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

theglobeandmail.com

191–200 of 207 posts

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

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but not everyone can live in a house they own all the time.

Housing co-ops are a thing that exist. Governments can also conceivably own rental properties. It’s property management that does most of the work anyway and they get paid like anyone else to do a job. Landlords are a drain on the economy and there are viable alternative models. We do not need landlords.

Maybe I just don’t understand the difference between landlord and what you describe. I thought any rental property would have a land lord?

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

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes daydream about building a city, just one, that prioritises cycling and walking over cars. If you like cars, you can literally live everywhere else.

In NA there's pretty much only Montreal

Let’s build a second city for those who prefer not to have cars dominate. :)

I guess the question is if that alone is enough of a selling point to form a city.

And then, the issue is always how you prevent the nimbys from taking over once the first batch of housing has been built.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing co-ops are a thing that exist. Governments can also conceivably own rental properties. It’s property management that does most of the work anyway and they get paid like anyone else to do a job. Landlords are a drain on the economy and there are viable alternative models. We do not need landlords.

Maybe I just don’t understand the difference between landlord and what you describe. I thought any rental property would have a land lord?

Landlords are the people that own the property and take profit for it. Sometimes they manage the property, in a lot of cases they don’t. Sometimes they are corporations, sometimes they aren’t. In any case they are collecting rents and taking profit from those rents solely by virtue of owning the property.

In the alternatives I mentioned, co-ops and government, neither of those entities need profit. Co-ops are just owned by the collective of the residents. They would pay their rent in order to pay off taxes and utilities and maintenance expenses.

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada is empty for a good reason. Explore around and you'll see why. Sheer mountain, muskeg and tundra. Where people live are the places where it's reasonable to live. Everywhere else is misery or impossibility.

The land is owned by the crown. In private hands it would be used productively. It has nothing to do with "misery or impossibility."

A great many people tried to use crown land in the past and gave up because it was useless bog too remote and not worth it. See: Haida Gwaii Naikoon. Cape Scott colony, and more.

When folks don't live somewhere, there's usually a reason, and it's usually "the land is terrible" not the government is forcing people to not use it.

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

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there were absolutely zero investment homes, then the price of a typical small home right now would be 150k.

Can you show your working on this assertion?

Far less demand.

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

#196
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, the "private market" had a chance to fix the problem but instead chose to squeeze tenants harder and harder for decades.

Housing is more or less maxed out with respect to zoning laws in a lot of places. Those come from the government. Rezone to allow higher density and people will build. It is functionally illegal to build more housing.

Yes, because of NIMBYism. Existing property owners benefit from an undersupply of housing, so they lobby for restrictions in order to reduce competition which would drive down prices and rents.

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

#197
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Could you give some examples?

Within capitalism, we could have some kind of system to provide equity to tenants. They are effectively already paying a mortgage (just not their own).

Outside of capitalism? Many more possibilities.

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

#198
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give some examples?

Within capitalism, we could have some kind of system to provide equity to tenants. They are effectively already paying a mortgage (just not their own). Outside of capitalism? Many more possibilities.

> we could have some kind of system to provide equity to tenants

This sounds interesting. Is this hypothetical? How does that equity get transferred/slowly leaked to the next tenant? How does one liquify it?

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The large companies just don’t account for very many homes. Once you control out for homes under construction, that just isn’t the issue. The issue is that we dramatically restrict how much housing anyone can build, specifically, upward.

Zoning hurts, labor shortage hurts, speculation hurts, sprawl hurts, etc. We don’t really need to look for a single cause. All of these things are happening and interacting with each other.

In general - zoning causes the sprawl and the speculation, and worsens the labor shortage. It is the only root cause.

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The large companies just don’t account for very many homes. Once you control out for homes under construction, that just isn’t the issue. The issue is that we dramatically restrict how much housing anyone can build, specifically, upward.

The city I live in isn't restricting it. Condos are going up as fast as they can be built and the parks are still filling up with tent cities and rents are still doubling. Something just doesn't add up. I'm in Canada (don't want to give exact city, sorry).

I’m on King on a 504a right now. It’s massively restricted. You just can’t tell by looking. “Lots” isn’t a measurement.
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