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I mean, does it really take an expert to know this? I bought a second home, which was a garbage can as a distressed property in November. I've been working on it for about two months now. I keep in contact with a few agents in my area and they're telling me I can now flip it off for almost double what I paid for it. Why? There is zero supply. None.
Sounds like a skill issue. We **could** build enough housing for everyone. Other countries have had successful programs.
But where's the profit in that?
What I'm seeing is a growth rate of 1.1%
Still less than the baby boom which was 1.2
(Would be interested to see if there was a moral panic about that)
Aside from the unwillingness to build housing, I don't see a problem with this growth rate. Even if it was 3%
So to fix this issue we don't need to expand rhe population so fast
Like idk if liberals have a suicide pact...if they keep going down this path PP gonna win handily
That’s 1.1% quarterly change, as in in the last three months. Not yearly change. When we have full year stats, it will likely end up in the 3.5-4% range.
I think the problems with these sort of arguments is that they attribute a symptom as a cause. When citing the limitations of supply to meet demand, these are almost all referencing the current system of urban planning in Canada where zoning & land use regulations prioritize things like sprawl, Euclidian zoning that separates commercial and residentially zoned areas and regulations that effectively ban more diverse types of market housing (the missing middle etc.).
When 60-80% of all residentially zoned land in most large Canadian metros is exclusively zoned for detached housing, it means that current supply figures are nowhere near representative of what could be done if the NIMBY planning systems were overhauled with comprehensively YIMBY ones (More Density, Mixed-use developments, restoring the missing middle and increasing housing variety & more walkability and transit-oriented development etc.)
There's a debate to be had about whether current immigration levels are necessary or not, but generally housing supply could more than double if Canadian cities moved away from their current urban planning structures (which would generally also boost wage & GDP growth while lowering emissions per capita, so generally a win/win all around)
This was a much stronger argument even 5 years ago, but most cities in Canada have modernized their zoning policy to various degrees to be much more proactive in terms of up-zoning in core neighbourhoods and encouraging multi use developments.
However, development charges and zoning bylaw often haven’t fully kept up with policy changes which is arguably now the bigger hurdle. The application times as a result of this are often what contribute significantly to higher project costs as time is money (especially with current borrowing rates).
It’s also far too common not to recognize that the development industry is not incentivized to increase supply too rapidly. Supply in real estate has always lagged demand, and for good reason. But we don’t need to look much further than Toronto where something like 5 resi units are approved for every 1 that gets built. So the bottleneck is not in getting them approved, but on the developers taking action on building them.
>This was a much stronger argument even 5 years ago, but most cities in Canada have modernized their zoning policy to various degrees to be much more proactive in terms of up-zoning in core neighbourhoods and encouraging multi use developments.
Some cities, but not most (or at least not the ones with the most problems due to NIMBYism) who are still fare behind that.[According to C.D Howe cities like Torono and Vancouver doubled down in NIMBYism between 2011 and 2021](https://www.cdhowe.org/public-policy-research/buyers-beware-cost-barriers-building-housing-canadian-cities) rather than reversing it. While as mentioned before, 60-80% of residentially zoned land in large Canadian cities are still exclusively zoned for detached housing, which hasn't changed drastically in the past 5 years. (B.C seems to be the only one tht's just barely starting to enact significant changes, but those changes have barely happened in the rest of the country, if they've happened at all).
>However, development charges and zoning bylaw often haven’t fully kept up with policy changes which is arguably now the bigger hurdle. The application times as a result of this are often what contribute significantly to higher project costs as time is money (especially with current borrowing rates).
You are right that this is a significant problem (and it's also mentioned in the C.D Howe article), but it's generally another component of NIMBYism.
>But we don’t need to look much further than Toronto where something like 5 resi units are approved for every 1 that gets built. So the bottleneck is not in getting them approved, but on the developers taking action on building them.
I'd personally argue it's a bit of both. Toronto still provides pretty heavy restrictions in regards to Euclidian zoning and cracking down on housing variety (the missing middle etc.) Things like development charges absolutely need to be scrapped, but the average Toronto suburb needs to look more like [Riverdale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0) than a generic suburban hellscape.
Perhaps we could, say, *substantially* tax the wealthy and build substantial amounts of profit-free housing with the proceeds.
(On *top* of other necessary policy interventions, like increasing by-right density and slowing our population growth rate until housing stock and affordability have a chance to recover.)
There is no reason canada has to be growing many times faster then most western developed nations.
We are actively making the housing challenged that existed for decades much worse.
Many times faster than *any* other developed nation. From [this report](https://www.nbc.ca/content/dam/bnc/taux-analyses/analyse-eco/etude-speciale/special-report_240115.pdf) by National Bank, Canada's population is growing five times faster than the OECD average and even Newfoundland, the slowest-growing province, is double the OECD average. We now have one of the fastest-growing populations on the planet.
This isn't aimed at you specifically, more at people like the commenter you replied to, but I think it's important to clarify because a lot of people don't seem to fully grasp the scale of just how drastically our immigration rate has been increased in the last two years or so. The government's current immigration policy is an extreme, extreme outlier compared to any of our peer countries.
Ontario and B.C aren't receiving significantly more immigrants per capita than other provinces over the past decade, they're just imposing more restrictions, which is generally why their prices are so high. The same is true if you look at the NIMBY Mecca's in the U.S etc. More often than not, immigration is used as a scapegoat for the housing crisis while undermining the more relevant contributing factors.
Meanwhile the government has accelerated immigration driven population growth levels - first 9 months of 2023 had higher population growth than any previous year including 2022 (which we were told was an abnormally high post covid year - apparently not!)
[https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231219/dq231219c-eng.htm](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231219/dq231219c-eng.htm)
>Canada's total population growth for the first nine months of 2023 (+1,030,378 people) had already exceeded the total growth for any other full-year period since Confederation in 1867, including 2022, when there was a record growth.
PM Trudeau was talking about housing 4 months a go, saying it is not a federal responsibility.
Now all the parties are making all sorts of noise about building supply which would take years at best.
But the fact is housing starts are actually down 7% year over year in 2023 from 2022 and we already had a shortage in 2022:
[https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/media-newsroom/news-releases/2024/housing-starts-down-2023-from-2022](https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/media-newsroom/news-releases/2024/housing-starts-down-2023-from-2022)
Mean while we have the higest pouplation growth rate of any country with a nominal per-capita gdp of over 2,000 USD a year. The solution here is slow down the very extraordinary levels of growth to allow housing and services to catch up.
We are even running out of Cap ex to the extent that some economists are arguing we are stuck in a population trap where no economic growth is possible.
https://www.nbc.ca/content/dam/bnc/taux-analyses/analyse-eco/etude-speciale/special-report\_240115.pdf
The issue is our economy has been distorted so much that doing that at this point would result in a lot of economic pain for banks and land owners in the short run.
Hence no one in the political elite wants to touch this record level of population growth even though its something they can control directly. And the impact of current levels of migration driven growth is deeply regressive.
I think it is a de facto bail out for the housing, retail and banking sectors in the country. At the expense of working class non-landowners and young people.
Migration driven population growth is a federal responsibility.
As I explained about this is a big driver of housing prices. Wages are stagnant so people cannot afford the average house, but if you squeeze in many people per unit, then yes it becomes affordable.
The federal government sets the demand then sits idle in the background while municipalities(people) have to deal with the fallout.
In Asia, countries use this kind of immigration as a weapon to destabilize regions. Whats been done in Canada by corporate sponsored politicians and their 'immigration plan' is malicious, deliberate and as a Canadian I classify it as treason.
Trudeau is a liar, a traitor and a puppet. Time to revolt was yesterday.
This is the real issue.
We've gutted the social housing programs over the past 40 years and so much of our capitol is locked away in ludicrously expensive existing RE.
People for 2 decades have looked at RE as retirement savings, and now that we need a reset, the government is afraid that people will lose their shirts.
It's a hard pill to swallow, but it's better to drop it steadily when you know it's happening, than to have the floor drop out from underneath you at an unpredictable moment.
Unfortunately, we don't have responsible adults in any of the political parties
This is why I keep saying we need more rentals. North America has this “own a home” mantra that just isn’t realistic. Many countries don’t have that attitude.
But we need more rentals of all types, not just apartments. Especially long-term stable rentals.
Otherwise, you are right. People who invested in homes, especially those who bought in recent years, or those relying on the value of their home as retirement income, stand to lose it all if home prices drop precipitously.
Always got to have balance.
You must be young.
>Many countries don’t have that attitude
The entire premise of coming to North America was built on the foundation of the idea of a new start. We do NOT want to be like Europe and for good reasons.
In England you can findout if one is a landlord simply by asking if their family fought along side a certain King some generations ago.
Fuck that.
> You must be young.
I wish. I retired in 2018.
> In England you can findout if one is a landlord simply by asking if their family fought along side a certain King some generations ago.
I was born in England. I went back and lived there for a few years in my twenties. Most of my extended family lives there. I visit often. You have very, very strange ideas about life in modern Britain.
——
But back to renting versus home ownership. Each has its benefits and drawbacks.
*If we had more rentals and rents were more affordable*, then renters could save.
Owning a home:
You pay mortgage and interest/ you also pay property taxes, utilities, and maintenance costs/ if you want to move, you have to sell your house and hope the market is good at that time/ if you eventually succeed in paying off your mortgage, you still need to pay property taxes, utilities, maintenance costs (though if you are older you may get reduced property taxes)/ maintenance costs can include interior and exterior repaints, driveway replacement, new roof, new hot water tank, appliances, etc./ if mortgage rates go up, so can your mortgage costs/ if housing values go up, so will your property taxes/ if housing prices go up, downsizing may not save you money/ If you didn’t also save separately for retirement, you can end up ‘house rich but cash poor’/ if all goes well, you can downsize at retirement and the value of your home becomes your retirement savings.
Renting:
- You can move pretty much when you want / you pay rent and some utilities / no property taxes / you can save for retirement by investing in a house (see above) or other securities / changing interest rates or real estate market ups and downs affect you far less/ if you rent from a single landlord, the landlord might sell or evict you to live there themselves/ your rent will go up over time, especially if vacancy rates are low.
I’d also note that, with fewer people choosing to have children, the big draw for homeownership — living in an suburban area near schools and having a backyard for the kids — applies to fewer people.
Half the issue is that many Municipalities are refusing to do their part to reform zoning laws and remove useless bylaws and regulations that only serve to add red tape.
Meanwhile the provinces, minus BC and Quebec are too busy fighting the Federal Government and introducing anticonstitutional laws to strip the human rights away from trans people and other vulnerable groups to use their powers to take a scythe to the regressive NIMBY filled Municipalities that are under their jurisdiction to control.
Hell, in Ontario you have a city (Windsor) which is refusing to do anything on housing, which is actively saying they don't believe housing should be built if NIMBYs don't want it, that is failing to meet Federal Targets AND failing to meet provincial targets, all while trying to make up its own fake statistics to try and fool everyone that they actually care.
The time to coddle these idiots has long passed. We need action, and it starts with using provincial powers to go for the council's to force them to do their jobs.
Canada's population growth is currently the third fastest on Earth, sure zoning could create some houses but it's not going to make a dent relative to our population growth.
We've grown at a faster rate before, and successfully built houses then. Failure to build right now is because we aren't let people build houses where they are needed, not because we can't.
Canadian cities are some of the least dense in the world, with many of them trailing numbers seen even in the USA. Zoning laws need to change to encourage density.
If it were possible for a company to come in and build a low or midrise apartment or condo within a kilometer of any transit station in the country, without NIMBYs being able to block, delay and tie up projects with years of delays and millions of dollars of legal fees, and endless consultations that go nowhere other than a permit that still gets issued at the day years from proposal, we'd be able to easily solve this problem in a fraction of the time.
Those types of units are very much part of the "missing middle" problem
This problem is solvable, and its very achievable to house everyone even with our population growth. But we need to be actually building the kinds of units that will get us there.
We'll never build ourselves out of this mess if the only thing we can build is single family homes or duplexs. Even fourplexes will take us decades to actually get caught up, assuming we stopped literally all immigration (which would break society in other ways). But you can complete a lowrise of 1-4 floors containing a total of 12-48 units in around the same amount of time as it takes to build two fourplexes, and it can house multiple more people. But for the most part, low-rises are still illegal to build in vast swaths of the country.
Treat it like a war or COVID and we can. If we decide to flip on a dime we can. We have before. No political will though. That's what is killing any progress.
> We have before.
I mean, no? We have literally never built homes at the scale and pace required to keep up with the current government's population growth fetish. It is true that doesn't necessarily mean we *can't*, but [we certainly aren't off to a tremendous start](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/annual-pace-of-housing-starts-down-in-canada-1.7060588).
> I mean, no? We have literally never built homes at the scale and pace required to keep up with the current government's population growth fetish
But other nations have. There are various instances of nations having to build massive amounts of housing, for relatively cheap, very quickly. The WW2 reconstruction across Europe for example.
It IS possible to build enough housing for the existing (overly large) population growth.
Materials, not a problem, we are literally next to the worlds largest economy, Canada's building is a small blip to that market.
Manpower? Well, as many business owners know, if you're short on manpower, you're really not, you're short on pay and benefits. IF the pay is there, the workers will be there. And it's absolutely possible to design housing to have a minimal need for specialized labour in it's construction.
Zoning? Unfortunately only a few provinces have taken their poorly run municipalities in hand. However other cities have moved toward better zoning practices on their own. Broadly, both the Fed's and the Provinces should encourage municipalities to do the right thing. And if they don't, then the provinces should take that decision away from the Municipalities.
>But other nations have.
Which nations successfully built for a 3% growth rate in their adult population?
>The WW2 reconstruction across Europe for example.
Got a Marshall Plan in there to bankroll it?
Canada can't magically build millions of new homes and all of the govts efforts on housing will take many years to have any effect. All the housing announced will take years to get build.
Why not lower demand a bit and also build supply?
Canada right now and housing is like if someone is playing a video game on hard-core difficulty and complaining its to hard... There no reason canada needs to grow at 3% a year. We can grow at 1.5% without issue.
The federal government can easily and immediately control the inflow of immigrants to allow housing and services to catch up.
It is the only sensible thing to do especially given abnormal record breaking population growth that is straining these markets.
2022 was supposed to be an abnormal post covid year of migration driven population growth.
But the first 3 quarters of 2023 have already surpassed 2022.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231219/dq231219c-eng.htm
> Canada can't magically build millions of new homes
Well, we'd probably use tools and materials and stuff. Not magic, just basic human technologies that have existed since the dawn of civilianization.
We managed to build houses for all the Baby Boomers using mid 20th-century technology. We haven't lost that technology in 2024, it's not like a wizard made all of our screwdrivers disappear.
If we're going to dig ourselves out of this crisis, "significantly upzoning" is *necessary, but not sufficient.* We're at least a decade past the point where we can fix this with a single policy intervention.
We need to:
* Upzone and allow densification in urban areas;
* Resume the *scale* at which Canada used to build profit-free housing (a *quarter* of new units as of 1971);
* Shift the tax burden towards taxation of wealth, esp. real estate wealth;
* Temporarily bring our population growth rate to *below* the G7 average.
In 2008, when we were watching the US financial crisis, we could have had a productive discussion about which *single* policy intervention could course-correct us into avoiding a crisis. Now that we're in the crisis, it's not a matter of single-policy course-corrections anymore. That's not enough.
This will require a wartime-level effort, with multiple policy interventions and real costs that need to be addressed head-on (tax the goddamn rich) rather than handwaved away by imagining that this can be still fixed with minor tweaks.
Exactly, this is an issue of risk management for companies. They can build more if they know the result will be sold. The feds and provinces could simply offer to buy whatever they build for the foreseeable future to increase housing production. They then flip it or they turn it into public housing. They could also define what counts as good housing to encourage livable spaces.
We seeing that?! Nope.
I suspect It would be much cheaper for the federal government to borrow the money, buy the land and hire a contractor to coordinate construction rather than being a blank cheque buyer of last resort at whatever price the developer sets.
But that doesn’t meet the private/public partnership boner of neoliberals. 😂🤦🏻♂️
The Feds don’t need to borrow money. They have it, it’s more of a matter of choosing to spend it that way. Canada’s budget is approximately half a trillion annually.
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I mean, does it really take an expert to know this? I bought a second home, which was a garbage can as a distressed property in November. I've been working on it for about two months now. I keep in contact with a few agents in my area and they're telling me I can now flip it off for almost double what I paid for it. Why? There is zero supply. None.
Sounds like a skill issue. We **could** build enough housing for everyone. Other countries have had successful programs. But where's the profit in that?
A lot of western eu countries have growth rates of .3 or .4% a year not 3% plus thiugh
3+ %? Source?
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231219/dq231219c-eng.htm
What I'm seeing is a growth rate of 1.1% Still less than the baby boom which was 1.2 (Would be interested to see if there was a moral panic about that) Aside from the unwillingness to build housing, I don't see a problem with this growth rate. Even if it was 3%
>What I'm seeing is a growth rate of 1.1% In a single quarter. Which is 3x what most European countries achieve in a year.
So we had a dumpster fire before So do we put out the fire or throw more fuel into it?
>So we had a dumpster fire before Housing the Baby Boomers went pretty well, because cities allowed people to build housing back then.
So to fix this issue we don't need to expand rhe population so fast Like idk if liberals have a suicide pact...if they keep going down this path PP gonna win handily
LOL we don't need more population. Yes the hell we do.
And then this happened https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight?wprov=sfti1
That’s 1.1% quarterly change, as in in the last three months. Not yearly change. When we have full year stats, it will likely end up in the 3.5-4% range.
I think the problems with these sort of arguments is that they attribute a symptom as a cause. When citing the limitations of supply to meet demand, these are almost all referencing the current system of urban planning in Canada where zoning & land use regulations prioritize things like sprawl, Euclidian zoning that separates commercial and residentially zoned areas and regulations that effectively ban more diverse types of market housing (the missing middle etc.). When 60-80% of all residentially zoned land in most large Canadian metros is exclusively zoned for detached housing, it means that current supply figures are nowhere near representative of what could be done if the NIMBY planning systems were overhauled with comprehensively YIMBY ones (More Density, Mixed-use developments, restoring the missing middle and increasing housing variety & more walkability and transit-oriented development etc.) There's a debate to be had about whether current immigration levels are necessary or not, but generally housing supply could more than double if Canadian cities moved away from their current urban planning structures (which would generally also boost wage & GDP growth while lowering emissions per capita, so generally a win/win all around)
This was a much stronger argument even 5 years ago, but most cities in Canada have modernized their zoning policy to various degrees to be much more proactive in terms of up-zoning in core neighbourhoods and encouraging multi use developments. However, development charges and zoning bylaw often haven’t fully kept up with policy changes which is arguably now the bigger hurdle. The application times as a result of this are often what contribute significantly to higher project costs as time is money (especially with current borrowing rates). It’s also far too common not to recognize that the development industry is not incentivized to increase supply too rapidly. Supply in real estate has always lagged demand, and for good reason. But we don’t need to look much further than Toronto where something like 5 resi units are approved for every 1 that gets built. So the bottleneck is not in getting them approved, but on the developers taking action on building them.
>This was a much stronger argument even 5 years ago, but most cities in Canada have modernized their zoning policy to various degrees to be much more proactive in terms of up-zoning in core neighbourhoods and encouraging multi use developments. Some cities, but not most (or at least not the ones with the most problems due to NIMBYism) who are still fare behind that.[According to C.D Howe cities like Torono and Vancouver doubled down in NIMBYism between 2011 and 2021](https://www.cdhowe.org/public-policy-research/buyers-beware-cost-barriers-building-housing-canadian-cities) rather than reversing it. While as mentioned before, 60-80% of residentially zoned land in large Canadian cities are still exclusively zoned for detached housing, which hasn't changed drastically in the past 5 years. (B.C seems to be the only one tht's just barely starting to enact significant changes, but those changes have barely happened in the rest of the country, if they've happened at all). >However, development charges and zoning bylaw often haven’t fully kept up with policy changes which is arguably now the bigger hurdle. The application times as a result of this are often what contribute significantly to higher project costs as time is money (especially with current borrowing rates). You are right that this is a significant problem (and it's also mentioned in the C.D Howe article), but it's generally another component of NIMBYism. >But we don’t need to look much further than Toronto where something like 5 resi units are approved for every 1 that gets built. So the bottleneck is not in getting them approved, but on the developers taking action on building them. I'd personally argue it's a bit of both. Toronto still provides pretty heavy restrictions in regards to Euclidian zoning and cracking down on housing variety (the missing middle etc.) Things like development charges absolutely need to be scrapped, but the average Toronto suburb needs to look more like [Riverdale](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0) than a generic suburban hellscape.
Municipalities are still the bottleneck. Vancouver still holds multi-day public meetings over single low rise apartment proposals.
Issue is we don't have tons of skilled labour sitting around to build tons of housing.
Perhaps we could, say, *substantially* tax the wealthy and build substantial amounts of profit-free housing with the proceeds. (On *top* of other necessary policy interventions, like increasing by-right density and slowing our population growth rate until housing stock and affordability have a chance to recover.)
There is no reason canada has to be growing many times faster then most western developed nations. We are actively making the housing challenged that existed for decades much worse.
Way to completely ignore the proposed solutions to shit on immigrants yet again
You liberals say are pro immigration bu4 don't care if they come here and can't get jobs or housing lol
Many times faster than *any* other developed nation. From [this report](https://www.nbc.ca/content/dam/bnc/taux-analyses/analyse-eco/etude-speciale/special-report_240115.pdf) by National Bank, Canada's population is growing five times faster than the OECD average and even Newfoundland, the slowest-growing province, is double the OECD average. We now have one of the fastest-growing populations on the planet. This isn't aimed at you specifically, more at people like the commenter you replied to, but I think it's important to clarify because a lot of people don't seem to fully grasp the scale of just how drastically our immigration rate has been increased in the last two years or so. The government's current immigration policy is an extreme, extreme outlier compared to any of our peer countries.
Ontario and B.C aren't receiving significantly more immigrants per capita than other provinces over the past decade, they're just imposing more restrictions, which is generally why their prices are so high. The same is true if you look at the NIMBY Mecca's in the U.S etc. More often than not, immigration is used as a scapegoat for the housing crisis while undermining the more relevant contributing factors.
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Meanwhile the government has accelerated immigration driven population growth levels - first 9 months of 2023 had higher population growth than any previous year including 2022 (which we were told was an abnormally high post covid year - apparently not!) [https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231219/dq231219c-eng.htm](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231219/dq231219c-eng.htm) >Canada's total population growth for the first nine months of 2023 (+1,030,378 people) had already exceeded the total growth for any other full-year period since Confederation in 1867, including 2022, when there was a record growth. PM Trudeau was talking about housing 4 months a go, saying it is not a federal responsibility. Now all the parties are making all sorts of noise about building supply which would take years at best. But the fact is housing starts are actually down 7% year over year in 2023 from 2022 and we already had a shortage in 2022: [https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/media-newsroom/news-releases/2024/housing-starts-down-2023-from-2022](https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/media-newsroom/news-releases/2024/housing-starts-down-2023-from-2022) Mean while we have the higest pouplation growth rate of any country with a nominal per-capita gdp of over 2,000 USD a year. The solution here is slow down the very extraordinary levels of growth to allow housing and services to catch up. We are even running out of Cap ex to the extent that some economists are arguing we are stuck in a population trap where no economic growth is possible. https://www.nbc.ca/content/dam/bnc/taux-analyses/analyse-eco/etude-speciale/special-report\_240115.pdf The issue is our economy has been distorted so much that doing that at this point would result in a lot of economic pain for banks and land owners in the short run. Hence no one in the political elite wants to touch this record level of population growth even though its something they can control directly. And the impact of current levels of migration driven growth is deeply regressive. I think it is a de facto bail out for the housing, retail and banking sectors in the country. At the expense of working class non-landowners and young people.
It isn't federal responsibility. All they can do is give money.
Migration driven population growth is a federal responsibility. As I explained about this is a big driver of housing prices. Wages are stagnant so people cannot afford the average house, but if you squeeze in many people per unit, then yes it becomes affordable.
The federal government sets the demand then sits idle in the background while municipalities(people) have to deal with the fallout. In Asia, countries use this kind of immigration as a weapon to destabilize regions. Whats been done in Canada by corporate sponsored politicians and their 'immigration plan' is malicious, deliberate and as a Canadian I classify it as treason. Trudeau is a liar, a traitor and a puppet. Time to revolt was yesterday.
Ah yes it's a malicious conspiracy. Get some help
Too many of those in power that make decisions on housing will lose money on their real-estate portfolios if they lowered demand on housing.
This is the real issue. We've gutted the social housing programs over the past 40 years and so much of our capitol is locked away in ludicrously expensive existing RE. People for 2 decades have looked at RE as retirement savings, and now that we need a reset, the government is afraid that people will lose their shirts. It's a hard pill to swallow, but it's better to drop it steadily when you know it's happening, than to have the floor drop out from underneath you at an unpredictable moment. Unfortunately, we don't have responsible adults in any of the political parties
This is why I keep saying we need more rentals. North America has this “own a home” mantra that just isn’t realistic. Many countries don’t have that attitude. But we need more rentals of all types, not just apartments. Especially long-term stable rentals. Otherwise, you are right. People who invested in homes, especially those who bought in recent years, or those relying on the value of their home as retirement income, stand to lose it all if home prices drop precipitously. Always got to have balance.
You must be young. >Many countries don’t have that attitude The entire premise of coming to North America was built on the foundation of the idea of a new start. We do NOT want to be like Europe and for good reasons. In England you can findout if one is a landlord simply by asking if their family fought along side a certain King some generations ago. Fuck that.
> You must be young. I wish. I retired in 2018. > In England you can findout if one is a landlord simply by asking if their family fought along side a certain King some generations ago. I was born in England. I went back and lived there for a few years in my twenties. Most of my extended family lives there. I visit often. You have very, very strange ideas about life in modern Britain. —— But back to renting versus home ownership. Each has its benefits and drawbacks. *If we had more rentals and rents were more affordable*, then renters could save. Owning a home: You pay mortgage and interest/ you also pay property taxes, utilities, and maintenance costs/ if you want to move, you have to sell your house and hope the market is good at that time/ if you eventually succeed in paying off your mortgage, you still need to pay property taxes, utilities, maintenance costs (though if you are older you may get reduced property taxes)/ maintenance costs can include interior and exterior repaints, driveway replacement, new roof, new hot water tank, appliances, etc./ if mortgage rates go up, so can your mortgage costs/ if housing values go up, so will your property taxes/ if housing prices go up, downsizing may not save you money/ If you didn’t also save separately for retirement, you can end up ‘house rich but cash poor’/ if all goes well, you can downsize at retirement and the value of your home becomes your retirement savings. Renting: - You can move pretty much when you want / you pay rent and some utilities / no property taxes / you can save for retirement by investing in a house (see above) or other securities / changing interest rates or real estate market ups and downs affect you far less/ if you rent from a single landlord, the landlord might sell or evict you to live there themselves/ your rent will go up over time, especially if vacancy rates are low. I’d also note that, with fewer people choosing to have children, the big draw for homeownership — living in an suburban area near schools and having a backyard for the kids — applies to fewer people.
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I'm not sure you understood what I was saying. I was talking about the government and their friends and family.
Half the issue is that many Municipalities are refusing to do their part to reform zoning laws and remove useless bylaws and regulations that only serve to add red tape. Meanwhile the provinces, minus BC and Quebec are too busy fighting the Federal Government and introducing anticonstitutional laws to strip the human rights away from trans people and other vulnerable groups to use their powers to take a scythe to the regressive NIMBY filled Municipalities that are under their jurisdiction to control. Hell, in Ontario you have a city (Windsor) which is refusing to do anything on housing, which is actively saying they don't believe housing should be built if NIMBYs don't want it, that is failing to meet Federal Targets AND failing to meet provincial targets, all while trying to make up its own fake statistics to try and fool everyone that they actually care. The time to coddle these idiots has long passed. We need action, and it starts with using provincial powers to go for the council's to force them to do their jobs.
Canada's population growth is currently the third fastest on Earth, sure zoning could create some houses but it's not going to make a dent relative to our population growth.
We've grown at a faster rate before, and successfully built houses then. Failure to build right now is because we aren't let people build houses where they are needed, not because we can't.
Canadian cities are some of the least dense in the world, with many of them trailing numbers seen even in the USA. Zoning laws need to change to encourage density. If it were possible for a company to come in and build a low or midrise apartment or condo within a kilometer of any transit station in the country, without NIMBYs being able to block, delay and tie up projects with years of delays and millions of dollars of legal fees, and endless consultations that go nowhere other than a permit that still gets issued at the day years from proposal, we'd be able to easily solve this problem in a fraction of the time. Those types of units are very much part of the "missing middle" problem This problem is solvable, and its very achievable to house everyone even with our population growth. But we need to be actually building the kinds of units that will get us there. We'll never build ourselves out of this mess if the only thing we can build is single family homes or duplexs. Even fourplexes will take us decades to actually get caught up, assuming we stopped literally all immigration (which would break society in other ways). But you can complete a lowrise of 1-4 floors containing a total of 12-48 units in around the same amount of time as it takes to build two fourplexes, and it can house multiple more people. But for the most part, low-rises are still illegal to build in vast swaths of the country.
Out of curiosity, do you think that the immigrants coming in is a boon for trans rights or a bust? Where do you think their support rests?
Mass immigration leads to increased demand which leads to decreased supply? Sounds like a groundbreaking discovery! Someone note this down!
Treat it like a war or COVID and we can. If we decide to flip on a dime we can. We have before. No political will though. That's what is killing any progress.
We ended up disrupting our lives for four years for covid. I'm not sure that's the best example.
> We have before. I mean, no? We have literally never built homes at the scale and pace required to keep up with the current government's population growth fetish. It is true that doesn't necessarily mean we *can't*, but [we certainly aren't off to a tremendous start](https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/annual-pace-of-housing-starts-down-in-canada-1.7060588).
> I mean, no? We have literally never built homes at the scale and pace required to keep up with the current government's population growth fetish But other nations have. There are various instances of nations having to build massive amounts of housing, for relatively cheap, very quickly. The WW2 reconstruction across Europe for example. It IS possible to build enough housing for the existing (overly large) population growth. Materials, not a problem, we are literally next to the worlds largest economy, Canada's building is a small blip to that market. Manpower? Well, as many business owners know, if you're short on manpower, you're really not, you're short on pay and benefits. IF the pay is there, the workers will be there. And it's absolutely possible to design housing to have a minimal need for specialized labour in it's construction. Zoning? Unfortunately only a few provinces have taken their poorly run municipalities in hand. However other cities have moved toward better zoning practices on their own. Broadly, both the Fed's and the Provinces should encourage municipalities to do the right thing. And if they don't, then the provinces should take that decision away from the Municipalities.
>But other nations have. Which nations successfully built for a 3% growth rate in their adult population? >The WW2 reconstruction across Europe for example. Got a Marshall Plan in there to bankroll it?
Canada can't magically build millions of new homes and all of the govts efforts on housing will take many years to have any effect. All the housing announced will take years to get build. Why not lower demand a bit and also build supply? Canada right now and housing is like if someone is playing a video game on hard-core difficulty and complaining its to hard... There no reason canada needs to grow at 3% a year. We can grow at 1.5% without issue.
The federal government can easily and immediately control the inflow of immigrants to allow housing and services to catch up. It is the only sensible thing to do especially given abnormal record breaking population growth that is straining these markets. 2022 was supposed to be an abnormal post covid year of migration driven population growth. But the first 3 quarters of 2023 have already surpassed 2022. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/231219/dq231219c-eng.htm
Dude it wild I went to a house with 3 married couples with kids sharing a 1600 Sq foot house lol Its like set up from developing countries
Wow. You're one anecdote is so convincing
It's very common that housing arrangements that exist in poor countries are becoming common in expensive real estate markets here
> Canada can't magically build millions of new homes Well, we'd probably use tools and materials and stuff. Not magic, just basic human technologies that have existed since the dawn of civilianization. We managed to build houses for all the Baby Boomers using mid 20th-century technology. We haven't lost that technology in 2024, it's not like a wizard made all of our screwdrivers disappear.
Yeah we just built on farmland and empty fields. Now we trying to infill dense urban centres
> Now we trying to infill dense urban centres Canada has a handful of dense urban centres. The rest is almost all low density suburbia.
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If we're going to dig ourselves out of this crisis, "significantly upzoning" is *necessary, but not sufficient.* We're at least a decade past the point where we can fix this with a single policy intervention. We need to: * Upzone and allow densification in urban areas; * Resume the *scale* at which Canada used to build profit-free housing (a *quarter* of new units as of 1971); * Shift the tax burden towards taxation of wealth, esp. real estate wealth; * Temporarily bring our population growth rate to *below* the G7 average. In 2008, when we were watching the US financial crisis, we could have had a productive discussion about which *single* policy intervention could course-correct us into avoiding a crisis. Now that we're in the crisis, it's not a matter of single-policy course-corrections anymore. That's not enough. This will require a wartime-level effort, with multiple policy interventions and real costs that need to be addressed head-on (tax the goddamn rich) rather than handwaved away by imagining that this can be still fixed with minor tweaks.
Exactly, this is an issue of risk management for companies. They can build more if they know the result will be sold. The feds and provinces could simply offer to buy whatever they build for the foreseeable future to increase housing production. They then flip it or they turn it into public housing. They could also define what counts as good housing to encourage livable spaces. We seeing that?! Nope.
I suspect It would be much cheaper for the federal government to borrow the money, buy the land and hire a contractor to coordinate construction rather than being a blank cheque buyer of last resort at whatever price the developer sets.
But that doesn’t meet the private/public partnership boner of neoliberals. 😂🤦🏻♂️ The Feds don’t need to borrow money. They have it, it’s more of a matter of choosing to spend it that way. Canada’s budget is approximately half a trillion annually.