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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

#751

Post by rcpt »

huevosabio wrote: post #493

These are boogieman policies that have zero influence on the root cause. Foreign investors jump into the housing market because the current system ensures that the supply of housing is limited so it is an attractive way to park your wealth. But that is not the root cause. The root cause is the system that is geared to keep houses always appreciating via supply constraints: aggressive zoning, discretionary permitting,…

Really doesn't matter how much we build if tax law continues to scream at everyone to reallocate everything they have into bets on land value

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#752

Post by [deleted] »

weeksie wrote: post #511
huevosabio wrote: post #493

These are boogieman policies that have zero influence on the root cause. Foreign investors jump into the housing market because the current system ensures that the supply of housing is limited so it is an attractive way to park your wealth. But that is not the root cause. The root cause is the system that is geared to keep houses always appreciating via supply constraints: aggressive zoning, discretionary permitting,…

It'll be interesting in a couple years when prices are still crazy and someone has to come up with an excuse for why. It's amazing to me how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because there aren't enough homes for people to live in. It's always a search for exotic explanations like foreign buyers and mysterious empty apartments.

[deleted]

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#753

Post by nickff »

mzs wrote: post #705
pembrook wrote: post #130

A quick look at the data suggests only about 2% of properties in Toronto and Vancouver are owned by overseas investors. Yes, housing is priced at the margin, but this won't do anything at all to prices over the long term. I'm sure this will be wildly popular politically, because people LOVE the idea that some foreign boogieman is the reason their children can't afford homes anymore. It's much easier to outsource your…

It's not about what percentage is foreign owned, but by how much said foreign investment has raised median prices.

The parent you're responding to is saying that Vancouver has a massive supply issue caused by zoning, and these measures are targeting a relatively small source of demand.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#754

Post by BitwiseFool »

seunosewa wrote: post #719
BitwiseFool wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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?

We know the answer to that, but the GP was asking why we aren't building in "all that extra space you have" and that's what I was responding to.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#755

Post by JumpCrisscross »

tromp wrote: post #669
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cities as already densely packed as Los Angeles I live in Manhattan. LA is far from densely packed. It’s idiotically packed, seemingly to maximise time spent in traffic and minimise the number of bars, restaurants and essentials within walking distance of the average resident. But visit Tokyo or Paris if you want to see true density.

> But visit Tokyo or Paris if you want to see true density. The developing world has even denser examples [1], e.g. the #2 entry of Manila is about twice as dense as Paris. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_cities_by_popula...

I explicitly cited G7 cities to highlight that the quality of life in these cities far exceeds LA’s sprawl. This isn’t a discussion about trade offs. It’s one about parking lots and three-story condos crowding out planning.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#756

Post by rcpt »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #667
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cities as already densely packed as Los Angeles I live in Manhattan. LA is far from densely packed. It’s idiotically packed, seemingly to maximise time spent in traffic and minimise the number of bars, restaurants and essentials within walking distance of the average resident. But visit Tokyo or Paris if you want to see true density.

>I live in Manhattan. LA is far from densely packed. Depends on what you consider "LA". the "LA county" that extends from Lancaster to Long Beach (some 90 sq Mi) is extremely sparse. But good luck convincing someone doing business downtown to go all the way out to Lancaster to buy homes. The "City of Los Angeles" that makes up the 10 square miles of Downtown and some immediately surrounding suburbs is densely packed…

> There's not exactly acres of fields waiting to be tilled for living quarters

https://www.thelacc.org/

Also, https://noparkinghere.com/

And I wonder how much space is lawns

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#757

Post by zekrioca »

la6472 wrote: post #386
Pet_Ant wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but if we want to address climate change and protect the environment, then we need to do this without sprawling outwards.

Nothing is better than sprawling outwards. Most of the white collar jobs can be done remotely , so commute is not needed. Most of groceries and other stuff can be delivered. A truck doing 100 deliveries is surely less traffic than everyone going to the supermarkets. And most importantly with sprawling outwards citizens can enjoy the outdoors and take care of their health. And even more importantly high density of pop…

I cannot imagine ordering fruits and vegetables online: how do you assure its quality without actually looking at them? I always prefer picking these myself, so yes, maybe it is a good idea to offer better transportation means to those who prefer to do in person grocery.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#758

Post by rory »

car_analogy wrote: post #293
pembrook wrote: post #130

A quick look at the data suggests only about 2% of properties in Toronto and Vancouver are owned by overseas investors. Yes, housing is priced at the margin, but this won't do anything at all to prices over the long term. I'm sure this will be wildly popular politically, because people LOVE the idea that some foreign boogieman is the reason their children can't afford homes anymore. It's much easier to outsource your…

> only about 2% of properties in Toronto and Vancouver are owned by overseas investors. Yes, housing is priced at the margin, but this won't do anything at all to prices over the long term. I'm sure this will be wildly popular politically, because people LOVE the idea that some foreign boogieman is the reason their children can't afford homes anymore. Overseas investors may own only 2%, but Canada has 23% foreign-bor…

I don't know a ton about Canadian immigration, but while raw net immigration volume is likely important in pricing a relatively inelastic good like housing, I think the details of who the immigrants are is too often overlooked in this kind of conversation.

In the US our largest immigrant group (Mexicans), and more recently Guatemalans and Salvadorans, are disproportionately the ones building new houses. Without them I have a hard time believing we'd be able to build the volume of houses we do. Does a parallel group exist in Canada? Are immigrants likely to work in construction?

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#759

Post by michaelmrose »

xapata wrote: post #659
clpm4j wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eliminating a subset of buyers, i.e. slightly decreasing demand, is an easy and obvious action to take. Will it have a significant and long lasting effect? Very likely not. But when examining the supply-demand equation, it's painfully obvious to say "foreigners who don't live here should not be allowed to buy residential housing". It's way, way easier than incentivizing developers to build affordable housing and deal…

> 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.

Alternatively you end up with more empty housing poor to middling people can't afford while a bigger portion of society has the life sucked out of them by housing costs work 2nd jobs spend less time with their kids or on self improvement. Save less. Crash harder during down turns etc.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#760

Post by mzs »

nickff wrote: post #753
mzs wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about what percentage is foreign owned, but by how much said foreign investment has raised median prices.

The parent you're responding to is saying that Vancouver has a massive supply issue caused by zoning, and these measures are targeting a relatively small source of demand.

I know, but this 1) is a moratorium across all of Canada and 2) places with better ROI like those with more limited supply are more attractive to foreign investors and will cause the median price to increase to an even greater degree.
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