royal as head of state? Why were foreigners allowed to buy homes in the first place? Most importantly, why does a country with a population of 35 million and a landmass stolen from the natives the size of china have problem housing their population? Certainly, even if much of canada is tundra, the…

> If they are having problems housing their population, why are they increasing immigration?

Because this housing crunch isn't coming from the 1% population growth the country's experiencing, it's coming from poor economic planning.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#750

Post by jjav »

weeksie wrote: post #511
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'll be interesting in a couple years when prices are still crazy and someone has to come up with an excuse for why. It's amazing to me how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because there aren't enough homes for people to live in. It's always a search for exotic explanations like foreign buyers and mysterious empty apartments.

> It's amazing to me how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because there aren't enough homes for people to live in.

I have to wonder if it is ever possible to build enough in the places everyone wants to live for it to become cheap?

Manhattan is extremely dense and yet, incredible expensive. More expensive than nearly every less-dense area. So density isn't helping drive cost down.

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