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Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

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Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#291

Post by dionidium »

arcticbull wrote: post #163
plantain wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

> Density hurts landowners by decreasing property values

Tell that to these folks:

https://twitter.com/curtlsmlchael/status/1606993882679590912

Upzoning in high-demand areas would unlock billions of dollars in value for existing homeowners.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#292

Post by seanmcdirmid »

xvilka wrote: post #208
stoppingin wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sydney's metropolitan area is already oversized. People are already regularly commuting for well over an hour to the city center on congested public transport, or driving on congested roadways. I don't think Melbourne is much different Where would we put 25,000 new homes today?

Just do it like any big Asian city: 1) build high-rises 2) build more metro lines Look at Tokio or Shanghai, as an example.

Tokyo doesn't have many high rises.

Shanghai has lots of high rises; well, they are mostly 30 story apartment buildings that can be reliably built with concrete and unskilled labor. Yet, there is a lot of speculation market in the China so prices are still high even if supply expands (and many apartments are empty because they are just being used as speculative investments). One of the reason I didn't look at Shanghai was commute times (Microsoft's Shanghai office is in the boonies vs. Beijing where the office is at least inside the 4th ring rood).

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#293

Post by cameronh90 »

betaby wrote: post #240
cameronh90 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Most of the food I eat comes from hundreds of thousands of miles away. And that's precisely the problem! Carbon footprint per capital is very high in Canada and for remote and colder locations it would be even higher!

I live in Europe but that's still the case, and apparently it doesn't really affect the carbon footprint because the majority of emissions are last mile.

That remote part of Canada would still be an issue though because it doesn't look like there are any train lines, major rivers or sea access.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#294

Post by antiterra »

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…

What are you on about? Canada has been building high rises like crazy for the past two decades, and those are exactly what are often held empty by speculative investors.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#295

Post by philliphaydon »

andreareina wrote: post #286
philliphaydon wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 u…

In Singapore HDB flats are still being used for investment and my generation (30s) and younger are still feeling the pinch. IMO there’s (at least) one part missing to the BTO sauce: you got a government subsidy, you don’t get to sell on the open market. I don’t know what the alternative is, whether it’s selling back to the government (adjusted for inflation and depreciation somehow) or what, but currently there’s a s…

Yeah it's not a bullet proof system but I think it still works relatively well.

If I understand correctly if you own a HDB, you can buy a Condo? But if you have a Condo you cannot buy an HDB? And then in some scenarios you must pick which one you will keep.

Since I'm not Singaporean I'm not well versed in the ins and outs of the system but I do think on the surface its much better than most other countries.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#296

Post by sgerenser »

ars wrote: post #114
smnrchrds wrote: post #55

If you think this law will be easy to sidestep, please read this post first: https://old.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/zz92li/prohi... It appears that the law is well-designed to avoid such abuses and loopholes. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1494/

It also appears to ban Canadian REIT's. Wonder how they are going to deal with the fallout from that.

Don’t most REITs own either multi family or commercial properties, which are exempt from this law?

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#297

Post by wenc »

LarryMullins wrote: post #283
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…

> The country is running out of space really fast I get what you're saying, but it's kinda funny since Canada is enormous and most of it is mostly empty.

I think OP was being sarcastic.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#298

Post by LAC-Tech »

rr808 wrote: post #217
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.

Global population will peak this century. Birth rates are dropping everywhere, and yes this includes the developing world (West Africa is half what it was, India is below replacement rate). The pool of working age immigrants will grow smaller and smaller. How much longer will we kick this can down the road?

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#299

Post by dionidium »

stoppingin wrote: post #215
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> There are a plethora of totally valid reasons why people would be opposed to endless urban sprawl, consolidation, and population growth.

There really aren't, though, in the sense that the costs (both societal and individual) drastically outweigh the benefits. Of course prohibitions on new construction are narrowly beneficial to specific individuals. Who wants some guys starting up new construction at 7AM next door? If you like your quiet little block, then why on Earth would you want it to densify? Somebody else's construction project is little more than an annoyance, after all. If you can ban it, then great!

The problem is that these individual preferences come with enormous costs, both economic and with respect to individual freedom. When weighed against the downsides, those banal individual preferences about densification are no longer compelling.

In short, yes, people do have rational, coherent reasons to oppose growth, but, no, those complaints are not in the end valid.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#300

Post by [deleted] »

acyou wrote: post #236
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…

Would you be able to please expand on this and explicitly say what you want to say? Wondering what you mean by "sprawly nations".

[deleted]
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