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Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

bnnbloomberg.ca

201–210 of 395 posts

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#201
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s utterly bonkers. The median single family home in Vancouver costs CAD $1.9M (USD $1.5M).

Vancouver is famous all over the world as an attractive city (for example I live in Berlin, Germany, and many people I know would like to visit Vancouver). I've never been there, but I have heard it is next to the sea AND next to the mountains, and it lies in a first world country with a solid economy and good health care. Maybe the prices just reflect demand?

And likely it will not be affected much by the climate change.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#202
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> housing has been traditionally an investment to earn a living when you retire, whether individually … Do you mean that people are expected to buy additional houses to make money from, after retirement? I don’t think that’s ever been the case.

I think he means rental income.

Yes, but you can’t rent out the house you live in. So that means you need to buy multiple houses…

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#203
post #3

Should housing be a primary vehicle for investment and the de facto way of making money? Or should it serve as a necessity and basic aspect of life?

In America, we have just made it too difficult to build new houses.

We have short circuited the market equilibrium.

The real way to make money here would be in building new houses. It is somewhat odd to me how this point never comes up. At least where I am, there is absolutely no shortage of land that could have new houses built but there is so much red tape it is not a good investment. This is especially true when we juice the stock market constantly to create a much better alternate investment.

Of course, any real problem in the world is multivariate but we like to dimensionality reduce everything to a single variable.

Hedge funds buying single family homes is bullshit. Not building enough new homes while giving everyone money borrowed from the future and rules to promote home buying has obvious consequences on price and supply though.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#204

London has similar problems. Apartment blocks that have a hundred flats, but only 5 are occupied all year round. The new ones at Battersea being a good example. The others owned by shell companies that are speculating and investing, or just plain hiding ownership and tax dodging. The UK government have made some small steps in trying to associate property with people via proceeds of crime acts, and the financial cond…

I do not think successive UK governments have had enough of a long term strategy to do this consciously (though I would love to find out it was a deliberate), but I think the Battersea / Nine Elms development is a fantastic way to exploit the surging demand into Western real estate.

Tens of thousands of flats have been built almost entirely funded by foreign investment. If/once the market collapses on whatever time frame, London now has significantly increased housing stock almost entirely on the back of foreign money (whilst providing income for local builders and suppliers). Already foreign owners are taking huge losses on their investment and I expect this to drop even further. If price drop to a reasonable level for your average Londoner, this will be a great win.

On a side note, that entire development is an architectural disgrace and as you note, for the time being a ghost town, parking dodgy money from abroad.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overseas buyers just get permanent residency and citizenship and buy houses. A few years ago you just needed ~$NZ5m invested in the country and you get permanent residency. There is no way the prices are driven by domestic money. My factory supervisor brother has a house in Mangere Bridge, a blue-collar suburb, built for ~$100k 20 years ago is now well over $1m. It is batshit crazy. I hear of eye-watering prices in M…

Let us assume it is not overseas buyers - what factors are left? Is it just access to cheap credit that drives investment into the housing market all over the globe?

Hard to say... Household income and home prices average about 100k & 1million respectively in NZ. That makes sense at ultra-low interest rates of -1 to 1%, but not at the rates of NZ (>3-5%). Loan-to-income probably averages about 5x, but price-to-income is about 10x so I'm not sure what feeds the difference. Doubt people are sitting on 50% downpayments. But I wouldn't be surprised if there's a ton of generational wealth going from parents to kids.

Averages can be a bit misleading as you'd compare average home-owner prices to average household (owner or renter) income. The incomes of owners are typically above this average, for renters below the average, so the price to income is probably not 10x but a bit lower.

Second, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of wealth flowing into the market is not sourced from overseas wealth by immigrants. As in, the source of the wealth is foreign, but it's spent by people who have migrated to NZ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra...

You can see NZ sits in the top 20 in the world in net migration rate. The net migration rate (net, i.e. with the short-term workforce filtered out) probably consists of relatively high-income and high-wealth expats.

Second it seems like home ownership is decreasing in NZ lately. Perhaps the rental market is becoming bigger and homes get bought up by investors. Means less supply in the home owner market. That typically pushes prices up strongly, too. (good for the rental market, bad for homeowner market).

Lastly there's a slight increase in average home sizes. Naturally that should increase prices without it necessarily meaning certain floor space of housing is more expensive.

Still, these figures are quite crazy. I'd make more sense if they were 30% lower. I'd also be quite concerned as NZ seems to run off of variable or short-term fixed interest contracts... corrections and volatility is much bigger in such markets, and given mortgaged RE is by definition leveraged, it can really wipe out large chunks of wealth.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#206

I honestly don't see a way out until boomers start dying. The 2030s will probably see a large decline in the housing market

That will always just be a slow bleed. Some are already selling and moving to warmer climates. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Villages,_Florida

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#207
post #185

Home owners will be happy to hear this. Not yet home owners like me are screwed because rents to damn high and I can’t afford to save up for a down payment. Sorry bud.

Unless you own more than one home, or want to extract your equity as debt then increasing housing prices are paper wealth you will never be able to realize until death. Why. Because while your home went up, so did everyone else's, you still need a place to live so if you sold your home you could only buy another home that was of equal value to your current home thus making it is net transfer not a gain...

Yeah it’s called “being in the market”. But you do realize it as you downsize one day when you don’t need as much space, etc. you can also move to a new market so maybe you lived in or near a major city at one point and want to move elsewhere - there’s a good chance your gains from one market can cover all costs in another.

For instance people moving from the Bay Area to Austin, Portland, and Boise.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#208

It's global warming. Same as New Zealand. Money is easy and smart money is flocking to places that will be survivable in a decade or two. This is very easy.

Siberia is a good place too - right now apartments and houses are very cheap.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#209
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if a rich king comes to a small village and insists on buying a loaf of bread from the baker for $100 rather than a penny Now the butcher knows the baker is hungry and has $100, so he ups his prices to get the most value But the butcher needs knives and the blacksmith knows he can afford more now too The kings left town but the damage has been done, will probably take some time for things to go sane again

they call it inflation...

It’s inflation in part but low interest rates drive it more.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let us assume it is not overseas buyers - what factors are left? Is it just access to cheap credit that drives investment into the housing market all over the globe?

Hard to say... Household income and home prices average about 100k & 1million respectively in NZ. That makes sense at ultra-low interest rates of -1 to 1%, but not at the rates of NZ (>3-5%). Loan-to-income probably averages about 5x, but price-to-income is about 10x so I'm not sure what feeds the difference. Doubt people are sitting on 50% downpayments. But I wouldn't be surprised if there's a ton of generational we…

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I can't add much to that, unfortunately due to lack of knowledge. Too bad it is not easy to get high fidelity data on these market processes.

> Still, these figures are quite crazy.

Sounds to me like there is something we do not see.

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