Whenever they say "I don't want to drive down prices" that demonstrates a fundamental unseriousness about the crisis.
this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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Yes. By having an official policy of propping up prices, the government is effectively giving a subsidy to homeowner profits at the cost of renters.
That's the core tenet of neoliberalism: to transfer wealth to the wealthy.
Don't worry it'll trickle down eventually! One day... Any minute now
Housing was expensive four years ago, that was before prices almost doubled. Policy that lowers prices to those levels would put home ownership in the reach of many.
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It seems to me that increasing supply alone is not going to cut it. Are there not a bunch of financial groups with nearly bottomless wallets that enable them to afford to buy up any amount of property to rent or flip at any price they want, even if it means some properties sit on the market empty for a long time? This government policy seems analogous to having people with $100 dollars sitting at a no-limit poker table with a bunch of billionaires who can afford to endlessly put you all in on every bet, so they always bet more than you have and then the government comes in and says they will allow for more games to be played. Wouldn’t the policy be pointless if you don’t also limit the number of games the wealthy players can play?
You are not only right, but foreshadowing the astroturfing all of that area is going to receive. Regulating real estate is the only answer and then we'll talk about building more. We know this to be true:
- Limit ownership to either you live on the property and 1 more house.
- Corporations and all of its subsidiaries are only allowed owning for renting above a certain amount of people. For example, they couldn't own a duplex, they could only own above a 10 unit rental or something. Not sure what that number would be.
- Airbnb's only allowed if the owners live on property and one more spot. No corporations unless they become a hotel and follow those regulations.
I think personal ownership can go higher than just two properties without problems. The issue isn't everybody owning five properties, but a small handful owning thousands.
Following that, limiting corporations' ownership is definitely a top priority. Only owning housing with 30 units or more would probably help a lot. 10 units is just too little I think, as that's just a conjoined townhouse, which can easily be personally owned and operated. 30 is more like a really small low rise.
AirBnB is definitely an issue as well, and is probably the hardest to regulate. Though definitely not the hardest to pass (that's the corporations one). I'm not sure what can be done with it, as there's already laws in place regarding hotels. Maybe force the company to register all BnB locations to a government database in real time? Though with enough housing, I think this will be an insignificant issue. Especially combined with the other changes. BnBing a spare room is quite a different thing compared to an entire unit/house on a permanent basis.
I like the idea of progressively higher taxes. Second house might have a modestly higher tax, but the third will be a steep increase and it only gets higher from there. Anyone who truly wants/needs multiple homes can have em, but they're gonna pay through the teeth for them (which we can invest into building more homes).
We have such a shortage that IMO any extra home ownership is a problem. But it's the kind of problem that I don't think is a concern if they pay sufficient taxes on it. It's the kind of problem that we can largely throw money at to fix.
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I think you're probably right about the numbers, that's definitely a discussion to be had. I originally said 30 on the units but there are units that I walk past a lot and they have about 10. I couldn't see a small business owner owning that, but I guess they could.
Living in Seattle and watching it be demolished was hard to watch, I've accepted it now. We're still fast becoming San Francisco where you have the rich and then no one to work there, it's not a good situation. Regulating the corporations is the only way to begin truly fixing it, imo. All of the best cities in the world are becoming disneyland and nothing behind the curtain.
Please no, don’t stop building supply until we get the demand side just right. We also massively lack supply, with the lowest housing per capita in the G7. It takes years to build supply. It’s insane that people want to slow that down!
When are people going to understand it’s both? What makes housing such a “good investment” is that we don’t build enough of it for the people we have. Investors aren’t snatching up affordable housing in rural Arkansas because they have way more supply. We should absolutely deal with investors, make their lives miserable, but we ALSO need supply.
Don't slow it down for who?
- The corporations that want to rent out the housing as airbnb's and taking away rental units for the people who live and work there?
- Or maybe the corporations that price fix their rental properties so that the rent never goes down like they did/do in Seattle?
- Or maybe you're talking about the condos in high rises that buy their way out of providing affordable housing and then won't lower their rent, but rather keep it unrented so they can get a tax break or whatever?
How about non-market housing supply, like the spacious comfortable middle class condos that Scandinavian countries provide? Vienna is also a model for government owned housing.
How about co-op housing supply, for people who want to live in communities and not live in an investment?
How about we free up zoning like they do in Japan, where you can buy a spacious new detached SFH in the middle of Tokyo for a fraction of the price of Toronto?
Do you know why the last housing bubble popped in Canada? Because we had a massive oversupply of condos and homes relative to demand. Being against supply is absolutely delusional.
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Those sound like better ideas to prioritize to me. Besides political machinations, what reasons are there not to implement those types of policies?
Everyone who is making money by not implementing these policies is peeling off some of it to keep the policies that make them the money in place.
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Canada wants to eat it's cake while also having it. Something like 60% of Canadians own their home or live in a home their parents own. 40% of a country is more than sufficient to tear the country apart if they lose faith in the society they live in. Allowing housing to become investments has been a mistake that needs to be corrected for the long term stability of the nation.
Allowing housing to become investments has been a mistake that needs to be corrected for the long term stability of the nation.
Canadians are using real estate as their retirement nest eggs. That means they're investing less in productive businesses and are woefully under-diversified. Reducing/removing the capital gains exemption on real estate sales would encourage actual investment.
Shit, when was such an exemption passed? That's literally a law that turns housing into a non-productive investment.
Making a necessity to live in the modern world an investment is the way to turn a portion of the population resentful and unproductive.
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To be fair, the reason they're using it for retirement is because every other method (defined-benefit pensions, defined-contribution pensions, bonds, mutual funds, RRSPs) have been systematically broken by the wealthy.
The dotcom bust, and the lesser extend the 2008 crisis, wiped out a lot of Boomer and elder-Xer equity. Real estate was the next thing that "weath advisors" pushed after they ran the other options into the ground.
If people could retire with dignity and security, we probably could have headed off some of the early stages of the real estate speculation boom. Of course, that would have required rich people to make less money, or face some kind of consequence. As it stands, the economy suits them just fine, even if it fails everyone else.
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If government had the power to just snap their fingers and halve the price of all real estate, regular home owners should not be negatively affected.
It's mostly only the people who own multiple homes as investments, developers, and people who rent out their properties.
If you own a home that you live in, yes it will suck that prices dropped after you signed your mortgage, but you already agreed to pay that before so you should be able to afford those payments wether your house is $1M or $500K.
If you need to move, the house that you need to move to will now be half price so you didn't lose anything with your own house going half price. If anything you win by not having to pay as much taxes.
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They want the existing houses to remain expensive while the new houses somehow are cheap? Sounds like they're wishing for a magic trick, or are trying to put lipstick on their business-as-usual pig.
House: 1 million $.
Job: 22k$/years.
So, how can this work? Magic 🪄✨
Just tax homes past a primary residence like Singapore. We know it works and at least it'll be real obvious those against are the immoral asses we thought they were
This is the simplest solution. But the annual property tax on 2+ properties has to bite otherwise corporations hoarding housing stock would just see that as cost of doing business.
The best approach would be progressively higher (like, exponentially) property taxes according to the number of properties held
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And I want a unicorn!! 🦄
Call me a radical, but this is a speculation issue. Stop allowing homes to be the object of speculation by limiting the amount of properties people can buy/have.
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Yeah that won't happen. Houses just get bought up by those who can afford so they a) can rent them out and b) use it as a safe investment. House prices need to come back down to fix this anytime soon so they can't be seen as an investment.
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"I want to stop being an alcoholic but I'd like to drink occasionally"
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There is a logic to this. Private developers will not make multi-year, large capital investments in something if they think that its value is guaranteed to decrease. That should be obvious.
And we desperately need to increase supply. For better or worse, we do still live in a capitalist society so its going to be up to the private sector to increase supply, with the govt providing an incentivizing role. The govt ever saying anything like "we need to bring house prices down" would paralyze private sector investment into building houses.
FWIW, in my esteemed position as an armchair big-social-problems-fixer, the solution is obvious: Govt investment/subsidies to convert downtown commercial real estate towers into condos. Instead of forcing people back to the office to salvage what's left of the real estate value for those empty towers. The owners get their handout, people can continue to work from home, it's good for the environment too! I dunno, I think it makes sense.
We accept that a fundamental need like healthcare shouldn't be subject to market forces. We don't have to treat housing any differently. Vienna was rated the #1 most livable city because they understand this. Our path forward is not only clear as day, it's tested, proven, and already putting out the best results in the world. The only reason we don't follow that path is because those with the authority to change things are in the class of people profiting from doing things wrong.
This. Fucking this.
Homes are infrastructure not investments. Well not monetary investments anyway.
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Selfishly want Canada to road test some ridiculous tax for residential properties that you own but don’t personally reside in. 50% progressive increase in property taxes for every residential property beyond the one you live in or something.
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I wish they would raise the HBP limit for RRSP that can be used towards a downpayment. It's not like I'm going to be able to retire with that if I can't build equity beforehand.
From the CRA "Currently, the HBP withdrawal limit is $35,000. This applies to withdrawals made after March 19, 2019."
From the article "Recent surges — prices have risen 36 per cent in three years"
So it should be closer to $50,000. Maybe $60, 000 would be better to account for prices continuing to rise while we wait for something to be done to improve the situation.
Maybe we need to be more vocal? 🤔
Contact the Prime Minister https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/connect/contact
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Housing as an investment is the problem. They dont want to stop that so fuck the poors i guess :/
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Possibly making a statement before election. Doubt government has any intention make housing affordable.
~~Canada~~ International Billionaires want to make ~~homes~~ places where poor people live ~~affordable~~ profitable without crushing prices
*fixed your headline
"I want you to buy a home at this price."
I can't afford that.
"But what if you paid anyway..."
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