341–350 of 395 posts
Realestate and banks are the biggest fraud ever.
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> Western real estate is the new gold. If you think western real estate is nuts, Chinese real estate is even crazier. Those Wenzhou house wives supposedly got started locally moving onto the rest of China and now the western world. It’s probably way more complex than that, however. > If you had made a few million based on your having positional power in a country where you would be jailed or killed once people found…
I don't think it's trivially easy to get money out of the country, so that might be part of it. Another thing is that for many people, being able to buy any real estate is attractive, even when you don't really get to "own" it in the western sense, it's still a lot like ownership (you own it for some number of years then have to give it back IIRC).
China practices 99 year leases, although everyone is expecting those leases to be rolled over with minimal amounts of money. When that didn't happen on earlier and shorter 40 or so year leases (made before the current policy was set), the central government had to step in and forced them to be rolled over, otherwise the rest of the country would have panicked.
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These investors want tenants. The more supply, the more (ceteris paribus) rents drop. The more rents drop, the lower the rates of return on the home, meaning the asset is worth less and prices drop for those buying homes, too. Supply leads to lower rents and prices. There's no magic way around these economic laws. Of course if demand grows faster, then prices still go up. But in absence of supply increases it'd be ev…
> These investors want tenants Not necessarily. By the UK Government's own estimate [1], 1-in-20 homes in West and Central London (the more expensive parts) are empty. The story I've heard is owners who use them as a store of wealth safe from their own government's hands (usually Russia, China, or places in the Middle East). They prefer not to have tenants because it adds risk and complexity. I'm not saying this is t…
Also I've heard about apartments and commercial rental space staying empty because people can borrow money against the 'value'. If rents drop that value shrinks. If it sits empty, no such problem. You still borrow against that commercial property that rents for $5000 a month. You were just unlucky finding a tenant the past 5 years.
New Zealand has a similar housing problem. House prices are skyrocketing and pricing out young people. A 25-30% rise in the past year has meant few people are saving fast enough to get a deposit. But two or three years ago the govt. banned overseas buyers. There is no reason to suggest the ban is not effective. It even bans non-permanent residents, so plenty of legitimate residents (work visas) can't purchase propert…
Overseas buyers just get permanent residency and citizenship and buy houses. A few years ago you just needed ~$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…
With birth tourism, just transfer some assets to your nephew, a full born citizen of $country_of_conveinience and have him purchase the property.
Living in Kitchener-Waterloo (an hour from Toronto), our housing rates have gone through the roof with rich Torontonians buying our stuff for 100-300k over, but who the fuck is buying their extremely overpriced stuff?? That's what we always wonder. Who can afford to live in Toronto or buy anything there? Their jobs don't pay that much more. There is no "more expensive market" or "secret Ultra-Toronto" that can move d…
It's almost entirely foreign buyers, as investments or for money laundering. If Trudeau would rub some brain cells together, we'd get changes to the law that would limit foreign real estate ownership, and close loopholes allowing the banks or other Canadian investment firms to hold real estate on behalf of foreign owners.
What about the votes he needs from certain communities?
https://globalnews.ca/news/4853439/karen-wang-liberal-burnab...
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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
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…
That is exactly why I am against “point based” immigration whatever that means. It essentially translates to saying we only bring in wealthy immigrants. Both Canada and NZ have similar problems, their point based immigration system disproportionately favor more financially well off class of people, in many cases the investor class loophole basically allows to buy citizenship. Add to that the number of immigrants is f…
Isn't it still like that in Quebec? Incidentally, the party they voted for has almost no support from immigrant communities.
> Also the point based system allows abuse in countries where we’ll connected people can basically buy “accredited” credentials such as relevant accredited experience in professions. I know someone who doesn’t know a thing about welding, but they moved here with credentials. Government has no way to verify these accreditation in many cases for many countries.
I constantly see resumes for Canadian "engineers" with foreign diploma. Not a single position at a Canadian company despite having lived there for 10+ years. Wonder why...
Note, the post is an interview with the head of Transparency International, who got data from 1.4 million transactions from the main land and mortgate registries in Ontario. The article isn't just some opinion about "foreign buyers," with racist undertones, there is a real pattern and data. They found Toronto matches matches markets around the world that real estate is being bought by companies, with cash, and throug…
Sounds like you need a new party.
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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
Making housing stagnant and expensive is a popular initiative waged against capital.