421–430 of 1001 posts
So why don't they build more homes?
The fact that there is so much development and change going on, and that it's still not enough to lower rental vacancy rates (or prices) is something that I think contributes to people feeling like maybe adding supply doesn't help and there's other problems.
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I'd argue the main cause of this is the REALTORs/real estate boards/MLS system that stonewalls any attempts at making real estate information publicly available precisely because the size of their paycheques relies on this information remaining hidden from the public. The conflict of interest beggars belief, but it's allowed to remain, among other reasons, since it also tends to benefit political parties courting vot…
What's stopping Canada from increasing its housing stock? Surely Canada has plenty of space for its 30M citizens, right? (Yes, I understand that much of the territory is uninhabitable, but even still...).
Between them and the banks that own all of those 30 year mortgages, that's all the political pressure you need.
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The question is, would an open auction be any better? The process will just happen at smaller increments. And you will have ghost bids to prop up the prices.
I would use a Vickrey auction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickrey_auction
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I live in Toronto as well. We make a good income, have large savings for a down payment, and recently thought about buying a house. It's depressing. So, I decided to look at the City Plan -- to see what the actual plan is for addressing the housing cost crisis in Toronto. Not surprisingly, the real problem became very clear to me, almost immediately. The problem is not blind bidding. The problem is not foreign buyers…
In Vancouver the city plan shows no more single detached houses anywhere. Everything is at least a few stories high
According to their plan:
> Our goal is 72,000 new homes across Vancouver in the next 10 years.
Unfortunately, if the Vancouver population continues to grow at an annual 1% rate, that means 275,000 new people to house. 72,000 homes would mean an average of 3.82 people in each of those new houses, which is just not realistic.
In short: Vancouver isn't even planning on building enough to be able to house everyone.
I'm not very familiar with the city, but clearly, their attempts to solve the housing issue are not actually serious if they're not even planning on building enough housing for everyone.
I'm a homeowner in Toronto and I don't think this will help. They've eliminated a small number of buyers from the market but have added other incentives like a first home buyers tax credit that will only fuel the fire - Australia tried this with tragic results. >> working with provinces and territories to develop and implement a Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights and bring forward a national plan to end blind bidding. Blind…
> "IMHO blind bidding is an unethical practice" When you're applying to a new job, do you feel it's ok for the hiring company to ask you what exactly you currently make so that they can offer you $1.00 more than what you currently today? If not, how is that not "unethical"? (Also note, in the US at least - you can't ask someone what they currently earn). I just don't understand why it's unethical. Maybe the seller wa…
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What's stopping Canada from increasing its housing stock? Surely Canada has plenty of space for its 30M citizens, right? (Yes, I understand that much of the territory is uninhabitable, but even still...).
There is plenty of housing for plenty of people in most parts of North America. The 'problem' is that what people _want_ is cheap housing in urban centers, a.k.a cool spots. Because that doesn't exist, we claim to have a housing shortage.
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What's stopping Canada from increasing its housing stock? Surely Canada has plenty of space for its 30M citizens, right? (Yes, I understand that much of the territory is uninhabitable, but even still...).
There is plenty of housing for plenty of people in most parts of North America. The 'problem' is that what people _want_ is cheap housing in urban centers, a.k.a cool spots. Because that doesn't exist, we claim to have a housing shortage.
With that being said, naturally homes near economic activity should be more expensive. It's more expensive and always will be to live near Google's HQ in Mountain View than it will be to live in Grand Rapids, Michigan or Toledo, Ohio. That's just economic physics. It's ok, normal, natural, acceptable, and economically good. And these homes are only going to get more expensive over time as energy costs increase (EVs won't save us), road maintenance costs increase (already far out of control), and people move to live in more walkable areas. But as these costs increase, people who were expecting that it would be cheap to live in the suburbs are surprised because energy costs and moving far away just won't save them anymore like it did in the past (oh I'll live here and just have a 40 mile commute) - hence it appears that we have a housing shortage when in reality the costs are more reflective of economic reality and were artificially cheap. New housing won't help here because even if we could build more faster we'd still be building it in an economically handicapped way and rely on traveling far distances in cars and on highways, which just will not work when we can't pump cheap oil out of the ground.
You have two options. The first option is dense skyscrapers. But those aren't going to be efficient enough in places unconstrained by geography. They also have maintenance issues and it'll be too expensive to keep them going in the future with much higher energy costs. The second option is medium-density mixed-use development. Think the beautiful streets with brick single family homes next to townhouses and 2 story apartments with a cafe or an office at the bottom, bikes, walking, and street cars or other similar efficient transit. These you can repair yourself and the maintenance is much lower on the long-run and they don't rely on cheap oil to be livable.
But we'll keep building skyscrapers and suburbs (I didn't mention these as an option because they aren't) and the prices will just keep going up.
I'm a homeowner in Toronto and I don't think this will help. They've eliminated a small number of buyers from the market but have added other incentives like a first home buyers tax credit that will only fuel the fire - Australia tried this with tragic results. >> working with provinces and territories to develop and implement a Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights and bring forward a national plan to end blind bidding. Blind…
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A designed process, very efficient at extracting the maximum price out of a stressful situation. It's a sad state of affairs in Australia right now.
But it's an open process. That it's close to optimal efficiency isn't a bad thing. Imagine the same level of stress, but you have to guess what the other buyers are bidding. Do you bid low and hope everybody else does? Bid high, but risk overpaying?
I'm a homeowner in Toronto and I don't think this will help. They've eliminated a small number of buyers from the market but have added other incentives like a first home buyers tax credit that will only fuel the fire - Australia tried this with tragic results. >> working with provinces and territories to develop and implement a Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights and bring forward a national plan to end blind bidding. Blind…
> "IMHO blind bidding is an unethical practice" When you're applying to a new job, do you feel it's ok for the hiring company to ask you what exactly you currently make so that they can offer you $1.00 more than what you currently today? If not, how is that not "unethical"? (Also note, in the US at least - you can't ask someone what they currently earn). I just don't understand why it's unethical. Maybe the seller wa…
Yes but I don't have to accept it and I can then tell them what I want and they're free to turn it down and it's a discussion. The hiring equivalent would be every applicant would write their expected salary down. Then the lowest wins with no negotiation.