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Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

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Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#711

Post by seanmcdirmid »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #654
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We really should follow Japan on this: (a) National zoning (b) A culture that abhors second hand housing (so structures don't appreciate like land does). Housing that depreciates is no longer a sound investment. (c) Liberal definition on minimal standard housing to rent (central heating not required, toilets can be shared, no personal shower or even a shower at all in the building you are renting a room in, small spa…

(b) is the biggest one. It doesn't make second hand unlivable, it just stops putting a premium on things which clearly aren't premium (unlike say Europe). It also makes it easier to tear things down in case of future needs, whereas Europe tends to "lock" itself in, creating a market which is very inflexible. >(c) Keep in mind 1LDKs (living room, dining room, kitchen) come with everything you'd expect a full apartment…

The USA is about 12% immigrants, Japan is around 2%. I mean, it is definitely no China, but it has the lowest immigration rate of the all the developed countries.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#712

Post by mzs »

tici_88 wrote: post #34

Foreigners, especially the billionaire type, can and have been setting up shell corporations through which to purchase Canadian real estate. The proposed measure will do nothing to stop this practice. The measures proposed by the Canadian government are likely just political posturing and indented to "pull the wool over the eyes" of Canadian voters because the housing bubble/crisis has reached epic proportions and ev…

There is no law yet so no implementation that shell companies can skirt. You are getting ahead of the horse. This is a signal from the Canadian government to foreign investors that Canadian housing could no longer be a safe investment for their money shortly.

https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2022/04/13/helping-yo...

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#713

Post by TimPC »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #693
TimPC wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recommendations of the committee reflect the fact that they had only one month to work in and as such severely limited the consultations they did. To take just one example of how ridiculous some of the conclusions are: They recommend forcing any municipality to accept 6 to 11 story buildings on any street that has a bus route regardless of whether that bus route actually reaches the building or not. This is a hug…

I think we have a philosophical difference here. You seem to accept the idea of centrally planning a city down to the micro-management level. I reject it. Yes, as you say, "this policy says you *could* build an 11 story building without providing parking in any small township on Yonge Street". The operative word is *could*. If there's market demand for it, you could and you absolutely should do it. If there isn't, yo…

I think you are leaping to a lot of conclusions not in evidence. There is a big difference between "centrally planning a city down to the micro-management level" and overriding any ability for a municipality to assert what it feels is needed in a development. Negative externalities are a very real thing and allowing developers to have arbitrarily many of them at arbitrarily bad levels is not the only alternative to complete and total central planning. Believe it or not there are reasonable middle grounds that allow some influence on developments from central planning to limit negative externalities while also listening to market forces. My beliefs align somewhere in this middle ground.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#714

Post by qiskit »

What's a foreigner to a country that allows more than 1 citizenship? What's a foreigner in a country that has a "foreign" royal as head of state? Why were foreigners allowed to buy homes in the first place?

Most importantly, why does a country with a population of 35 million and a landmass stolen from the natives the size of china have problem housing their population? Certainly, even if much of canada is tundra, they don't lack the land/resources/etc.

If they are having problems housing their population, why are they increasing immigration?

Nothing adds up.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#715

Post by nightski »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #580
johnnyanmac wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because there aren't enough homes for people to live in. I imagine there are enough homes in both America and Canada (they are two of the largest countries after all). But it's all about location. Very few can even afford to move out to the middle of nowhere just to own land. And not many people that can are willing to turn their potentially short commut…

To specifically rail on the "liberal" Bay Area and numerous other "liberal" cities in the US: The NIMBY housing policies and restrictions on building new housing are a massive part of sprawl, and with it the huge amount of excessive carbon emissions from commuting in single passenger cars. A dense city is about the best organization of people for the environment. To get things you need, you travel the furthest distan…

I'll stick to my "sprawled out" city where we couldn't build tall even if we wanted to simply because the land does not allow it. I can get anywhere in the city in less than 10 minutes and have access to plenty of creature comforts.

Sprawl is only bad in big cities. In a city of 250k, it's not really a big deal.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#716

Post by paxys »

jjav wrote: post #709
xapata wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> incentivizing developers to build affordable housing But that's unnecessary. If developers build more luxury housing, that'll reduce the price of existing housing, such that it becomes affordable.

> If developers build more luxury housing, that'll reduce the price of existing housing, such that it becomes affordable. Not really: Say there's one free acre of land in town. You could build one mansion on it, or a highrise with 100 apartments. Building the mansion isn't going to move the needle on any existing housing at all, as it's just one unit.

That isn't a matter of incentives but zoning laws.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#717

Post by MAGZine »

freeone3000 wrote: post #674
MAGZine wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what world are "temporary" foreign workers buying homes in Canada? With what salary? Same with Refugees, students. Funny how in the first hundred years in Canada, we didn't have any issue with housing costs, despite accepting vast amounts of refugees. I'm not saying it's not making the problem worse, but to SOLELY pin it on them is IMO willful ignorance. if we banned all immigrants, of any kind, tomorrow, would Ca…

Temporary Foreign Workers is everyone with a work permit for their first three years (or longer!) regardless of qualifications -- NAFTA means doctors, engineers, and software developers are TFWs for a few years at least until/unless they apply for permanent residency. The idea that they are somehow less wealthy than the average immigrant is incorrect. So to answer "with what salary?": The one from their jobs.

This is factually incorrect. NAFTA workers--TN visas--are not part of the the TFW program, which is something entirely different and requires market assessment impacts.

https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/progr...

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#718

Post by mise_en_place »

rasz wrote: post #695
mise_en_place wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason is that those foreign investors are productive and have excess capital available to invest. They are from creditor nations, not debtor nations.

If you call local corruption productive.

You cannot lie in the foreign exchange market. If you bs your productivity vis-a-vis loose money supply, your currency will rightly be worthless. The USD would usually be worthless too, it's just that due to Petrodollar system and reserve currency status, it's artificially propped up to be strong.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#719

Post by seunosewa »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #702
twblalock wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When more people show up, you should build more housing. Canada is a big place with a small population relative to its size — you have plenty of space. Your argument might work if Canada was a small island like Singapore, but it is one of the largest countries by land area in the world. What prevents you from just building more housing in all that extra space you have? Zoning laws and nimbyism.

>"What prevents you from just building more housing in all that extra space you have?" That's the wrong way to look at the problem. Developers can already build in the hinterlands, but there's virtually no demand to do so because the economic activity is concentrated in the established cities. You also run into the Siberia problem where despite having massive tracts of "free/undeveloped" land in the taiga, actually i…

What stops you from building more housing where there is demand?
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