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Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

bloomberg.com

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Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#91

Post by eptcyka »

VincentEvans wrote: post #7

I don’t know the specifics on Canadian real estate market and the specifics of the problems there, but based on my understanding of the problems facing your neighbors to the south - I feel like it’s almost an attempt to appease citizens by blaming the issue on “foreigners” (always a move that is popular with politicians) to redirect attention from the much more likely cause - massive investments made by hedge funds,…

Real estate is always a good investment (unfortunately), and capital flight from Asia is not a joke. It's happening in Europe too. Personally, I think governments in well developed countries should do their best to dissuade investment in housing as a financial instrument. Why should I compete with a millionaire, be it local or foreign, for a decent house to live in a city I've lived in for years?

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#92

Post by bryanlarsen »

mperham wrote: post #20

Liberal governments will do everything but the one thing that will solve the problem: make it much, much easier to actually build more housing. Everything else is just pointless busywork.

Federal Liberals can't do anything about that, it's a provincial responsibility.

The Ontario provincial Conservatives commissioned a report into how to make housing affordable, and then completely ignored almost everything it said.

This summer, I'm voting for whoever promises to actually implement the Housing Affordability Task Force report.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#93

Post by dboreham »

mperham wrote: post #20

Liberal governments will do everything but the one thing that will solve the problem: make it much, much easier to actually build more housing. Everything else is just pointless busywork.

It's very easy to build housing here in Montana but that hasn't stopped property prices from rising significantly.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#95

Post by [deleted] »

bogota wrote: post #54
ameminator wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many likely reasons for the explosion in housing prices - but we can't pretend that immigration isn't one of them. A solution will likely need to be multi-factored, but reducing demand by reducing immigration will probably have to be part of that solution. To ignore that is to limit how effective your measures in reducing the cost of housing can be.

Or we could have seen this coming a mile away and built more houses and reduced the idiocy of city zoning. But yeah it’s the immigrants fault. Lets reduce immigration while we are facing a labor shortage.

[deleted]

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#96

Post by sct202 »

mperham wrote: post #20

Liberal governments will do everything but the one thing that will solve the problem: make it much, much easier to actually build more housing. Everything else is just pointless busywork.

The 100 year old building I live in would never have been approved under current requirements; the approval meetings would be going in circles about how it has too many units, not enough parking, not enough green space etc.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#97

Post by CPLX »

incomingpain wrote: post #61

The data is public, less than 5% of homes are going to foreigners. Don't see how they even accomplish banning foreigners when there are free trade and free investment agreements. The problem is that bonds have negative yields. Retirement funds are forced into buying real estate, because housing is a safe investment right? The federal government knows this and knows they can't do anything. If they targeted retirement…

In a real estate market (ie slow moving, most inventory turns over after several years) changing the demand of 5% of the buyers could have a massive impact.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#98

Post by nly »

paulgb wrote: post #86

> Freeland will introduce legislation that allows Canadians under the age of 40 to save as much as C$40,000 ($31,900) for a home downpayment within a new tax-exempt vehicle, the person said. I'm not an economist but this seems pretty dumb? To the extent that it helps someone afford a home that they can save tax-free for it, the same is true of some of the people they're bidding against, driving up the price they ulti…

We have a similar scheme in the UK, where you can save £4000/yr and get a 25% top-up from the government if you use the pot to buy your first home. Everything invested in this scheme is tax free: income and growth.

You're completely right, it just drives up prices further... but they're vote winning policies and using these pots makes conveyencers a nice profit.

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#99

Post by boplicity »

______-_-______ wrote: post #62
dsnr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not really guaranteed to solve the problem. It will only be a part of the solution. In many countries, including Europe, new properties are quickly snatched by investment companies that have much easier access to capital than private individuals and can easily afford to pay above market prices. People shouldn’t really have to compete with companies or “investors” on the housing market.

I mean... it has to eventually. If my country has a population of 50 million and I build 800 million homes, will investors keep buying them all at above market rates (read: more than I spent building them)? Then I can build 100 million more and keep collecting infinite money?

This can go on longer than you think; it leads to "ghost cities" -- huge areas full of empty housing bought by speculators.

https://allthatsinteresting.com/chinese-ghost-cities

Re: Canada to ban foreigners from buying homes

#100

Post by mh8h »

boplicity wrote: post #88

> During last year’s election campaign, Trudeau’s party also proposed a ban on “blind bidding” for houses -- the prevailing system by which offers are kept secret when someone is auctioning a home. This is such a huge deal. Anyone who has had to go through the process of buying a home through a bidding war knows how unfair and one-sided this process is. It take a high-pressure emotional situation, and gives all of th…

The effects of blind bidding on price increase are still not very clear. I haven't had a chance to look at the literature, but I've been seeing several news articles about this: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/blind-bidding-real-estate-1... https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/study-supports-blind-bidding...
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