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Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

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Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#301

Post by dionidium »

katbyte wrote: post #262
TrackerFF wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think the even crazier fact that explains the housing crisis is that the perception in Vancouver is that the city allows tons of new housing. If you ask residents, they'll tell you all about how much the city has changed. People are naturally conservative with respect to their immediate environment.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#302

Post by amake »

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.

that's the joke

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#303

Post by BenFranklin100 »

philliphaydon wrote: post #261
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 u…

The reasons we don’t have enough homes is because governments have made it illegal to build enough new homes to meet demand.

You are essentially say that the presence of car collectors leads to car shortages.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#304

Post by seanmcdirmid »

bamboozled wrote: post #160
mavelikara wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are only foreign rich people, and not local ones, interested in your mountain town? > What annoys m the most about these parasites, is they don't pay tax, they buy a property, use all the local resources I pay for as a tax payer, contribute zero to the local area. Why are they exempt from property taxes?

I don’t want to name countries but they’re buyers from a country where people have a lot of disposable cash, where I live people don’t have that kind of money, that’s why. The property taxes are a flat rate for everyone who lives here. This is to be fair everyone I guess. Anyway, whatever the tax is, it’s easy for the people with money to pay it, it’s not a disincentive. Property tax and income tax are different thin…

> I don’t want to name countries but they’re buyers from a country where people have a lot of disposable cash, where I live people don’t have that kind of money, that’s why.

They don't just have a lot of disposable cash, they would rather get some of it out of their country and out from its control as insurance. An authoritarian government can completely wipe you out next week without much safeguards, so people in this country hedge like crazy.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#305

Post by antiterra »

jimmaswell wrote: post #280
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…

Sardine-can conditions become less necessary by the day as more industries move to WFH. Who chooses to live in Manhattan if their job doesn't demand it? Demand for nicer living conditions with lawns, space, garages, and fresh air will rise as the urban exodus continues. The city is obsolete in the era of WFH. Let these unnatural aberrations recede. Humans were meant to live in small tribes and we see how their progra…

Have you ever actually been to Manhattan?

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-07/is-new...

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#306

Post by stoppingin »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #230
stoppingin wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> plethora of totally valid reasons why people would be opposed to endless urban sprawl, consolidation, and population growth Totally agree. But the counterpart of that is rising housing costs. If you accept that tradeoff, you aren't a NIMBY. This covers many homeowners. But renters opposed to development while complaining about housing costs are trying to suppress their housing costs by increasing others'. That exte…

Thank you for taking the time to make a nice reply, and for not taking my criticism of your post personally. I really appreciate that.

I feel like you have a very arbitrary definition of NIMBY. I'm writing this post right now from the 14th floor of a highrise building in Sydney's inner city, in the apartment I rent from a landlord who lives in mainland China. There are still rows of historic terrace houses in the nearby suburbs that have been heritage listed. I'm sure property developers would love to turn these into more highrise apartments. Even though I'm renting, I don't want these to be replaced with endless new apartments. I could list a dozen reasons too. For one, I don't think this would help create a city that people would actually enjoy living in.

I've been told by people who would know that one of Sydney's big problems is that property developers are able to artificially inflate property value by staggering the release of newly developed property onto the market. So more development isn't necessarily going to solve any of this country's problems with property value. It hasn't so far.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#307

Post by seanmcdirmid »

fatbird wrote: post #231
bamboozled wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, I wasn't fully clear. I'm talking about Canada, where Chinese investment is only 4%, contrary to perception that "Chinese money" is the source of our troubles. 4% is still a significant impact, but it's pretty much pure racism that singles out the Chinese as the primary driver.

Aren't Chinese investments relatively restricted to Vancouver and Toronto areas? If that 4% is focused, it could have huge impact in those areas.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#308

Post by firecall »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #303
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…

The reasons we don’t have enough homes is because governments have made it illegal to build enough new homes to meet demand. You are essentially say that the presence of car collectors leads to car shortages.

Those things are not the same though!

Cars and Houses do not perform in the same way financially.

Houses tend to increase in value, Cars tend to decline in value.

There are, of course, outliers in both markets.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#309

Post by eldaisfish »

josho wrote: post #276
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…

I don’t necessarily see a problem with point 2. Renting a house often creates supply. The owner will create a basement suite or a nanny suite over the garage. If housing shortage was solved then that also kills the profit motive of renting out all but the most ideal houses for renting. The root cause in Canada is the neoliberal policy that started in the 90s that ended government building low income housing. They lef…

this misses the point. The root of the housing shortage problem in Canada, Australia and New Zealand is zoning. Zoning plus NIMBYs make housing wasteful by allowing only single family houses in vast areas of prime land.

This is a simple supply-demand problem, not anything complicated. The solution is equally simple - make zoning laws basic and limited in scope.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#310

Post by asdff »

themitigating wrote: post #135
asdff wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is symbolism when everyone who is paid to think in this space considers it not to be a solution to the root of the problem, which is a lack of housing supply to keep up with job growth. You've banned foreign investors, great, there are still domestic investors who will fill the void in the market like gas in a small room. If you want there to not be investors, then housing shouldn't be such a great speculative ass…

"local governments have opted to constrain supply and support investors rather than the workers they represent in their constituency." The local governments zoning laws might benefit investors but that may not have been goal of the government. What should they do to support workers?

>What should they do to support workers?

Zone for more housing.

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