Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#761

Post by la6472 » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 8:15 PM UTC

zekrioca wrote: post #757

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…

I cannot imagine ordering fruits and vegetables online: how do you assure its quality without actually looking at them? I always prefer picking these myself, so yes, maybe it is a good idea to offer better transportation means to those who prefer to do in person grocery.

Just grow as much as you can yourself. After all that is the perks of living in the suburbs.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#762

Post by titzer » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 8:15 PM UTC

chipsa wrote: post #748

titzer wrote: post #725

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. 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.

People will just rent it.

I don't know what the solution to the problem is, but I fear where it's heading. If people cannot get housing, anarchy and revolution are in the making. Then it's heads on pikes, French Revolution style.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#763

Post by saiya-jin » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 8:17 PM UTC

munk-a wrote: post #707

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> build affordable housing Lets build shitty buildings that will last for decades. Affordable housing is and will always be a horrible idea. Build and build until you get a surplus and suddenly tons of housing is affordable.

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…

thats a view of an owner who wants to get as rich as his property will allow him, and hopefully even more. fuck everybody else. exactly how we get into this situation.

folks who gamble with money have to accept the risk part of the equation, whatever vessel that may be. if somebody invested in tech stocks few months ago they are now probably crying in the corner.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#764

Post by kelnos » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 8:19 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #697

kelnos wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Is there any evidence that induced demand applies to housing as well? Yes, plenty of people are discouraged from moving to a hot city due to the lack of supply. Increasing supply then moves discouraged demand into actual demand. Otherwise why do dense cities (like Shanghai, NYC, Manila) still experience housing shortages? If the place is desirable, demand increases to catch up to the new supply, bringing us to the…

I was asking for evidence, not a hypothetical rationale.

It's possible (and likely) that housing in Shanghai, NYC, and Manila just have not reached a supply-demand equilibrium yet, because housing policy still constrains supply. There's nothing requires that demand is effectively infinite in these cities, or that demand will keep growing as more housing is built.

Let's say unfilled demand for housing in San Francisco sits at 100,000 units right now (making up numbers; they don't matter). If we could magically build those 100,000 units tomorrow, yes, I do expect we will induce some more demand, because home/rent prices will drop. So let's say we build another 100,000 units. Maybe we get some more demand, because home/rent prices drop more. So we do it again, but not forever.

Because my feeling here is that the main driver of more demand in SF would be drops in home/rent prices. Those prices can't drop to zero; they will always have a cost, and it seems unlikely to me that the cost will drop low enough -- no matter how many units are built, within the physical constraints of the space -- such that there will still always be unmet demand. And home prices will still always be propped up by housing policy to some extent; the city would never implement unrestricted housing development with no hurdles. But maybe the "equilibrium" price can be something significantly less ridiculous than it is today.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#765

Post by jefftk » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 8:19 PM UTC

worik wrote: post #738

jerf wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a path dependency problem. In principle, had you just been building housing like that all along, investing in housing is not appealing as you shouldn't see significant gains in general. However, now that it is appealing, the investment itself pushes up demand, which pushes up the appeal of investing because now prices are going up, which pushes up demand, etc. Again, in principle, if you just keep building, t…

Market forces are not magic, nor the only method of economic planning. When markets work they are very good at finding prices. But when they fail you get this sort of thing. There needs to be a lot of planned intervention in the housing sector. Entities with a lot of capital need to build the houses that people need to live in where they need to live in them and then let them live in them. The market will not do that…

The market ("people who would stand to earn a lot of money") would be happy to do that, but it's not allowed to (zoning: height limits, parking requirements, lot coverage, maximum floor area...)

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#766

Post by jjav » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #596

admax88qqq wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A culture that abhors second hand housing (so structures don't appreciate like land does). Housing that depreciates is no longer a sound investment That sounds tremendously wasteful. All housing will have to be built new now? > (d) Not very open to immigration at all, have a decreasing population. This is probably the biggest reason housing is depreciating in Japan, especially outside of Tokyo.

> That sounds tremendously wasteful. All housing will have to be built new now? Well ya. You don't build to have your home last for more than 30-40 years, which can save some materials. We should get better at recycling and renewing building material, maybe the Japanese counteract things that way?

> You don't build to have your home last for more than 30-40 years, which can save some materials.

I'm very skeptical it would save any non-trivial amount in materials. What would you leave out?

Housing in the USA is already very cheaply built, 2x4s and drywall and the cheapest hardware they builder can get. Such houses easily last over a 100 years barring some disaster.

To build a house that crumbles to unlivable in 30 years, you'd have to intentionally design it to do that. Which sounds terrible from an environmental waste perspective.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#767

Post by qwery » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 8:22 PM UTC

jejeyyy77 wrote: post #454

alistairSH wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

The only way your bid gets accepted is when you overbid. If your "fair"/"what it's worth" offer gets accepted, you have overvalued the property.

> generally they will give you one chance to "improve" your offer

Of course, you have no idea what you're competing against, or if there even is a higher offer.

> in an open bidding system, you are literally in competition for who can/is willing to pay the most for the home.

This is true for blind auctions too.

> The ceiling is basically what you think is "fair". > in an open bidding system ... The ceiling is what you can/willing to afford

I don't see any reason why you couldn't set the ceiling to what you think is "fair" at an open auction.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#768

Post by rcpt » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 8:23 PM UTC

Aerroon wrote: post #601

3pt14159 wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could, you know, intelligently tax property nationally and tie it to a national dividend that directly goes to landed immigrants and citizens in the form of a basic income. It will make sure that the poor and lower middle class don't get hosed and simultaneously make property a less attractive investment for foreigners or would-be mansion builders. I don't want to live in the same place my whole life and I don'…

> It will make sure that the poor and lower middle class don't get hosed and simultaneously make property a less attractive investment for foreigners or would-be mansion builders. It will also make sure that you get enough leeway to build in all the corruption you want. Or at least all the NIMBYism you want. "Yeah, to build in this region you have to pay this huge tax unless you fill out this form and we approve." An…

You're talking about "impact fees" which are dumb for that reason. OP is more about land value tax

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#769

Post by rcpt » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 8:25 PM UTC

oneoff786 wrote: post #592

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…

e) a land value tax

That solves a) through d) to.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#770

Post by zbrozek » Tue, Apr 19, 2022, 8:27 PM UTC

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,…

Build, baby, build. But we need property rights to be able to do it. None of this discretionary permitting nonsense; that's how we got into this mess.