Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes • Hacker News Board

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#481

Post by llampx » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 8:25 AM UTC

stoppingin wrote: post #306

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 nea…

> 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.

Funny, I would have the opposite opinion. Just because someone was alive and rich back in 1950 or whenever these cute little houses were built, doesn't give them more of a right to live in that area than others, in my opinion.

Let's face it, most of these cute litte historic houses are probably owned by the same mega-rich investors and CCP party members as your apartment building.

1 person having a garden does not justify 15 families not being able to live there.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#482

Post by givemeethekeys » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 8:29 AM UTC

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/

Wouldn't the following still work?

Step 1: Create a Canadian company. Own 100% of its shares.

Step 2: Buy property in all-cash transactions.

Step 3: Enjoy ownership as a foreign buyer.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#483

Post by robocat » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 8:30 AM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #434

stoppingin wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My hypothesis has been that renters stopped voting. Who are these renters who stopped voting? I can only speak for Australia, however the average age of renters has been rising for decades. Most of Gen Y have come to terms with the fact they will likely never own property in a major city. These people keep voting, but their vote isn't accomplishing anything. > Density hurts landowners by decreasing property values…

> How does density actually hurt landowners? If you own a house in a heavily consolidated urban area your property value will hardly have decreased. Correct because, and I can only speak for America, those big cities stopped building. San Francisco alone is short about a quarter million homes, like 33% of the existing population. There’s a whole Wikipedia article on it. That’s why it’s so unaffordable. > Also conside…

> San Francisco alone is short about a quarter million homes

If they added a quarter million homes, do you think they would still be short another quarter million homes?

Not saying densification is bad. But in some cities the density can keep increasing and not have any drop in demand. Apartment prices in dense cities don’t drop?

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#484

Post by asdff » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 8:35 AM UTC

themitigating wrote: post #289

RestlessMind wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course all cities should strive to be like Houston, a city surrounded and intersected by highways. The lower part of Manhattan would have had a highway through it but instead it'sa cultural epicenter ( https://untappedcities.com/2013/09/11/nyc-that-never-was-rob... )

To be fair with both the lower and mid manhattan expressway plans, they were at one point planning for buildings being built above and below the elevated grades. It wasn't just going to be dead space.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#485

Post by asdff » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 8:38 AM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #399

seattle_spring wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A full half of the voting base, or more, fervently vote against their own best interest. Seems like it’s happening in Europe and has taken deep roots in places like Brazil, too. People can’t really be surprised that bad things are happening when they explicitly vote for bad things to happen.

Surely you’re talking about all those wealthy HNers who vote for higher taxes on themselves. Why is it that when some people vote for their principles but against their wallet it’s a good thing but when others do it it’s a bad thing?

If you think being taxed is a bad thing then you don't really understand what taxes do

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#486

Post by asdff » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 8:42 AM UTC

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.

I don't think renters ever voted significantly. That being said, this is true. 60% of LA county rents, yet in local elections, 60% of voters are homeowners, and only half of eligible voters participated in the last election despite everyone being mailed a ballot by default and having almost a month to fill it out.

Density also helps landowners, lots that are zoned for multifamily are worth more.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#487

Post by asdff » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 8:45 AM UTC

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…

A lot of this can be solved by simply updating zoning code to allow for more housing. Housing is only a lucrative investment because its been made artificially scarce through restrictive zoning.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#488

Post by asdff » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 8:51 AM UTC

QIYGT wrote: post #321

dionidium wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same in NYC which has been creating ~3x more jobs than homes in recent decades.

In SF the ratio is like 7 jobs per unit of housing built, its really really bad

https://sf.curbed.com/2017/7/26/16040938/san-francisco-jobs-...

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#489

Post by asdff » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 8:53 AM UTC

rcarr wrote: post #368

xvilka wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The solution is to peg it to job growth. Today in nyc you have nimbys in greenwich village who hope it stays as it looked the last 50 years for the next 50 years. Such a neighborhood near so many jobs and transit cannot remain a mid rise tenement district until the end of time.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#490

Post by subradios » Tue, Jan 03, 2023, 8:55 AM UTC

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #341

plantain wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

College students are an excellent apolitical example - these are people who are guaranteed transient, hate the population who actually live there ("townies" amirite?) and on top, they're loud, party a lot, and do other forms of criminal activity.

Houses form a large portion of someone's net worth, moving costs a lot of money and besides, the person you want to force to move may be unable to move.

Why would they vote to let you build university housing next door to them?

Every single aspect of that dorm negatively impacts their quality of life, and further reduces their ability to afford to live anywhere else.

You can say this is "shortsighted" because of urbanist sympathies, but the reality is that voters are basically perpetually punished for allowing any kind of building. Over time, cabals of "absolutely not" form.