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Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

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Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#361

Post by ethbr0 »

drunkenmagician wrote: post #343
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…

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.

Commercial landlords aren't the problem, per se. Ownership concentrated in a few massive entities is.

Outlawing owning >x% of a market's housing supply (for some low x) doesn't sound like the worst idea.

What we'd want is there to be (a) enough rental housing stock, (b) enough rental owning companies of comparable size to create a healthy market on rental prices, & (c) a sane balance between the number of rental and owner-occupied homes.

Part of the current imbalances are a consequence of low interest rates though, as investors could get a lot more leverage to acquire properties for rent.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#362

Post by alvah »

firecall wrote: post #308
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.

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.

Land in desirable areas with permission to build houses on it tends to increase in value. In most cases the house itself is a depreciating asset.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#363

Post by BenFranklin100 »

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…

Your’e confused about this specific conversation and the US housing market in general. I read your post several times, and can’t make heads or tails of what you’re trying to say. Sorry.

I will make one point: in the US, it’s never been the government’s job to build homes. That’s always been left primarily to the private sector. Right now however, governments won’t allow the private sector to build enough homes. They’ve made it illegal, especially apartments.

It’s like if the government banned the production of new cars. In a few years time, a 1995 Honda accord would be worth $20,000.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#364

Post by screye »

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?

Normal countryside villages actually work really well as an accompaniment to cities.

Ironically, the most desirable villages build densely around a small core and the farms spread out radially around the village itself.

[1] https://www.roadaffair.com/most-beautiful-villages-in-the-wo...

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#365

Post by orwin »

db48x wrote: post #166
orwin wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understood what GP meant, so i will try to formulate it in another way: A: People who want to live in a city need housing and are ready to either 1: pay X/month (rent) or 2: buy the house. B: This law do not create new unit to be rented or bought, and do not do anything for the cities attractiveness, IE the migratory trend will stay the same C: The renting price is complex and while location and reg…

But D is not true. If a property costs one million today, but could sell for two million in a few years, then simply buying it and holding it will earn you a reasonable rate of return even if you never rent it out. In fact renting it out is risky simply because it will make the property harder to sell when the time comes. And with a small but significant population of potential buyers excluded, the property prices wi…

But D is true though. Housing price is mostly based on the price-to-rent ratio when outside a bubble, and the average investors know it way better than the average Canadian [0]

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-to-rent-ratio.asp

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#366

Post by lazide »

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.

Car collectors don’t turn around and rent cars. Thought car rental companies do - and they definitely impact prices for vehicles.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#367

Post by AlbertCory »

> Many experts have also said the ban on foreign buyers — who accounted for less than 5% of home ownership in Canada, according to the national statistical agency — would not have the desired effect of making homes more affordable.

"Many experts have also said" : garbage "journalism." Who are these "experts"?

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#368

Post by rcarr »

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.

Mid rise is a better solution. Beautiful buildings like the ones in New York. Dense housing, but not so dense that it starts to become dystopian.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#369

Post by ethbr0 »

scarface74 wrote: post #349
philliphaydon wrote: post #324

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 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...

While getting FHA 203(k) might be easy, the details are a pain in the ass. I got one to get a new roof on my first house.

Imagine all the usual shitty mis-communication and last-minute paperwork of dealing with a mortgage agent... plus last-minute fun with contractors, who are used to answering on a very different schedule. E.g. "Oh, I need 2 more competitive quotes for the same work in the next 2 days, even though you've already found your contractor" or "Oh, these quotes don't specify exactly the same work, so need to be redone."

At the end of the day, the process requires you to waste a lot of contractors' time soliciting bids for work you're never going to hire them for.

Hindsight 20/20, I would encourage finding any other method of financing work. Make your mortgage as simple as possible, so there's a chance the agent might not @&$# it up. Then deal with contractors on your own timeline.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#370

Post by BenFranklin100 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #355
BenFranklin100 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but no. Land sometimes appreciate in value. The homes built on the land nearly always depreciate in value. And when land appreciates in value (aka by being near schools, hospitals, and well-paying jobs), we distribute the higher cost of the land among multiple homes by building taller, denser types of housing. This is presently illegal in much of the US however.

Many SFH's here in Seattle are being torn down to build multiple 3 story town homes with no yards and rooftop decks (I live in one). They still go for a million, but there are plenty of people here with that purchasing power to buy them. Still cheaper than a 2 bedroom apartment in Beijing.

Yep, tell me about. Part of the reason is that the market is still out of whack from decades of under-building. However, the bigger reason is that new homes have always been relatively expensive. The construction costs have to be immediately recouped for one thing, and they’re often located in more desirable areas.

The beauty of new homes is that they give the Amazon tech bro something to buy instead of coming into your neighborhood and bidding up the price of the older homes. That’s the good things about new homes: They help keep old homes cheaper.

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