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

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

bnnbloomberg.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 395 posts

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

#331

Post by vkou »

thevagrant wrote: post #231
vkou wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no way the prices are driven by domestic money. How can you be so sure? With the way mortgages work, and the way people who bought starter homes ~10 years ago are more than capable of affording a downpayment on a bigger home, you don't actually need a large amount of domestic money for housing prices to be bid up into the stratosphere.

Where I live there are empty houses. Very few locals can buy $1m+ homes and be so lazy to even bother renting them out. I looked up ownership of some I noticed empty for a long long time and the owners appear to be a string of shell companies.

They may be a factor driving the prices up, but the locals being able to keep up through borrowing is why the prices stick.

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

#332

Post by epicureanideal »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #138
epicureanideal wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anywhere you put it in there, it can go away in an instant if the government wants to take it away from you. We don't understand this in the west Divorced or divorcing men understand how this can happen in the west.

As far as I know this applies to anyone divorcing; divorce laws apply equally to spouses these days, not just to men.

That may be how the laws are written, but that isn't how they're enforced in practice.

Divorces are initiated about 70-90% by women (I've seen numbers quoted throughout the range depending on the time period and the demographics being looked at), women end up with the kids 80-90% of the time, and so on. Almost all spousal support is awarded to women. And so on.

The usual argument about the kids ending up with the mother because the father doesn't want more time with them is often offered without much questioning, but the same people that argue this would not so easily accept similar arguments to explain differences in incarceration rates between people of different ethnic backgrounds, for example.

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

#334

Post by akudha »

pas wrote: post #317
akudha wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most financial gurus preach real estate as a way to get rich. They don't care about the next generation, fuck them. I have a colleague who earns in dollars, but he buys real estate in his home country (India). He'd buy a few apartments in a building right when a new project is announced. By the time the project is completed (2-3 years usually) the apartment value has already gone up by 10-15% minimum, sometimes more.…

Why do you think it's morally bad what this guy does? Developers make a profit, he basically provides loans to developers, takes on risks. Prices are too high because there aren't enough units being built, not because folks speculate on new developments. The rentiers are who do nothing yet they earn extra profit due to market failures. (Usually mandated monopolies or emergent oligopoly markets, see ISPs in the US.) I…

Not enough units being built is only part of the problem. There are empty apartments in the buildings that he buys. You know why? Because they are owned by people who reside abroad (US, Australia, Canada etc). These people have plenty of cash, so they buy multiple properties and just let it sit there (if they can't sell it for a profit), visiting for a week every 2-3 years. They are simply pricing the locals out. The only reason they buy is to sell it at some point in future, for a profit.

You asked why it is morally bad. It is morally bad because the prices are artificially inflated. This guy I told you about, he can sit on these empty properties for 5, 10, 20 years if he chooses to, because he doesn't need the money.

So not only people like him inflate the prices, they also let properties sit empty.

None of this is illegal, of course. One can argue it is just business, that is also true. But that doesn't make it ethical or moral. Real estate prices in cities like Bangalore are absurd, thanks to people like him. It is happening in Canada, Australia etc too. Chinese people "parking" their money in NYC, Toronto etc housing markets (it is just one example, I am not picking on Chinese, just to be clear)

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

#335

Post by yardstick »

Nelkins wrote: post #313
yardstick wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll bite: what’s the simple solution?

Make housing abundant by building more of it, like we used to.

It’ll be snapped up by all the landlords who have had years of profit taking to build up cash reserves to buy additional stock at a premium. That’s what is happening now.

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

#336

Post by icedata »

ecshafer wrote: post #290
yunohn wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can rent out rooms in the house you live in, but that is less of a thing now than in the past. In the 1800s/1900s widows, spinsters, old women, that had property would often get by by renting out rooms/beds, essentially being a "mother" to young men or women. Men/women came to the city to work, or school, or whatever and they would rent a room and the landlady would serve meals, do laundry, etc.

Recently, in large parts of the Greater Toronto Area, it has not been legal to rent out rooms in your house. It was and is legal in the original city of Toronto and other municipalities that were later incorporated into the megacity. There is a proposal before city council to legalize it across the city, but so far no decision has been made.

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

#337

Post by skzv »

anovikov wrote: post #147
skzv wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your primary investments? Do you own any real estate?

I pour pretty much everything into S&P 500 plus have some cash for balancing. Yes i bought a few apartments when i was basically a kid in my early 20s but not in the last 15 years and not planning to ever buy any real estate unless i'll come to be able to do it on a proportion of my income that lets me completely ignore "investment" consequences of such a decision (say Yes commercial real estate is a good thing. Ther…

Thanks for your insight!

> Single family house you'd want to live in, clearly "no". It's almost always a bad investment decision.

Is this still true, though? Asset management companies - most famously Blackrock - are now pouring billions into acquiring exactly that: single family homes. And with prices growing in the double digit percentages every year across North America, it seems almost guaranteed in every metropolitan area.

I can be convinced otherwise, but I'm worried we are returning to a time of renters and land-owners, and I'm not sure I want to be a renter for the rest of my life.

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

#338

Post by toomuchtodo »

dgudkov wrote: post #194
pkorzeniewski wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm disgusted by the whole real estate market, people buying dozens of apartments and houses just to rent them - and hence increasing prices for people who just want something on their own instead of making rich people richer - is destructive for society, especially for young people. Owning a roof over your head shouldn't require an average person to work their ass for half of their lives.

It wasn't like that. The inflated real estate market is a result of several factors that emerged in the last 15-20 years and combine and reinforce each other: - A decade of near-zero interest rates - A lack of investment opportunities: real estate usually has a below average ROI but there is nothing else to invest in nowadays (look at startup valuations to understand how desperate investors have become) - Too much mo…

Without regulation, capital will strangle society and the future to squeeze whatever returns can be juiced from both. This is to be expected with secular stagnation [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_stagnation

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

#339

Post by tolbish »

closeparen wrote: post #302
tolbish wrote: 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?

This is a cheap sentiment to express. You want righteousness points, specify the system by which you will choose who gets which housing. See if that stands up to scrutiny.

Found the landlord. Also, you have made quite a few assumptions there, friend. There are several good ideas listed here, including raising taxes on unoccupied homes.

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

#340

Post by 2ion »

teruakohatu wrote: post #17

New Zealand has a similar housing problem. House prices are skyrocketing and pricing out young people. A 25-30% rise in the past year has meant few people are saving fast enough to get a deposit. But two or three years ago the govt. banned overseas buyers. There is no reason to suggest the ban is not effective. It even bans non-permanent residents, so plenty of legitimate residents (work visas) can't purchase propert…

> House prices are skyrocketing and pricing out young people

Oh I'm already priced out in Europe. I'm not going into debt for 20-50 years just to pay for _one_ thing.

Post reply on HN