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Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

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Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#341

Post by BenFranklin100 »

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.

It’s the other way around. Zoning changed dramatically and local governments began to aggressively intervene in the residential housing market.

Before 1900, the governments more or less stayed out of the details of residential housing. There were restrictions on what could be done with a piece of land, but the government generally did not get too involved in whether a single family vs multi-family apartment could be built on a specific parcel.

The 1926 SCOTUS case, Euclid vs. Ambler, changed all this. The SCOTUS ruled it was legal for cities to ban certain types of homes, such as cheaper, denser, apartments. By creating an artificial shortage of homes or by directly forbidding types of homes, the wrong type of poor minorities could be kept out of neighborhoods without officially banning them. Back then this was mainly blacks, but nowadays it’s broadened to include any type of poor minority in disfavor, such as college students.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#342

Post by QIYGT »

jimmaswell wrote: post #335
QIYGT wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't tell whether you're being sarcastic. The world you describe sounds disgusting, and NYC is more popular than ever in our new WFH world.

> The world you describe sounds disgusting Normal countryside villages are disgusting to you?

As it turns out, the best villages have neither lawns nor garages.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#343

Post by drunkenmagician »

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…

Having lived in both NZ and Singapore I can second these comments. Although the 'a business cannot rent out a home' bit would probably not work in practice. There's definitely an ongoing need for commercial landlords, although govt's could do more to ensure this model is sustainable and fair for both landlord and renter, usually it swings in favour of one or the other.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#344

Post by dboreham »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #327
firecall wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Houses tend to increase in value, Cars tend to decline in value. this is an observation that may be mostly supported by data right now, but also is not super meaningful. WHY do houses appreciate? why do cars depreciate? The answer is supply and demand: supply of housing is far more regulated than supply of cars - height limits and zoning are frequent reasons, but any sort of building approval process with unnecessa…

Houses are basically NFTs

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#345

Post by scarface74 »

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…

> It's built for sale, not built for rental.

Why is there such an emphasis on ownership? Yes I’ve owned five properties - two to live in permanently, one to live in half the year (the other half we travel), and two investment properties. The tenants I had in my rental properties were in no position to buy a home or for that matter to rent a whole house. I rented by the room.

I actively discourage young people from buying homes. They need the flexibility to move to where the jobs are.

Besides, are you really going to discourage building multi unit housing for rents? How is that going to help housing affordability?

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#346

Post by djrobstep »

stoppingin wrote: post #189
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:…

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?

Where the existing ones already are, but higher.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#347

Post by MonkeyMalarky »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #314
josho wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>They left the free market to do its thing. And this is the end result of decades of free enterprise. We’ve built lots of housing for upper middle class because that’s profitable for builders and largely left the poor/young to be screwed. Is that true? I'd imagine building a big block of, say, 100 units to be far more capital efficient than building a few freestanding homes, if zoning laws allowed it.

The plethera of shoebox condos in Toronto attest to this fact. Then people wonder why birth rates are so low when the only options are having a baby while living in a 1 bdrm condo with a galley kitchen, or moving hours away from your job.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#349

Post by scarface74 »

philliphaydon wrote: post #324
BenFranklin100 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. The price of a old car, a new car, a cheap car, and an expensive luxuary car, all vary greatly. Cars are more or less open for purchase by everyone. Houses a fixed in a location, you cannot pick it up and mo…

> It's MUCH harder to buy an empty lot, and get a loan from a bank to build a house on that lot now.

No it’s not

https://www.lendingtree.com/home/fha/getting-an-fha-construc...

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#350

Post by notwokeno »

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.

If people can't choose who they socialize with they'd rather just not socialize.

Most of what you're seeing in the US is the result of one group pushing another group on a third group and the third group deciding that it's just not worth bothering.

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