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Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

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Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#561

Post by Tiktaalik »

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…

You picked a very good anecdote because it was precisely the era of governments razing entire neighbourhoods to arbitrarily build highways without the support of the locals who lived there that induced the backlash in the 70s against top down government planning.

Basically government poisoned the well itself and has still yet to really deal with the consequences.

Now things have gone too far, what was once local activism has been taken over by established wealth interests, and development is paralyzed.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#562

Post by Tiktaalik »

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.

The Federal Canadian government used to aid the construction of tons of housing, both market and non-market all through the 60s and 70s. It ended with the austerity budgets in 1993 of the Liberals under Jean Chretien, at which point the Federal government pretty much entirely got out of housing and left it to the provinces.

Provinces didn't fill in the gaps the same way. Shrugged their shoulders and mostly downloaded the problem to municipalities.

Municipalities didn't have any sort of revenue generating capacity to build social housing at all, nor did they have the ability to incentivize market housing, so only a limited amount of very profitable market housing gets built.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#563

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #536
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it too but only to visit and party every now and then, since, due to the massive liberal and expat/immigrant population there, it's the only place in Germany where I feel comfortable and at home, and not in a conservative conformist dystopian nightmare, despite me being fluent in German. But with the general poor state of the city despite the high income taxes, and that terrible housing market over there I can…

I see Berliners crying about their rent every day, but compared to Munich rent is still affordable in Berlin.

>but compared to Munich rent is still affordable in Berlin

I hear this a lot, and this may still have been the case 4 years ago or so, but I feel this is mostly coming from people who found housing in Berlin before Covid and aren't experiencing the current market.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#564

Post by rfwhyte »

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:…

It's because the current entrenched rules and regulations surrounding the housing markets in pretty much every western nation were written by landlords and property developers and the current system, like pretty much every system in the world these days was designed to exclusively benefit the already wealthy. Governments do nothing about the "Problem" because to them its a feature rather than a bug. The system is designed to protect the wealth and power of the wealthy, rather than provide public goods like housing.

I mean if anyone could build housing wherever they wanted, that would make land and house prices go down, which would mean rich people who own lots of land and lots of houses would therefore be less rich, so that will obviously never happen. Much better for the rich to stay rich and for the rest of us to be homeless according the powers that be.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#565

Post by rfwhyte »

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.

The rich used their money and power to get their cronies and puppets elected to governments the world over so they could rewrite rules to their benefit.

Just look at the increase in corporate money and lobbying in politics to see a pretty shocking corollary with pretty much every major ill the world is suffering from these days.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#566

Post by asdff »

Ziomislaw wrote: post #528
asdff wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

taxes give more money for politicians to steal, whats good about it?

I'd rather have politicians steal it and use at least a sliver of it for some good than for private individuals to sit on top of their pile of gold while people are in tents outside their compound.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#567

Post by asdff »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #525
asdff wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you think being taxed is a good thing you really don’t understand what taxes do. I’m very sympathetic to the argument that they are a necessary evil of a functioning society but to call taking peoples resources under threat of violence good implies a perverted moral compass to put it mildly. Regardless, that’s not the point. The point is that there’s a double standard.

It's not taking peoples resources, you never had that money to begin with, you are just the point in which its being collected.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#568

Post by asdff »

cheeseomlit wrote: post #534
asdff wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Taxes in a fiat currency system only exist to remove currency from circulation to prevent excessive inflation. There is no real connection between tax revenue and government expenditure since any shortfall can simply be printed. If you are a US citizen every dollar you've ever given to the federal government has been thrown into a 30 trillion dollar black hole never to be seen again, I wouldn't characterize it as a g…

Taxes exist to fund the government and I support having a government and public programs.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#569

Post by petermcneeley »

JamisonM wrote: post #448
petermcneeley wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets try to avoid the sophistry. I dont think the native Americans were wrong to consider the influx of European settlers as being a threat to their existence. Also like "But it's the price increases that cause the investments, not the other way around." is completely nonsensical. Investment is about the expectation of the future price. If something has increased in price it might indicate that it will decrease in pr…

The expectation of the future price of housing for foreign investors is entirely about believing that future construction will be restricted. If investors, foreign or otherwise, believed that housing was a market that responded to market forces in a timely manner they would not invest. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the foreign investors: 1. Believe that their domestic real estate market is overpriced or w…

>upper-middle class Chinese person looking to secure assets outside the purview of the authoritarian government they are forced to live under will pay a premium

I think this plays such a significant role in the motives behind the foreign investment that even if housing was going down they would still make this trade.

Re: Canada bans most foreigners from buying homes

#570

Post by BurningFrog »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #559
BurningFrog wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like you shut down a very profitable export industry. Why not keep building these condos and rake in the money?

Well I think the main reason is that it annoyed the populace that felt they were now having trouble buying a place due to all this foreign competition, and politicians need to serve the populace, not foreign investors. But the real problem is that building housing is a physical process that takes time and limited manpower. If we're devoting our trades to building empty condos for rich people, then they are not spendi…

Thanks.

That makes some pragmatic sense, but to me, it's at best short-sighted.

At worst it's a cover for NIMBY-ism and/or xenophobia.

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