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Investors account for 30 per cent of home buying in Canada, data show

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Re: Investors account for 30 per cent of home buying in Canada, data show

#111

Post by pjc50 »

achrono wrote: post #14
ChumpGPT wrote: post #3

Canada has very little private land ownership.The Federal Gov hoards land and creates a severe shortage of land for individuals to purchase. They need to open up the billions of acres of accessible land to 1st time buyers and then to existing property owners. Especially in the Province of Ontario. They also intentionally keep interest rates low so existing house/property owners can leverage their properties to buy mo…

>I'm not sure of the unintended consequences of my proposals, but they couldn't be worse than what is happening now. I wonder how large the percentage of buyers would be who would buy on-behalf of someone -- e.g. person A is an existing homebuyer, their cousin person B is not, and to avoid the prohibitive tax rate, person A gets B to buy it on their behalf so that it is legally not an investment. This practice is sad…

> person A gets B to buy it on their behalf

B then owns the house. A has to have a pretty strong hold over B given they don't have a legal claim on it.

Re: Investors account for 30 per cent of home buying in Canada, data show

#112

Post by epistasis »

__derek__ wrote: post #2

> The central bank defines an investor as a buyer who took out a mortgage to buy the property while maintaining a mortgage on another home. In the US, a lot has been made about large investment companies buying up houses, but this is something different entirely: > This category represents homebuyers with multiple mortgaged properties. This means investors are homebuyers who either: > * purchase an investment propert…

Honestly I think that owner occupied homes should count as investment homes too. There is scant difference between the economic interests of a landlord and a homeowner.

Which is what lets homeowners buy a second home so much more easily than younger people. The asset price inflation of homes in Canada has been remarkable at concentrating the productive labor of working Canadians into the idle hands of homeowners.

Re: Investors account for 30 per cent of home buying in Canada, data show

#113

Post by JambalayaJim »

ako wrote: post #95
jseliger wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder what country, besides Japan, will be the first one to 'break' and realize that, when you restrict supply in the face of rising demand, prices rise. The current situation is sustainable for as long as voters keep voting in NIMBY politicians. Something may give, but something may not. https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-en...

The problem is that it's a location supply problem, rather than a housing supply problem. People all want to live in the same locations, that are already full of houses.

Toronto is full of single family homes, right in the heart of the city. This should not have happened.

You should be able to density.

Re: Investors account for 30 per cent of home buying in Canada, data show

#114

Post by pjc50 »

likenesstheft wrote: post #15
newbie578 wrote: post #4

I do wonder what country will be the first one to ‘break’ and implement restrictions on buying homes. The current situation is not sustainable, and soon something will need to give.

[flagged]

The real figure seems more like 500k, or about one percent per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_immigration_statistics

Which categories of Canadian visa do you want closed?

Re: Investors account for 30 per cent of home buying in Canada, data show

#115

Post by CapstanRoller »

carom wrote: post #56
bugglebeetle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, then do Georgism or some other form of land value tax. Distinction without a difference. Destroying your society for the benefit of real estate speculators is insanity, is my point.

It's funny because LVT would reward multi family investment properties while raising taxes for single family home owners.

How is that "funny"?

The continued proliferation of cookie-cutter detached single family homes with useless lawns is big part of several problems we currently face as a society.

Incentivizing denser housing is a good idea.

Re: Investors account for 30 per cent of home buying in Canada, data show

#116

Post by bugglebeetle »

carom wrote: post #78
goethes_kind wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments should just build a bunch of socialized housing and rent it at a rent just high enough to offset the expenditure (i.e. way below private market value). That would put downward pressure on rents. That is what Vienna did and they are the only popular city in Europe without a serious housing crisis.

That would be so perverse if the government gave itself a monopoly on building housing. Just change zoning and make it legal for the private market to meet the need. Look at all the builders remedy projects in Santa Monica to see that this works.

Builders Remedy affect on the affordability of Santa Monica is so minimal as to be irrelevant.

Re: Investors account for 30 per cent of home buying in Canada, data show

#117

Post by sokoloff »

__derek__ wrote: post #66
sokoloff wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like it would also include people who are buying a new property to occupy as owners that will be mortgaged, while planning to later sell their existing, also-mortgaged, owner-occupied property. Those people are not investors by any useful English-language definition, but would be counted as such by this method. This is exactly the situation we were in when we bought our current home, and anecdotally, is not…

I believe those would be called repeat buyers under the Bank of Canada methodology because the Transunion data should connect their new mortgage with the discharge of their previous mortgage.

If someone had a house with a mortgage, bought another house with a mortgage in May, and discharged the original mortgage in October (or the following February), were they a repeat buyer or an investor? Plain English would say "repeat buyer", but I can't tell definitively how they'd be treated in the data.

The one clear reference in the article strongly suggests they'd be categorized as an investor: "The central bank defines an investor as a buyer who took out a mortgage to buy the property while maintaining a mortgage on another home."

Re: Investors account for 30 per cent of home buying in Canada, data show

#118

Post by acover »

ako wrote: post #106
acover wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Ontario the median hourly wage is $27 cad. It's not some huge difference. Probably on the level of other university graduates. For comparison US GDP per capita is 71k usd and San Francisco salaries are 172k usd. That's a big difference.

San Francisco tech salaries are not representative for the entire US tech industry. And on top of that, San Francisco salaries drive up housing prices, so i'm not sure if working in SF results in a higher discretionary income.

Toronto tech salaries are not representative for all of Ontario either.

Bay area tech salaries are 3x gdp per capita.

Toronto tech salaries are 1.2x gdp per capita.

Funnily enough, the 3x higher salaries in San Francisco actually make it more affordable than working tech in Toronto.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

Re: Investors account for 30 per cent of home buying in Canada, data show

#119

Post by CapstanRoller »

tptacek wrote: post #103
Ghostt8117 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you are an investor. You do not live in the home you purchased. You rent it to earn money, i.e., an investment. This creates a huge problem. Rental properties have different regulations in different places. My brother-in-law was not given a lease renewal amnd was forced to move (within 30 days) while, where I live, that is illegal unless there is cause for eviction. It creates instability. Also, my rent increase…

Housing would be (much) more difficult if nobody could rent and everyone had to own the homes they lived in, not easier.

There are more options beyond "own a house" and "pay someone else's mortgage without getting any equity"
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