Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

voanews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 619 posts

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#491

Post by llampx »

phpisthebest wrote: post #323
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…

1) I agree here but I have a feeling it would be unpopular policy on the democratic side of the asile if it tried to be done here in the US. 2) I am unclear why one would cap the number of houses or prevent rental. Or how that would solve the problem. Affordablity is only one reason people rent. There are alot of people that do not WANT to own. Hell I am a home owner and have often thought about selling and going bac…

I am wary of any arguments that suggest deregulating is the answer. Deregulating has practically never gone well.

The answer might be to have regulations that fit the current needs and constraints, not the ones from 60 years ago.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#492

Post by asdff »

Grimburger wrote: post #165
fleddr wrote: post #121

I want to give some push-back regarding the often-heard phrase that governments should stop restricting supply. I'll be using the situation in the Netherlands to explore some complexities. These may not apply everywhere, but it serves to illustrate that the situation is far more complex than "stupid zoning". First, the reason the Netherlands is in a similar situation as Canada (400K home prices, very tight supply) is…

This a confusing comment, looking at the stats there was more homes built from 2008-2014 than from 2014-2020. https://tradingeconomics.com/netherlands/building-permits What you are saying seems more anecdotal than evidential. Also looking at other sources it says that the wait time for a new build has blown out to 2 years: > Why has this shortage taken place? There are a couple of reasons. Fewer building permits are…

Much of Amsterdam for instance is severely restricted in terms of growth. You have a height limit in a city and also ordinances preserving agricultural land that's only 3 miles out from the dead center of Amsterdam. You can't keep a city stuck in time and expect it not to inevitably become a playground for the rich who can afford to outcompete everyone else for the limited supply, and what do you know Amsterdam is one of the most expensive cities in Europe today.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#493

Post by orwin »

db48x wrote: post #408
orwin wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Only if the buyer intends to rent it out.

Isn't the price-to-rent ratio in the us around 16? And from what i just researched, it's like 18 in Canada, so not "Only if the buyer intends to rent it out". The price-to-rent ratio is 18 in Canada, hence it's not yet a bubble, hence housing as an investment is related to renting prices more than just something to happen in a bubble.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#494

Post by llampx »

philliphaydon wrote: post #357
AussieWog93 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I honestly donno a lot about the US and it’s “projects”, but my understanding is large blocks of units in the US or the west tend to be built and left to rot. Other than Singapore are there any blocks of units that don’t get run down over time and left to rot? (Seriously question as I’m curious)

Every city in Europe?

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#495

Post by asdff »

fleddr wrote: post #121

I want to give some push-back regarding the often-heard phrase that governments should stop restricting supply. I'll be using the situation in the Netherlands to explore some complexities. These may not apply everywhere, but it serves to illustrate that the situation is far more complex than "stupid zoning". First, the reason the Netherlands is in a similar situation as Canada (400K home prices, very tight supply) is…

Zoning is a huge factor, just look at Amsterdam. Restrictive limit along with legally preserved farmland just a few miles from the center of the city, its no wonder no one is building. There's nowhere that you are allowed to.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#496

Post by raziel414 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #292
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.

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 Shangha…

> Tokyo doesn't have many high rises.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "high rises", but I don't think this is true. I live in Tokyo, inside a 10+ floor building, that's surrounded by similar buildings.

Just off the top of my head, I can think of a lot of places with multiple blocks full of high rises, such as Ginza, Shibuya, Akihabara, etc

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#497

Post by user-extended »

Negitivefrags wrote: post #219
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:…

There seems to be a general lack of political will for big projects in the west. Looking at Asia now is like what the west used to be like. I am unsure about the cause but I suspect that a lot of it is that people seem a lot more worried about consultation with locals and such. In the past the government might just decide “we are building a highway here” or “we are building all this infrastructure for houses there” a…

>Looking at Asia now is like what the west used to be like.

Housing sure is cheap in Korea, China, and Hong Kong!

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/4/28/south-koreans-st...

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#498

Post by llampx »

medvezhenok wrote: post #465
scarface74 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sold my investment properties over a decade ago. But you didn’t answer the questions. Should everyone who wants to live in a house be forced to buy no matter what stage of life they are in? What shouid the people do who can’t afford to buy?

I don't think everyone should be forced to buy - I think that the tax code should be changed in order to not favor buying so heavily over renting. A few ideas to start 1) Get rid of the mortgage interest deduction 2) Tax imputed rent same way that rent payments are taxed (so you would have to pay tax on the money you would have paid to rent from yourself) 3) Get rid of capital gains exemption ($250K per person, 500K…

> In Switzerland, 58% of the population are renters. Notably, the tax advantages of owning above are missing in Switzerland, making renting a more attractive proposition. That's what should be fixed. Don't push everyone to buy a home, but don't keep shoveling money in regressive transfers to those who do.

I don't know how familiar you are with Switzerland, but if you are trying to paint this as a good thing, it is not. Go to www.homegate.ch or www.immobilier.ch and see how much a house costs. Hint: very few are below 1 mio CHF for a family home in a good area. That's an insane amount of money, even for a good earner. People in Switzerland don't rent long-term because its a great financial decision, they rent because they can't afford to buy.

Interest-only mortgages are common here. That means you take out a mortgage and don't even try to pay it back fully, only paying back the interest your whole life and then when you die, the bank sells the house and takes its share of the capital back. There are also some tax rules around (2) from your point above, plus negative interest rates for a long time, leading to Swiss property prices going parabolic the last few decades.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#499

Post by asdff »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #118
BurningFrog wrote: post #75

One good rule of thumb is that whenever people are blaming foreigners for their problems, they're wrong. Investment in housing and price increases are related. But it's the price increases that cause the investments, not the other way around.

> One good rule of thumb is that whenever people are blaming foreigners for their problems, they're wrong. Another good rule of thumb is to not dismiss issues just because they don't fit an over-generalized idea of how all situations must work. The housing situation in Canada is weird . I visited a friend who lived in a high rise and barely saw anyone else come and go from the building the entire week I was there. Fr…

So why are they doing this in Vancouver and not like Detroit, where you can get almost 20 median priced homes (60k each) for the price of a single median price home in Vancouver (1.2m each)? It's about just buying property and storing cash right, why not try and corner the Detroit market since its actually possible with these numbers?

Because its not about just buying for property buying sake. It's just an asset. People invest in assets to hopefully see a return. The fact they are buying in vancouver and not detroit is because these investors expect to see a substantial gain with the vancouver asset versus the detroit one. SPY is down 20% this year while vancouver properties actually saw a gain, its even better to invest in vancouver real estate than the stock market currently.

So how do you walk this back and not make housing in vancouver such a great speculative asset? Easy, you devalue housing, by allowing for apartments to be built in the ~80% of vancouver that is limited to single family or low density development.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#500

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

user-extended wrote: post #497
Negitivefrags wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seems to be a general lack of political will for big projects in the west. Looking at Asia now is like what the west used to be like. I am unsure about the cause but I suspect that a lot of it is that people seem a lot more worried about consultation with locals and such. In the past the government might just decide “we are building a highway here” or “we are building all this infrastructure for houses there” a…

>Looking at Asia now is like what the west used to be like. Housing sure is cheap in Korea, China, and Hong Kong! https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/4/28/south-koreans-st...

>Housing sure is cheap in Korea, China, and Hong Kong!

Just to clarify, that was sarcasm for everyone who thought your statement was serious and didn't open your link.

Post reply on HN