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Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

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Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#261

Post by philliphaydon »

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:…

Because today houses are not for living in. They are investments.

There's multiple issues that need solving now.

1) Being able to purchase a house without ever setting foot in the country. NZ decided to stop foreigners buying houses. There were websites you can go in and people from China would buy houses without ever setting foot in NZ... The buying power of alot of people from China and India is huge. This drives up prices.

Let's not forget, most countries in Asia you literally cannot buy property if you're a foreigner. You have have to have a spouse or buy via a 3rd party who owns it and you pay them fees to hold it for you.

2) Houses are no longer valued based on your income, they are based on what you can earn.

This is difficult to solve. You need rentals to assist with foreign labour. But you want to remove rentals to prevent houses being investment properties.

Maybe they should cap the number of houses a family can own, and a business cannot rent out a home. It's built for sale, not built for rental.

3) Housing shortages. Housing supply should be assisted by the government via BTO's. Built to Order. Rather than taking huge loans from banks, you can buy a house from the government at a fixed price, that you will pay back. If you don't pay the government takes it back, otherwise you cannot sell that house for the first 10 years of ownership. You cannot rent it out for the first 5 years of ownership. Somewhat similar to how Singapore runs their BTOs.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#262

Post by katbyte »

TrackerFF wrote: post #232
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:…

Zoning laws limit where and what you can build. Who sits on these boards, lobby, and vote on zoning regulations? Homeowners in the area. The first thing that happens when a company announces a new building projects, is that they get deluged with protests from the neighboring homeowners. Sometimes this process will take years and years - there's no worse sin than taking away sunlight from neighbors, "visual pollution"…

crazy fact about Vancouver: 85% of residential land is zoned SFH

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#263

Post by RestlessMind »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #219
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” a…

Decades ago when the West was developed, there was very little value placed on the existing stuff. Five people died constructing the Empire State building. Do you imagine the uproar if that happens today? I bet human life was valued much less back then. Similarly, lots of neighborhoods were erased to make way for highways, railroads and industrial plants. Nowadays, try constructing an industrial plant in a major city center and you will discover that people care a lot of their clean air and clear water.

There is also a related but separate aspect where environmental activists erected barriers to slow down any development. You still feel its effects today where CEQA is weaponized to slow down a small apartment housing.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#264

Post by [deleted] »

kelnos wrote: post #260
HWR_14 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who buys a single family home is depriving a family of the ability to own a home. A 4+ unit complex is unlikely to fall into the same situation. Those are often rented out. You're right that it might prevent owned condos from forming instead of apartments, but the only thing that gap allows is the sale of an entire complex, and the only thing it prevents is conversion of new apartment buildings to condos. Onc…

I think there's more to it, though. If landlords or management companies are competing to buy a 4+ unit building, that having more potential buyers (foreign buyers) will tend to make the final purchase price higher than it would have been if there'd only been local buyers, regardless of who ends up with the winning bid. And certainly the higher cost of purchase will influence the amount the new owner charges tenants…

[deleted]

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#265

Post by kelnos »

fleddr wrote: post #121

I want to give some push-back regarding the often-heard phrase that governments should stop restricting supply. I'll be using the situation in the Netherlands to explore some complexities. These may not apply everywhere, but it serves to illustrate that the situation is far more complex than "stupid zoning". First, the reason the Netherlands is in a similar situation as Canada (400K home prices, very tight supply) is…

2008 was 15 years ago, though. Certainly the home-building industry recovered quite a long time ago. Yes, there are some wrinkles: building material cost was very high for much of the pandemic, and now interest rates have gone up (I don't know how interest rates in the Netherlands get affected by US rates, but I imagine they're not totally independent). But there's a huge period from 2009 to around 2020 where home building should have been quite economical.

If home prices have risen during that time to levels people now find uncomfortable, then the only conclusion we can draw is that there has been a ton of demand, and thus many available buyers. So I don't get how you can argue that no one was building due to lack of buyers.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#266

Post by [deleted] »

kelnos wrote: post #260
HWR_14 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who buys a single family home is depriving a family of the ability to own a home. A 4+ unit complex is unlikely to fall into the same situation. Those are often rented out. You're right that it might prevent owned condos from forming instead of apartments, but the only thing that gap allows is the sale of an entire complex, and the only thing it prevents is conversion of new apartment buildings to condos. Onc…

I think there's more to it, though. If landlords or management companies are competing to buy a 4+ unit building, that having more potential buyers (foreign buyers) will tend to make the final purchase price higher than it would have been if there'd only been local buyers, regardless of who ends up with the winning bid. And certainly the higher cost of purchase will influence the amount the new owner charges tenants…

[deleted]

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#267

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kasey_junk wrote: post #257
CPLX wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does someone oppose population growth? That’s a literal question. What public policy do you endorse that has the ability to significantly reduce the number of people being born? If you don’t have one you’re just opposed to building enough houses for the people we have.

Increasing the level of education for women. Increasing the access to pre-natal care for women. Decreasing the poverty level generally and specifically for young families. Moving more people out of agricultural work. Those things are highly correlated with lowered birth rates, though I suspect the last one is probably not applicable to the US.

> I suspect the last one is probably not applicable to the US

None of them are applicable to America [1].

[1] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#268

Post by kelnos »

mdasen wrote: post #209
fleddr wrote: post #121

I want to give some push-back regarding the often-heard phrase that governments should stop restricting supply. I'll be using the situation in the Netherlands to explore some complexities. These may not apply everywhere, but it serves to illustrate that the situation is far more complex than "stupid zoning". First, the reason the Netherlands is in a similar situation as Canada (400K home prices, very tight supply) is…

The problem is that restricting purchasing is a tiny stop-gap. It might be a useful stop-gap depending on the circumstances, but it won't actually solve the problem. It's like having a hole in your boat, tossing two bucket-fulls of water out, and then calling it a day. The boat is better off, but the water is still coming in and eventually the problem will be back and will keep getting worse. So Canada has shed a sma…

Yes. I mentioned this elsewhere, but Vancouver and Toronto have had foreign-buyer taxes on the books for a while now. Data seems to show that it has indeed dramatically reduced foreign purchases, but it's not at all clear that homes have become any more affordable in those areas. They need to build, period.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#269

Post by HWR_14 »

kelnos wrote: post #260
HWR_14 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone who buys a single family home is depriving a family of the ability to own a home. A 4+ unit complex is unlikely to fall into the same situation. Those are often rented out. You're right that it might prevent owned condos from forming instead of apartments, but the only thing that gap allows is the sale of an entire complex, and the only thing it prevents is conversion of new apartment buildings to condos. Onc…

I think there's more to it, though. If landlords or management companies are competing to buy a 4+ unit building, that having more potential buyers (foreign buyers) will tend to make the final purchase price higher than it would have been if there'd only been local buyers, regardless of who ends up with the winning bid. And certainly the higher cost of purchase will influence the amount the new owner charges tenants…

> certainly the higher cost of purchase will influence the amount the new owner charges tenants to live there.

I don't think it will hurt tenants if their building sells for more money, unless there are any legal limitations based on sale price of a building with regard to raising the rents. But just market forces shouldn't really react at all.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#270

Post by [deleted] »

screye wrote: post #212

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…

[deleted]
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