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Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

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Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#81

Post by andrewmcwatters »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #40
tolbish wrote: post #3

Should housing be a primary vehicle for investment and the de facto way of making money? Or should it serve as a necessity and basic aspect of life?

Investment is a basic aspect of life; housing has been traditionally an investment to earn a living when you retire, whether individually or as part of a pension funds. The problem appears to be the monetary policies of central banks and rampant public debt, and the low interest rates, inflation, and lack of alternative investments that go with it.

This isn’t true. Investment properties were nowhere near what they are today compared to the 70s in the US.

I don’t know what traditionally means to you, but this is not a historical norm if you went back 50 years.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#82

Post by ant6n »

jamal-kumar wrote: post #62
RandomWorker wrote: post #14

Home owners will be happy to hear this. Not yet home owners like me are screwed because rents to damn high and I can’t afford to save up for a down payment. Sorry bud.

I like not living in Canada anymore. It's depressing to think about how it got, but I've just stepped aside for a long while now and whenever I visit I'm just kind of shocked at how it doesn't get any better and instead just increasingly worse.

What place could possibly be better?

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#83

Post by onion2k »

RandomWorker wrote: post #14

Home owners will be happy to hear this. Not yet home owners like me are screwed because rents to damn high and I can’t afford to save up for a down payment. Sorry bud.

It's good for home owners in the short term. In the long term it means everyone will spend more on housing, which limits the amount they can spend on everything else, which doesn't really help anyone.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#84

Post by bookofsand »

fastball wrote: post #25
sunstone wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia if I recall correctly, foreign buyers are only able to buy newly built homes. Canada would benefit from a similar rule, it would stimulate more housing and not impact the demand for existing homes.

In Indonesia, only citizens or businesses with part ownership by citizens are allowed to own property, and I think this is probably the right way to go for most other countries as well. Unlike the vast majority of other human endeavors, land actually is a zero sum game, at least until we are a space-faring species.

Even if we become a space faring species, land will still be a zero sum game.

* Within the Solar System the amount of land available on bodies with not-crushing-gravity is limited to a few times the Earth surface. This includes hospitable bodies like Venus, Titan or the Moon. The entire area of Mars is slightly smaller than Earth's land area, with climate conditions significantly worse than Antarctica. Sobering map: https://brilliantmaps.com/solar-system-surface

* Inter-stellar travel is subject to prohibitive time and energy costs. Physically speaking there is no way for Alpha Centaurians to visit their Earth properties on a regular basis, or vice-versa. This renders the whole concept of 'property owned by foreign stellar body inhabitants' moot.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#85

Post by kennywinker »

rishav_sharan wrote: post #52
fredophile wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That tax applies to the city of Vancouver. Most houses in Canada are outside of Vancouver.

Did it have any effect? From what I hear, Vancouver has one of the costliest real state markets in Canada

There was hints of things maybe cooling off, then covid hit and prices have been spiking since.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#86

Post by FooHentai »

tolbish wrote: post #3

Should housing be a primary vehicle for investment and the de facto way of making money? Or should it serve as a necessity and basic aspect of life?

Probably a false dichotomy; the ideal is somewhere in the middle. It's reasonable to plan to extract some value back out the commutable, family-size when retiring to somewhere smaller and further out. But it's a problem when this becomes the primary or only available means of funding retirement.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#87

Post by jbay808 »

rishav_sharan wrote: post #52
fredophile wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That tax applies to the city of Vancouver. Most houses in Canada are outside of Vancouver.

Did it have any effect? From what I hear, Vancouver has one of the costliest real state markets in Canada

Yes; it's caused several people to leave their empty houses in a permanent state of not-fit-for-inhabitance, which allows one to avoid paying the tax.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#88

Post by nitrogen »

killjoywashere wrote: post #61
killjoywashere wrote: post #56

Meanwhile, 3 provinces in China keep facing unexpected power shortages from their hydroelectric dams, but the airport keeps landing 747s full of GPUs.

Why the downvotes? This is old, well reported news: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/21/bitcoin-btc-price-drops-on-c... .

It's unrelated to the article, and is likely to spur even less related comments.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#89

Post by dandanua »

spfzero wrote: post #63
wyck wrote: post #42

This isn't new, nor is it only related to China. Mexico, Russia, many middle east countries, and whole slew of other places has poured billions of cash into Canadian real estate. It's done via regulated banks who turn a blind eye because there nothing illegal about how it's being done. The are skyrises being built in every major city in which 95% of the tenants are not Canadian, and they sit practically empty. Some c…

Western real estate is the new gold. It's protected by the entrenched lawful property rights of western countries, so money made in countries without those rights are going to flow in. Think about it. 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 out what you had been doing, you'd get the money out to somewhere your descendants w…

Very few people realize that the western acceptance of blood money actually fuels autocratic regimes around the world and makes them much stronger. For example, Russian power elites have millions and billions in assets in the West. Hence, this new "cold war" with authoritarian Russia and Putin is a total farce. But those blood money will ruin the West, one day or another. Trump was the first major sign of it.

Re: Billions in 'unknown' funds flowing into Canada's housing market [video]

#90

Post by kennywinker »

exporectomy wrote: post #24
gota wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to the punitive taxes for unnocupied homes I read about a couple of years ago? If I recall it was a "tax" 1% of the property value every month after the first 12 of vacancy I can't imagine that going into effect and rent/house prices _not_ going down

If the problem is caused by too many people wanting to live there, rather than empty houses, it wouldn't help. Nobody likes to blame themselves, but everyone living in a high-priced area is partly to blame for the high prices, not just some faceless evil baddies.

There are more empty homes (or occupied just enough to avoid the tax) in vancouver than there are unhoused people here.
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