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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

#851

Post by xapata »

michaelmrose wrote: post #759
xapata wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> incentivizing developers to build affordable housing But that's unnecessary. If developers build more luxury housing, that'll reduce the price of existing housing, such that it becomes affordable.

Alternatively you end up with more empty housing poor to middling people can't afford while a bigger portion of society has the life sucked out of them by housing costs work 2nd jobs spend less time with their kids or on self improvement. Save less. Crash harder during down turns etc.

Speculators will eventually mark to market and sell or rent their empty houses. It might take a while, but it's a big country. Housing is illiquid on a small scale, but is a fairly efficient market on the national level. Except for the zoning rules, of course. That's the nice thing about living in the US or a Schengen country. It's easy to move to where the economy is better.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#852

Post by munificent »

zbrozek wrote: post #771
munificent wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It should be fast to build houses. My family acquired land, designs, permits, and moved in to a place in rural TN in about 9 months. It's taken me 2 years to get a site development permit (permission to ask for a building permit) to modify a roofline so that it sheds water in CA.

Building houses in rural areas is fast and cheap because there's nothing already there and screwing up is unlikely to affect anyone else since no one is nearby.

Increasing density in places that are already built up is much harder. You have to remove the people and things that are already there. If you do something wrong, there are many people in the area who can be negatively affected.

Building permitting regulations are written using the ashes of fires that started from a single house and burned down an entire city.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#853

Post by renewiltord »

ejb999 wrote: post #825
renewiltord wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is a classic group-action pre-commit. "I'd like to play a game of football if we're all up for it, otherwise let's go to the pub" "Why don't you just go play a game of football yourself, dude?".

not even close to the same thing. Playing a game a football requires many players - helping out someone less fortunate than yourself requires zero involvement of others. Claiming "if only other people would join in I would do the right thing', is worse than virtue signaling, it.s disgusting.

Let's not get carried away here with emotional language. Perhaps you could see it as a giant rock lying on someone's leg and this guy is saying "If others will help, I will lend my strength to lift the rock". He just doesn't want to push the rock by himself alone because it won't work. Rock's too big.

It's not an outlandish sentiment so I don't think it needs all this "disgusting" and "virtue signaling" and "right thing" stuff. It's just "I believe we need group action to have outcomes. I am willing to contribute in such a group".

There are loads of such examples:

- Indiegogo

- Aforementioned Rock

- Kickstarter

There's some minimum activation energy necessary for rock to get off leg and if we cannot accumulate that, it is possible for energy to be spent elsewhere more productively.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#854

Post by Drew_ »

FredPret wrote: post #665
rockbruno wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Stop zoning out multi-family homes and apartment buildings and this wouldn't be a problem. Believe it or not, there are many low-income people living in cities where these things are allowed, and they're not all renting single family homes.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#855

Post by mise_en_place »

imtringued wrote: post #800
mise_en_place wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot lie in the foreign exchange market. If you bs your productivity vis-a-vis loose money supply, your currency will rightly be worthless. The USD would usually be worthless too, it's just that due to Petrodollar system and reserve currency status, it's artificially propped up to be strong.

I hope you notice the irony in your comment. You praise the exporters while completely ignoring that imports must exist in equal proportion to exports.

> You praise the exporters while completely ignoring that imports must exist in equal proportion to exports.

In a closed system with two economies, yes, true. But in reality, many nations either run a trade deficit (exports imports)

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#856

Post by armagon »

itsoktocry wrote: post #628
twblalock wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When more people show up, you should build more housing. Canada is a big place with a small population relative to its size — you have plenty of space. Your argument might work if Canada was a small island like Singapore, but it is one of the largest countries by land area in the world. What prevents you from just building more housing in all that extra space you have? Zoning laws and nimbyism.

> What prevents you from just building more housing in all that extra space you have? There is plenty of cheap, available housing in the hinterlands of Canada. And yet, nobody wants to move there. Why do you think that is? Prime locations are scarce no matter how much land mass you have.

Honest question: where are these cheap, available houses? I thought I did live in the hinterlands, and there's nothing in that category here that doesn't need to be torn down. Since I work online, I might be able to move if the prices are right.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#857

Post by arrosenberg »

la6472 wrote: post #611
arrosenberg wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. No, the lowest traffic solution is having the smallest number of trucks that are needed to serve local markets that a relatively high volume of people can access via walking, biking or mass transit. All that walking,…

City dwellers are not subsidizing anybody. In fact there are certain things the government does for the common good. Like protecting border or extending healthcare. It is the kind of civic planning that determines if a community will be able to support ordinary human aspirations like living a comfortable life in a spread out space or a community is going to pile like ants on top of each other. Of course certain peopl…

The government pays for those things with money generated in the cities. We need rural communities to grow food, but most rural and suburban communities in the US do not generate enough revenue through taxes to support themselves without federal assistance. Sometimes it is worth doing, but the cities make the money that pay for it. So again, why should we subsidize lower density that requires more subsidy and more energy to support? Our existing cities could be redesigned to be more human friendly and higher capacity - if we are going to spend federal dollars, thats where they need to go.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#858

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

glogla wrote: post #732
homonculus1 wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[homogenous Japanese population] is the farthest possible away you can get from [unrestricted immigration from the southern hemisphere]. Why yes, indeed, it is!

Ah, racism. Long time no see.

"Long time no see" is a racist mockery of Chinese immigrant broken English.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#859

Post by la6472 »

arrosenberg wrote: post #857
la6472 wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

City dwellers are not subsidizing anybody. In fact there are certain things the government does for the common good. Like protecting border or extending healthcare. It is the kind of civic planning that determines if a community will be able to support ordinary human aspirations like living a comfortable life in a spread out space or a community is going to pile like ants on top of each other. Of course certain peopl…

The government pays for those things with money generated in the cities. We need rural communities to grow food, but most rural and suburban communities in the US do not generate enough revenue through taxes to support themselves without federal assistance. Sometimes it is worth doing, but the cities make the money that pay for it. So again, why should we subsidize lower density that requires more subsidy and more en…

Suburbs are not rural areas. Suburbs are sane living condition which every human being in the planet is entitled to.

Suburbs are also the source of majority of tax revenue.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#860

Post by Drew_ »

rank0 wrote: post #571
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those who hoard housing should get a kick from a exponential tax. Yes, but at the same time it should not be possible for them to pass those costs on to people renting the house; rents should be fixed, or based on things like floor space and amenities. But personally I think everyone should have a way in to the housing market. Renting is throwing away money; it goes into someone else's pocket and it's gone. When yo…

> Renting is throwing away money; it goes into someone else's pocket and it's gone. Holy shit this is insane. Do you actually believe renting has no benefits? When you purchase a property you’re on the hook for that mortgage payment for the next 30 years. Buyers absorb an enormous amount of risk. Maintenance is time consuming and expensive. Renters can leave whenever they like and have no long term financial ties to…

They didn't say renting has no benefits they said it's expensive and has no ROI.

You position renting as easy and buying as a burden and an "enormous risk" so I assume you will be renting apartments and leasing cars for the rest of your life surely?

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