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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

#891

Post by madboston »

dwighttk wrote: post #876
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,…

If houses don’t appreciate, why buy a house? Just rent

because you want to settle down and stop moving? maybe have a family? have a place for your own that you can actually configure to your own liking? not get kicked liked a football because rent was increased for lease renewal because new corporate landlord doesn't give a shit? give next generation a fair/reasonable chance of making it on their own and not because they were not lucky enough to be born with family money?

I laugh when I see people have BLM signs on their property because those are the exact people who don't want to care about it.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#892

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ghaff wrote: post #831
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is this satire, are you really advocating building houses with an expected life-span of 40 years? I'm really not sure. On the one hand, I agree it is wasteful. On the other hand, I personally like living in a new home. > No more drywall, particle boards everywhere. Tiles.. forget it, kitchen counters made by reclaimed wood etc The average kitchen where I live is renovated every 10 years, so the drywall, much of the…

I have never seen that in the US. Any significant remodels are on the order of decades. My house is 200 years old.

https://www.usacabinetstore.com/how-often-should-you-remodel....

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#893

Post by worik »

_3u10 wrote: post #846
worik wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Vancouver and Toronto isn’t a housing market in any real sense of the word. Supply is fixed by government, interest rates are fixed by government, etc. If you took government control out of the market prices would plummet. Any plank will do, supply, financial backing or interest rates and the whole thing comes crashing down. That’s the real problem, how to cause a 20% “correction” and not 80%. My house is 8 hours fro…

Everybody blaming zoning.

What is happening in Dallas which has no zoning rules? (Or am I thinking of Austin Texas?)

I do not know, but it would be useful for this debate

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#894

Post by liketochill »

_3u10 wrote: post #846
worik wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Vancouver and Toronto isn’t a housing market in any real sense of the word. Supply is fixed by government, interest rates are fixed by government, etc. If you took government control out of the market prices would plummet. Any plank will do, supply, financial backing or interest rates and the whole thing comes crashing down. That’s the real problem, how to cause a 20% “correction” and not 80%. My house is 8 hours fro…

Revelstoke?

If so, revelstoke like Vancouver is actually pretty hemmed in by water and mountains. There isn’t an infinite amount of easy to build on land like the on the prairies.

Quality of life in revelstoke is probably amazing! Small town, ski hill, mountains, biking, snowmobiling, fishing, lakes, rivers, airport, and lots of jobs

Demand will always exceed supply in desirable locations, that is part of what makes them desirable. Would you spend 30% of you and your wife’s income to secure a plot in such a paradise? 40%? 50%? Lots of people will take the bet and risk. If you lose and go bankrupt well then you move to the easily affordable town in the equivalent of the fly over states. Odds are the million dollar mortgage will get inflated away you just have to tread water while interest rates are historically low until you can juice your income or hourly rate up enough to make the million dollars you are in debt seem trivial.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#895

Post by steve_adams_86 »

RocketOne wrote: post #201

Im one of those 'greedy' old farts who owns more than one home. We have one for ourselves and 5 rentals. Im starting to agree with those who are feeling priced out of the market. What would make me stop buying homes? A graduated tax would. If there were no sales tax on the first two, and then 15% tax on the third, 25% tax on the 4th, and going up by 10% for each subsequent house, it would definitely make me quit buyi…

Similar to tax avoidance which people tend to loathe, you’re only doing what makes economic sense. So long as it makes sense, it’s hard to criticize or resent someone for making sound investment in their economic well-being.

I do think it’s a problem when a handful of people have 5 houses and far more have none, but I really don’t see the problem as one originating from the people who own 5 houses. It’s a systemic issue.

I’m not sure your tax solution would work well. Like most individually limited purchases, people can simply forward purchases to family members or in some cases subsidiary corporations.

I don’t see a way through this without major reform. As long as housing is a commodity I don’t think we can fix anything.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#896

Post by bombcar »

worik wrote: post #893
_3u10 wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vancouver and Toronto isn’t a housing market in any real sense of the word. Supply is fixed by government, interest rates are fixed by government, etc. If you took government control out of the market prices would plummet. Any plank will do, supply, financial backing or interest rates and the whole thing comes crashing down. That’s the real problem, how to cause a 20% “correction” and not 80%. My house is 8 hours fro…

Everybody blaming zoning. What is happening in Dallas which has no zoning rules? (Or am I thinking of Austin Texas?) I do not know, but it would be useful for this debate

Houston is usually the one they point to, but is the equivalent of zoning in other ways such as covenants, etc.

Houston is booming I hear.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#897

Post by bombcar »

jjav wrote: post #869
alistairSH wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, in a competitive/expensive market, the developer will pick the high-rise (almost) every time when allowed by law. Locally, when I see people complain about luxury housing being built, it's because the developer is building high-spec townhomes and selling them for $800k+. Instead of lower-spec townhomes at $500k. The developer can't fit appreciably more homes in the same footprint (they're all 3-4 stories tall…

> Except, in a competitive/expensive market, the developer will pick the high-rise (almost) every time when allowed by law. A developer will, indeed. More profit. But an acre is small enough that it could just as well be a rich individual buyer, in which case they'll build what they like. There's a half-acre plot for sale nearby for nearly $2M, I'm curious if it ends up being bought by an IPO millionaire to build a s…

In many markets there’s no choice - it has to be a single family home.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#898

Post by bombcar »

xapata wrote: post #848
nradov wrote: post #840

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people being forced out are renters.

Then it's even easier to move. If the polity doesn't want to zone for more housing, they've chosen to expel people who can't pay more than $X for rent. They'll feel the pain when there's no one around to make their coffee anymore. There's no such thing as unlimited demand for luxury housing. Build enough and the rent will fall for the existing housing stock.

I’m starting to feel we may be nearing a local maximum on housing, as more and more arguments seem to take for granted that it can never go down …

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#899

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

cik wrote: post #33

I love Canada - but our government has always been idiotic. The ban is against 'foreign investors'. But the thing is, Canada has a corporate designation called CCPC: Canadian Controlled Private Corporation. Directors of said corporation have to be > 50% resident Canadians. A corporation can be created for the purchase of this property, with a Canadian controlling, and being the director. This will literally do nothin…

>I love Canada - but our government has always been idiotic.

No, the Canadian people are stupid, as are people elsewhere.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#900

Post by bombcar »

munificent wrote: post #852
zbrozek wrote: post #771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 regulation…

That may be how they were written but now they’re used as an extension of NIMBY.

And often the density of “rural” areas is comparable to the big cities as even in rural areas most of the population is in small cities.

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