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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

#931

Post by digianarchist »

chrishemsworth wrote: post #844
pembrook wrote: post #130

A quick look at the data suggests only about 2% of properties in Toronto and Vancouver are owned by overseas investors. Yes, housing is priced at the margin, but this won't do anything at all to prices over the long term. I'm sure this will be wildly popular politically, because people LOVE the idea that some foreign boogieman is the reason their children can't afford homes anymore. It's much easier to outsource your…

Better Dwelling paints a bleaker picture when you isolate certain relevant categories of homes For example, in BC (as of 2020), 9% of new condos (built after 2016) were owned by foreign interests, which is down from 2019, but probably holds steady for a number of years. https://betterdwelling.com/foreign-buyers-own-1-in-10-recent...

Pales in comparison to amateur domestic investors (25% in Ontario 2021) [0], "mom and pop" landlords that the federal government have chosen to protect.

[0] - https://betterdwelling.com/over-a-quarter-of-toronto-real-es...

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#933

Post by tryauuum »

dale_glass wrote: post #306
tryauuum wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some nitpicking: internet in Russia is very fast and stable. But you are right when you say "restricted". The retarded government tries to ban some websites.

How fast of a connection can you get? I'm on 1Gbps fiber, and can get 10G/10G fiber for cheap at my home right now, and just finished with the preparations.

My internet provider provides bandwidth up to 800 Mbit, I use the 200 Mbit package

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#934

Post by alar44 »

freeone3000 wrote: post #666
alar44 wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, most people do not live within a market that has these problems. Yes, something like 80% live in a metro area, but this isn't applicable to all metro areas. In the US, maybe the top 5ish cities. Even Chicago, for example, has tons of undeveloped, or underdeveloped land. It's not even close to Toronto or NYC. For most people, moving a little farther from work is what they need. A Chicago suburb commute isn't even close to the same thing as LA or NYC.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#935

Post by seoaeu »

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.

> Then it's even easier to move.

Moving requires finding a home somewhere that they can afford. The fact that they’ve been subjected to rising rents rather than a financial windfall like nearby homeowners… makes that far more difficult for them

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#936

Post by refurb »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #418
refurb wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the hottest market in Canada, Vancouver, the hottest communities had single digit foreign ownership. That doesn't explain why Halifax, Nova Scotia has double in price. But regardless, not sure why travel restrictions would matter. You don't need to see a house to buy it.

This isn't true at all. If any foreign buying stat looked single digit it was only because the metric was so broad so as to include areas where there was zero foreign buying interest. The week the BC Liberals brought in the foreign buyer tax they had data in hand that showed foreign buying in Richmond and Burnaby was (going from memory here) between 15-20% of sales that period. Worth noting that at the time those are…

They never started collecting actual citizenship/residency data on house sales until a year or two ago. I remember one analysis out of UBC that assume foreign owner if they has a "foreign sounding name".

From what I've seen, some neighborhoods are high, but it's at the margin. Canadians snorfing up massive amounts of debt in order to acquire more property is a bigger driver.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#937

Post by seoaeu »

xapata wrote: post #928
YokoZar wrote: post #926

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of affordable cars are used cars. Used cars are cheaper when there's tons of new cars, and they get more expensive when new car production slows - prices jumped so much in the past two years that some used cars were sold for more than they were originally purchased for. We treat that weird situation as obvious undersupply in the car market, but somehow expect it with houses. Why should old, used hou…

People forget that houses depreciate. It's the land that appreciates.

This isn’t true in all markets. Higher labor costs (for instance, caused by higher rents…) makes it more expensive to construct new homes. That makes any existing homes more valuable, potentially even accounting for depreciation

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#938

Post by seoaeu »

shkkmo wrote: post #784
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.

Up to a point, this is true when the affordable housing has had it's cost bid up by high end customers because of a scarcity of high end housing. However, once that high end market pressure has been abated, then there a real and hard limits to the amount of high end housing that can/will be available to low income customers. Instead of being available cheaply, this high-end housing stock will end up being used as a v…

We’re not anywhere close to this in any of the high cost markets. But once we do get to that point another thing will happen: the lower demand for high end housing (there’s only so many vacation homes and short term rentals you can sell) will make it economical to build new mid-range housing

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#939

Post by seoaeu »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #694
clpm4j wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eliminating a subset of buyers, i.e. slightly decreasing demand, is an easy and obvious action to take. Will it have a significant and long lasting effect? Very likely not. But when examining the supply-demand equation, it's painfully obvious to say "foreigners who don't live here should not be allowed to buy residential housing". It's way, way easier than incentivizing developers to build affordable housing and deal…

> 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.

> Affordable housing is and will always be a horrible idea.

This is like saying food banks are a horrible idea, and we should just focus on job growth so everyone can afford to buy their own food. It comes across as really tone deaf to ignore that some people need help now and that even though it isn’t a complete solution, feeding one person today or getting one person off the street into newly constructed affordable housing makes a real difference to them.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#940

Post by tmnvix »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #106
Bilal_io wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, and I honestly wish there were measures to fine owners that have empty homes as well. Many people would disagree with me, but to me it's not about economics. We need a way to fight the idea of hoarding homes, a basic human right, as being an "investment".

In Norway a kommune (local authority) can institute a boplikt, a duty of residence. This means that if you purchase a house in that area it must become your principal residence.

So it's not at all possible to rent a home in these places?
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