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Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

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Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#211

Post by zozbot234 »

bravo22 wrote: post #168
arcticbull wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hypothesis has been that renters stopped voting. They tend to be transient, younger, non-voters while landowners tend to be older, rooted and vote fervently. Density hurts landowners by decreasing property values and landowners vote.

The younger owners tend to also vote based on social "wedge" issues which means they don't need to be catered to on this issue whereas asset owners tend to vote based on their interests and have to be catered to otherwise they'll vote for the other party. I believe this also explains the rise of progressive political factions that propose a lot of policies that seem to favour the disenfranchised but in reality benefi…

> I believe this also explains the rise of progressive political factions that propose a lot of policies that seem to favour the disenfranchised but in reality benefit the rich and the asset owners.

This, so much. Segregation has once again become overt Democrat Party policy, only now it's disguised as "fighting against gentrification".

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#212

Post by screye »

I don't blame Canada. The country is running out of space really fast and they lack the technology to build more than 1 floor of house. Unlike massive countries like South Korea, they can't fit 50 million people.

Can you imagine being forced to live in slum like conditions without a half-acre yard or at least 3 parking spots? We are a developed country, do you expect us to park on the streets like the 3rd world ?

If only Canada had access to hammers & wood & nails. They could have built something. But, where might someone be able to buy any of those I wonder ?

____________

Watching sprawly nations one up each other with moral grandstanding while acting as if no one sees the elephant in the room is frustratingly funny.

If you are going to go this route, at least institute a high tax penalty for unit vacancy.

_________

edit: didn't think it was possible for people to miss such obvious sarcasm, but here we are

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#213

Post by bamboozled »

fatbird wrote: post #185
mavelikara wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was asking about the rich people in his county, who don't currently live in the mountain town.

In Canada, the vast majority of rich foreigners buying property are American. Chinese investors, the favourite villain of the "rich foreigners" class, make up only about 4% of foreign real estate investment.

It would be funny though, if you were trying to say that Chinese foreign ownership isn't a problem in places in the world, because I mean, it's absolutely smashed Sydney's housing prices.

Not saying there's anything "wrong" with any ethnic group, but there are sources of money in this world and some are particularly more present than others.

I don't know why but I'd say Chinese foreign ownership is much lower in the USA than in Australia, parts of Asia. Either way, I'd say 4% is still a pretty large part of American real estate ?

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#214

Post by jackgolding »

plantain wrote: post #154
pxue wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply is artificially controlled by voters who don't want density to increase, masked behind preservations, environmental concerns or just plain corruption

What changed? Governments used to aggressively intervene in the housing market.

But about half of average Australian household assets are held in the value of the home, accounting for an average $A509,000 out of a total average household assets of $A1.1 million.

---- Source: https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/too-many-eggs-in-the...

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#215

Post by stoppingin »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #164
arcticbull wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hypothesis has been that renters stopped voting. They tend to be transient, younger, non-voters while landowners tend to be older, rooted and vote fervently. Density hurts landowners by decreasing property values and landowners vote.

> renters stopped voting Renters also got co-opted into being NIMBYs out of fear of gentrification.

This idea is pure fantasy. This condition of classifying people as NIMBYs if they disagree with you on this topic is incredibly toxic. There are a plethora of totally valid reasons why people would be opposed to endless urban sprawl, consolidation, and population growth.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#216

Post by [deleted] »

andsoitis wrote: post #201
throwayyy479087 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zone every inch of currently settled land to allow 6 story mixed use buildings, by right. Don’t require anything to build besides engineering and safety checks - no chance for NIMBY input. Do this federally.

> allow 6 story mixed use buildings Why stop at 6? Why limit it at all?

[deleted]

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#217

Post by rr808 »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #184

They tried this in NZ too; it did nothing. Canada - Like New Zealand, and like Australia - relies on simply increasing the population through mass migration to "grow" the economy. This benefits enough powerful people that it will never stop for the sake of mere renters.

Western countries are all trying to encourage immigration because without it their populations will collapse. Right now populations are rising and causing house prices to rise but soon boomers will start dying leaving huge numbers of homes empty.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#218

Post by cameronh90 »

betaby wrote: post #148
jq-r wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, that does look habitable to me. Moreover, it looks quite nice compared to a lot of places people live in. Mars, Moon, and some places on Earth defnitely are not habitable (unless very supported), but calling most of the Canada "unhabitable" is more than a stretch.

That land is not suitable for agriculture. There is no way to build anything sustainable there, nor there is any point in that.

Most of the food I eat comes from hundreds of thousands of miles away. I'd imagine a bigger issue with inhabiting that area is lack of logistics.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#219

Post by Negitivefrags »

plantain wrote: post #140

I really don't understand why governments around the globe just throw their hands in the air and pretend housing is an unsolvable problem for which they have no obligation to fix. It wasn't always like this - in 1922 in Australia we realised there was a shortage of 25,000 homes, so they just made it happen [1]. Why are we so impotent today? Do we just not care enough? Are the vested interests too powerful? [1] https:…

There seems to be a general lack of political will for big projects in the west.

Looking at Asia now is like what the west used to be like.

I am unsure about the cause but I suspect that a lot of it is that people seem a lot more worried about consultation with locals and such.

In the past the government might just decide “we are building a highway here” or “we are building all this infrastructure for houses there” and there seemed to be a lot less consideration for how people affected would feel about it.

Media has gotten more pervasive, so we might imagine that politicians are more concerned about things flaring up there, but Asia has plenty of media access too, so that doesn’t really explain it.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#220

Post by fatbird »

dan-robertson wrote: post #187
fatbird wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to show proof of citizenship and residency during conveyance. When my wife and I recently bought, our driver licences and passports were recorded by the lawyer, pretty much just to tackle this issue. A foreign investor would need to arrange for straw purchasers to avoid the law, but that in itself would be an act of consciousness of guilt for breaking this law.

Suppose I’m in the position of the person in comment I replied to above: I look out of my window and see some empty apartments. Some time later, I write on hacker news that they were not for sale but held by foreigners as investments. Are you suggesting that, between these two steps, I would conveyance the sale of one of those apartments and thereby determine that it was bought as an investment property by a foreigne…

Conveyance is the act of transferring ownership, done by real estate lawyers. If you, as a foreign investor, bought before this law came in, then when you tried to sell it, your identity as a foreign investor could be noted, triggering a check of when you purchased it with respect to this law. but the point here isn't to look around and find all the foreign investor owned properties. It's that investments are bought and sold, and getting into that step is sufficient to carry out action. In this case, the foreign investor would have to sell to someone who's a Canadian citizen, which returns housing stock to being locally owned.

Something that's not been brought up much in this discussion is that foreign real estate investment is a diversification tactic: they're buying to get money into a different market than the rest of their wealth. That's why it isn't Canadians driving most of this. Foreign real estate is primarily a safe offshore hedge.

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