Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

901–910 of 1001 posts

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#901

Post by icambron »

jjav wrote: post #869
alistairSH wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, in a competitive/expensive market, the developer will pick the high-rise (almost) every time when allowed by law. Locally, when I see people complain about luxury housing being built, it's because the developer is building high-spec townhomes and selling them for $800k+. Instead of lower-spec townhomes at $500k. The developer can't fit appreciably more homes in the same footprint (they're all 3-4 stories tall…

> Except, in a competitive/expensive market, the developer will pick the high-rise (almost) every time when allowed by law. A developer will, indeed. More profit. But an acre is small enough that it could just as well be a rich individual buyer, in which case they'll build what they like. There's a half-acre plot for sale nearby for nearly $2M, I'm curious if it ends up being bought by an IPO millionaire to build a s…

I mean, it could; rich people do what they like. But would it statistical aggregate? I really doubt it.

And do they want to live in that mansion surrounded by multi-unit buildings built by developers buying the nearby acres? Also seems unlikely.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#902

Post by alistairSH »

jjav wrote: post #869
alistairSH wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, in a competitive/expensive market, the developer will pick the high-rise (almost) every time when allowed by law. Locally, when I see people complain about luxury housing being built, it's because the developer is building high-spec townhomes and selling them for $800k+. Instead of lower-spec townhomes at $500k. The developer can't fit appreciably more homes in the same footprint (they're all 3-4 stories tall…

> Except, in a competitive/expensive market, the developer will pick the high-rise (almost) every time when allowed by law. A developer will, indeed. More profit. But an acre is small enough that it could just as well be a rich individual buyer, in which case they'll build what they like. There's a half-acre plot for sale nearby for nearly $2M, I'm curious if it ends up being bought by an IPO millionaire to build a s…

That’s fair.

Local to me, redevelopment of a lot with an existing SFH tends to be another SFH because of zoning (unfortunately - many of the lots would be perfect for a nice duplex or very small apartment block).

Larger lots tend to be bought by corporate developers, both because they have the resources to develop it fully and also because they frequently have to battle NIMBYs for a while to get re-zoning approved (I tend to side with the developers, except when they buy parkland to develop, but that’s a whole other discussion).

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#903

Post by bombcar »

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…

> The population density of the Los Angeles urbanized area is indeed greater than that of the New York urbanized area, with 7,009 people per square mile versus 5,239 people per square mile.

But there are acres and acres of single family homes in both urban areas that could become mid rise apartments.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#904

Post by bhewes »

handmodel wrote: post #826
worik wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market forces are not magic, nor the only method of economic planning. When markets work they are very good at finding prices. But when they fail you get this sort of thing. There needs to be a lot of planned intervention in the housing sector. Entities with a lot of capital need to build the houses that people need to live in where they need to live in them and then let them live in them. The market will not do that…

I live in Los Angeles and am lucky enough to rent on a street that is single family houses. It is illegal to build a duplex here, or a structure above 2 stories, even though each house must be 2500 sqft still. People who are pro-market forces (such as myself) believe strongly that if you were allowed to build apartment buildings in neighborhoods like this that enough capital absolutely would be raised to raise supply…

SB 9 pasted in Sept of last year that allows for duplexes on single unit lots. Here is the info for LA County https://planning.lacounty.gov/view/sb_9

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#905

Post by bombcar »

munificent wrote: post #548
scld wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the NIMBY argument that there are "plenty of homes" is like going into a supermarket whose shelves are completely full of only sardines and saying "there is plenty of food".

I think an extension of that analogy is that there are thousands of supermarkets. A few of them are well-stocked while the rest are full of sardines. There are two proposed solutions: * Let everyone shop at the couple of good supermarkets and hope the supermarket can keep the shelves stocked and deal with the crowds. * Get those other supermarkets to start stocking stuff other than sardines. The right answer is proba…

Or just learn to love sardines.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#906

Post by majormajor »

danans wrote: post #873
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. If the last few decades have taught us anything, it'd that location (and every social category that location encodes) matters to people more than luxury, or rather a desirable location is the biggest luxury. This is why a 3 BD fixer-upper in Palo Alto will cost more than a luxury 5 bedroom house i…

Even if you had no zoning or "organized" NIMBY restrictions, it would be extremely slow to build denser in the most popular "full" residential places: any new construction there requires someone else to sell and leave for that construction to take place. You aren't going to be able to build a hundred-unit tower like you could if the land was empty or was just a vacant old structure.

Targeting stuff that isn't currently residential would be a much easier starting point.

IMO, but more controversially, it goes even further: in the long run, especially with fast transportation and digital communications, it's hard to see certain places ever getting "affordable" given today's wealth distributions. Some locations are going to be in higher demand due to non-human-development related factors (weather, scenery, etc). Others due more to development factors: NYC is more in-demand than if it was an empty bunch of land because we've already done a bunch of development there. (That latter case is especially interesting because it shows how development can both increase supply AND demand, it's not solely something that affects supply.) So if some places are inherently going to be more in-demand than others, and you build more when the market price is currently $X, prices won't fall very quickly at all as you get the people who otherwise want to live there, but couldn't do $X but would do it for $X-1, $X-2, etc, now re-interested in the area!

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#907

Post by bombcar »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #539
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…

>If you're a recluse you can make it work, but I can understand millenial aged people not jiving with that style Which further creates a spiraling effect where even recluses will feel obligated to move to the city just for anything that you can't / is very difficult to get from a town. Turns out it isn't that fun when the majority of your neighborhood doesn't share your generation or interests. Especially for young p…

It’s interesting to see what people consider an “unlivable” town - some would include places on that list that I would consider major cities!

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#908

Post by troupe »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #600
idiotsecant wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sane universe is not requiring toilets and showers a solution to housing issues? I'm reasonably sure we can meet housing needs and still maintain basic human dignity.

A $250/month room with a shared toilet is better than living in a tent somewhere. Also, the need for showers can be mitigated with public bath houses, we used to have more of those...again...it makes lower end housing more viable, but most people will probably want their own toilet and shower and will pay for it. > I'm reasonably sure we can meet housing needs and still maintain basic human dignity. The proof of your…

> A $250/month room with a shared toilet is better than living in a tent somewhere.

For the person living in it, yes. For other people living in the area, bringing in a large number of people who are just one step above living in a tent, may have impacts on the neighborhood that they don't want. Much of the resistance to building more housing is this at various different levels.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#909

Post by majormajor »

bombcar wrote: post #896
worik wrote: post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody blaming zoning. What is happening in Dallas which has no zoning rules? (Or am I thinking of Austin Texas?) I do not know, but it would be useful for this debate

Houston is usually the one they point to, but is the equivalent of zoning in other ways such as covenants, etc. Houston is booming I hear.

Right, cities in Texas aren't cheaper because they don't have zoning (they either explicitly do, as well as HOAs in new developments and all sorts of other NIMBYism, or they do in indirect ways like you mention).

They're cheaper because they can still expand outward more than SF, LA, NY, etc before hitting inconvenient geography. Lots of other places that benefit from this too, of course, not just Texas.

Re: Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years

#910

Post by bombcar »

jjav wrote: post #766
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That sounds tremendously wasteful. All housing will have to be built new now? Well ya. You don't build to have your home last for more than 30-40 years, which can save some materials. We should get better at recycling and renewing building material, maybe the Japanese counteract things that way?

> You don't build to have your home last for more than 30-40 years, which can save some materials. I'm very skeptical it would save any non-trivial amount in materials. What would you leave out? Housing in the USA is already very cheaply built, 2x4s and drywall and the cheapest hardware they builder can get. Such houses easily last over a 100 years barring some disaster. To build a house that crumbles to unlivable in…

They “last” 100 years with pretty Constance maintenance - and the average house isn’t that old so the jury is still out on some of it.

In many places tear down and rebuild is cheaper than remodeling, especially when energy costs are taken into account.

Post reply on HN