Vancouver Housing Tax Pushes Chinese to $1M Seattle Homes • Hacker News Board

Re: Vancouver Housing Tax Pushes Chinese to $1M Seattle Homes

#71

Post by tudorw » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:54 AM UTC

foota wrote: post #40

tudorw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little different as land is finite, I could own 100 phones, it would not change your option to buy one, if I bought 100 houses in your town, you might have to move. Here in the UK for example, crucial support staff, teachers, nurses, policeman, are paid by the state, they are having to move further from their place of work to find affordable housing, so they commute further and its hard for organisations to be…

Phones are finite too, though less so than land.

it's a fair point, they use some rare stuff, anyone worked out if we can all have one based on current population growth / phone use growth ?

Re: Vancouver Housing Tax Pushes Chinese to $1M Seattle Homes

#72

Post by bootload » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:54 AM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #41

bootload wrote: post #14

"The week that the government announced Vancouver’s foreign tax," Which government? Fed, state, municipal?

The article is pretty lazy with describing the tax. The municipal government of Vancouver doesn't have any of these taxing powers, and the tax comes from the Provincial government. It only applies to the Metro Vancouver area however, so some are already stating that there has been a spillover effect in other areas of the Province, such as Victoria.

thanks for the reply @Tiktaalik, I couldn't work out if this is a top down or bottom up response. So it's Provincial (State in my country). Interesting.

Re: Vancouver Housing Tax Pushes Chinese to $1M Seattle Homes

#73

Post by MagnumOpus » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:59 AM UTC

refurb wrote: post #61

rpedela wrote: post #8

I am beginning to think there is another housing bubble, but this time I am not exactly sure how it would play out if it burst assuming there is one forming. Would it affect the Chinese economy? The economy in each US city? The larger US economy? The global economy?

Google the Case-Shiller home index. Average prices in the US are as high as they were during the 2007 bubble.

Not quite correct. The CS20 home price index is...

- 7% lower than the 2006 peak in nominal terms.

- 22.6% lower than the 2006 peak in inflation-adjusted terms (adjusted by the BLS's US CPI-urban NSA)

- 27.3% lower than the 2006 peak as a percentage of wages (adjusted by the BLS's average hourly earnings paid to private-sector employees)

Together with massively lower mortgage rates (3.9% rather than 6.2% for a 30yr fix), the situation is nowhere near as bubblicious as 2006. We are maybe around 2003 levels - easily sustainable.

Re: Vancouver Housing Tax Pushes Chinese to $1M Seattle Homes

#74

Post by jaredklewis » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 1:10 PM UTC

goatsi wrote: post #19

jaredklewis wrote: post #11

It's strange that there is so much push back against foreign investment. Rather than enact a bunch of projectionist policies, wouldn't it be better to just adapt to the investment in a way that benefits natives? After all, when foreign people want to buy something you have, that is called an export, and most people agree those are good for the economy. If foreigners are investing in housing, local governments will re…

It's funny that you think that they pay taxes. >An unusually high number of Vancouver homeowners living in multi-million dollar neighbourhoods but reporting poverty-level incomes is a red flag that needs immediate government action, says NDP MLA David Eby. >“The focus should be quite straightforward: are you paying your worldwide taxes inside British Columbia, or not?” Eby, who represents Vancouver-Point Grey, told r…

I said that if we are making legislative changes anyway (i.e. adding in anti-foreign buyer laws), why not just fix the underlying problem, sans-xenophobia, by adding or increasing property taxes?

If people aren't paying a sufficient amount in taxes now, I suggest adding land value taxes.

Re: Vancouver Housing Tax Pushes Chinese to $1M Seattle Homes

#75

Post by foota » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 6:26 PM UTC

tudorw wrote: post #71

foota wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phones are finite too, though less so than land.

it's a fair point, they use some rare stuff, anyone worked out if we can all have one based on current population growth / phone use growth ?

Probably. There's already a _lot_ of phones. The question is how new of phones everyone want.

The issue imo isn't how many resources we have, but how much capital we're willing to devote to phone production.