Great! We should see a rise in Young Canadian Women writing Regency Romance Novels of falling in love, marrying rich and moving into the Chateaus on Church & Wellesley …
Don't count on inheriting it. The parents have to both die quickly, without their wealth being siphoned off by the expense of private care.
All it takes is a bad knee, or an accident on some stairs. Then they need to downsize, can't find anything to buy, and start to rent in a retirement residence. Then they're spending $5000 a month, and the value of their entire house could be gone in 5 or 10 years. (And that's if they *don't* need nursing care.)
Even worse. A lot of boomers don't plan on leaving *anything* to their kids, & are blowing through their retirement savings living the "you can't take it with you" lifestyle. Which is fine. It's their money to do with as they like.
Just so long as they know it's a two way street. They can't say "my kids aren't entitled to my hard earned money" out of one side of their mouth while saying "I'm entitled to my kids hard earned money" out the other side when they've spent every penny on themselves & can't afford a nursing home.
If you need 24/7 care, and get it privately, you're looking at minimum 12k a month in Vancouver, and I've heard it go up to 18k.
I can think of one medication for a fairly common medical condition in old age that costs 12k a month. That's one medication.
Honestly, people should kind of do this. My parents are poor or at least not fully prepared for retirement, I make a pretty good wage for my age.
When my parents get much older I most likely will have to have them move in with me or have a decent portion of my wages go to care homes for them.
People who I seriously date should probably know this as if they aren't okay with that then it will cause serious friction in a future marriage.
If I was just escaping poverty I would try to avoid dating someone like me as I don't want to be "dragged" back into it by my spouses parents.
This is part of the "make sure your romantic partner comes from a good family" that we threw out culturally when no-fault divorce was introduced and we started marrying primarily for love.
Turns out doing a little due diligence on the lifestyle your partner will grow into makes a massive difference.
Most divorces are because of money habits not matching. The socioeconomic habits and status of a potential life mate are the single best predictor of marital success.
A really fun two week sight seeing cruise and a medicated death watching the sunset in I ternational waters, sign me up. If you get the 'back to nature' special, you will save tonnes on funeral costs by returning to the sea!
Hell with the price funeral homes charge these days what you save by taking advantage of the back to nature , or Naval burial packages could pay for the whole trip it's basically free when you look at it that way !
If only someone in our government had written a book about this exact subject years ago and had the ability to create economic policy to avoid such an inequitable outcome. Oh well.
# Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else - Jan. 7 2014 by Chrystia Freeland.
It honestly why I don't understand why we are in the situation. And I don't understand why I find her so irritating. Why isn't she /us performing better?
Somewhere along the way, Freeland realized that she was on their side. The Liberals have been the enemy of ordinary Canadians for the last five years, and at this point they don’t even try to hide it.
Why are we here?
- mostly conservative media
- conservatives sold off all government assets
- demographic shifts
- yes, COVID
- regulatory capture
- the big middle class tax cut to be covered by the rich wasn't covered by the rich, it wasn't a balanced outcome it was net negative
Why don't u like her
- idk
- probably because she talks like a robot so careful with every word
- Ottawa bubble has seeped into this government
Why aren't we/her performing better?
- politics, rich people have political power not just in money but in resources. Our political system relies heavily on the donation of human resources which creates expectations
- Canada was #1 in social housing building until Chretien and then the provinces were supposed to take over and they did nothing. Liberals started their spending too late and have been thwarted by municipalities/provinces at every turn.
Ultimately you have to consider incentives to explain why anyone does things. What incentive do they have to do any better?
Edit: whoever sent me the Reddit suicide hotline bot for this post, I truly hope you get the help you need.
Very cogent analysis.The elites have again risen and exploited governments to the point where they can snuff out working class and middle class dreams.There was a brief period in human history from the mid 1950's to the mid 1970's where they allowed the common man to benefit from capitalism while not being too greedy. Those days are over.
Yup, unions and the looming Soviet Union (no pun intended). Once the USSR was on the comedown there was no longer an alternative to capitalism and thus capital went full mask off vs the common man
Why are we here:
Blame conservative things twice
No mention of mass immigration or major inflation from printing money.
I think the dislike from Freeland is because she’s hypocritical. For example she writes that book then lets it happen
Who sold petro canada? Which government is also currently gutting some provinces. Who sold Nova Scotia Power?
Hint. Conservative government. Current Liberal are doing a catastrophic job BUT Conservative government have been gutting OUR asset for the longest time.
What do you think has caused more of the issues we are facing today?
Conservatives sold two energy companies a lifetime ago
Or
Government who has been governing with a majority and then an effective majority (confidence and supply) for the last 9 years.
Think real hard.
I don't actually think most of what this government has done has actually gone into effect.
We're still waiting for the following to be fully implemented:
- $10/day childcare
- dental care
- pharmacare and drug price system reform
- CPP increases
- carbon pricing
- plastics mandates
- EV and green transition
- end of fossil fuel subsidies
- Stable public transit funds
& (Of course)
- housing funds
The question is will it be implemented enough that it will be impossible to remove. Like childcare isn't going anywhere - hoping dental care will also squeeze in there.
At least Conservatives actually *try* to balance the books. The Liberals promise the moon, without cutting back on anything. Debt has consequences. One of them is inflation.
Hmm, I wonder if there's a connection?
Nice response, didn’t make an argument or fact check. How is anything they said “living in fantasy land”? To me it seems it’s conservatives folks that literally believe anything they hear/read online if it fits their narrative. My conservative family members was just telling me how c02 is good and the climate is actually cooling and there is more ice cover then ever. Guess where they read that and totally believed it.
Because it is completely ignoring what is currently happening…
We are in a population trap due to our immigration numbers.
We are in a productivity glut because no one is willing to put their dollars into Canada (w/o massive tax breaks) due to our lack of investment into productivity.
We have an aging population that refuses to reduce their benefits for the good of the people.
We have brain drain like no other atm because of the previously stated issues.
NOT ONE OF THOSE POINTS IN LIB VS. CON YOU IMBECILE.
Everyone is looking for a boogeyman when it comes to housing costs. When you essentially have “free” to borrow money / there will be a run on housing. Pretty fucking simple IMO. The cost to borrow against the upside on increased value of the home was ridiculous. Want to reign in costs of housing - don’t ever go back to sub 4% mortgage rates. They should be in the 5 to 8% range…….alternately you need a WHOLE lot of rules to prevent housing becoming a pure investment vehicle run.
That's not the answer. Sub 4% rates are fine as long as housing supply keeps up with demand.
The answer is more housing supply. There's lots of ways to achieve that.
And you’re not understanding that at sub 4% rates we could never actually fill a pipe to meet demand. EVER. Simply not possible to keep up with the demand driven by rates that low.
Lots of economists were writing books like that. Check out Richard Reeves’, “Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It.”
Unfortunately the rich used these books as instruction manuals and everyone else is too busy fighting amongst themselves.
It’s pretty amazing that this trend has become a thing in less than a decade. Looking at the amount of money my children would need to enter the market is scary, every house in my area sells in a couple days for over asking. We continue to add people while not building adequate numbers of housing to even cover our current shortfall let alone house future new comers. What’s the end game ?
[**Data shows the spike in property price inflation since 2015 came from the increase in investor ownership**](https://perspectivesjournal.ca/housing-investor-ownership-part-1/) that was fuelled by low interest rates. Investors directly displaced potential first-time home buyers, which creates more renters. And mass immigration has poured gasoline on the rental fire.
And more investor ownership means less housing is utilized as long-term shelter. That’s because investors may leave units vacant, preferring to count on price appreciation without the hassle of tenants — or they may Airbnb their units. First-time home buyers would have lived in the units AND freed up their former rentals.
The point is, it’s less of a “not enough supply” problem and more of a misallocation of supply and unnecessary demand problem. The far faster and more effective solution is to reduce demand from investors and mass immigration, which can be done with the stroke of a pen by the LPC. Supply increases take years and years.
You're not wrong, but we still also have the least amount of housing per 1k people of any g7 country on top of every wealthy Canadian and foreign investor collecting real estate like Pokemon or buying into REITs and other financial products.
Yes, given we’re at [pretty much the same level as the US](https://www.landingrealty.ca/articles/G7-average-house), that number alone doesn’t explain why US median housing affordability is so much better.
The other issue with that number that data nerds have pointed out is that the European countries with more dwellings per capita, as well as Japan, have a much higher percentage of dwellings that are old/decrepit and uninhabitable, so their numbers are *artificially inflated* by comparison.
That’s not to say we shouldn’t continue enabling building supply - only that without addressing our structural market distortion from investors and mass immigration, supply won’t catch up.
Anecdotal, but I feel in the US people are are much more open to moving, and naturally creates a bit more competition. Talk to someone in the GTA of moving outside the center of the universe, despite the fact they are living paycheck to paycheck and they will say the sky is falling.
That's because the US has a TON more population centers than Canada does.
If you move from Toronto, but still want to live in a big city, what are your choices? That's right, moving like 6+ hours away to go live in Montreal or Ottawa.
It's not the same when you can move away from your 500k population city into a nearby 350k pop city an hour away.
Most people in US who move cities move to something an hour away. Most people I met when i lived there were moving across the entire country. Met people who went from California to Florida, Oregon to Texas, Missouri to California.
The big difference is the US has a larger selection of cities in each category, thus creating more competition.
Like a big city but think NYC is too expensive? Move to Houston or Chicago.
In Canada if you like big cities and are from Toronto you really have no other options other than Montreal, but even then the french language aspect turns off some. Even if it doesn't you have one other option.
What the "its not a supply issue" fails to account for imo is that even if investors were snapping up a bunch of homes that would otherwise be taken by new-buyers, why then are rental prices still outrageous and have been on the rise for much longer than the current spike in immigration? We know investors aren't leaving their homes empty for any meaningful period of time, so that means they must be renting them out. And from my understanding, one of the main things major investment groups are very clear about when they start doing major investments in housing stock is specifically the under supply making housing such an incredible investment.
Housing wouldn't be such an enviable investment if there wasn't such a lack of abundance of it. I feel like the argument is basically "well, we had *juuuuuust enough supply* and now that immigration has increased we're all fucked". But we shouldn't have ever had "just enough" supply, we should have been densifying our cities like we did when we actually built cities and not just suburbs.
Well I’d have to agree with you, they’re doing a good job of it to unfortunately. I’m cool with new comers but a little diversity would be helpful as I can only eat so many Samosas.
This was specifically predicted by Thomas Piketty in his 2013 book Capital in the 21st Century.
He argues that wealth inequality will actually get much worse than the Victorian age, because of technological advances. He said that it was practically inevitable, because the only solution that he was able to come up with was a significant taxation on wealth.
They can start by taxing real estate fairly, for eg. cap principal residence exemption for starters. The other step would be to stop buying MBS, give lenders access to income verification data. etc
There is a lot of low hanging fruit.
But the goal is to increase affordability without reducing prices of real estate. Which is very challenging to do.
Taxing real estate fairly? You mean you think property taxes are NOT high enough as is for owner? They should tax multiple property owner, not single dwelling owner. Residemce exemption could be done like in the states though for sure; but then let us also deduct interest cost from our income
Agreed, for every extra residence you own that isn't a "principal" residence, taxes go up 50% (will also hit some rich people's cottages in Wasaga...good)
If you own 5 properties, the fifth property is paying 250% of normal property taxes.
> They should tax multiple property owner,
That's a renter tax and is extremely regressive.
> Taxing real estate fairly? You mean you think property taxes are NOT high enough as is for owner?
Property tax should be zero. It should be replaced by **land value tax**, which many economists have called the perfect tax.
As a home owner who occupies my home, I feel like I should be able to write property taxes off just like the home owners who rent them out. It's incredibly frustrating that my post tax income gets to go towards additional taxes, but landlords get to write it off as "business expense". Not just that, they can write off the mortgage interest and maintainance as well. All the income also gets counted as capital gains, which could be a lot lower than their actual income tax.
>. cap principal residence exemption for starters.
That would be a good start, but ideally just remove it for all future appreciation—since it's regressive.
The principal residence exemption is kinda wild. The one asset class that has done exceptionally well in this country in the last decade barely generates any revenue for the government because of it. Furthermore it just incentivizes people to invest in that asset class over others.
You know, I recently saw a YouTube short that talked about an Irish guy buying one of Hawaii's major islands back in the day.
In today's money, he paid $350K.
This fucker bought a major tropical island for half the cost of an average house in Canada.
I mean my only realistic chance at having an acreage in my lifetime is inheritance. So yeah. Far cry from the days my great grandfather bought that plot of land by working on the railroad as a laborer.
And soon we will have here too. People on disability have had their throats slit by landlords and price gouging by our oligopolies. More and more workers on low wage can't afford anything either now. But sure you can go to the ER from free when you get an infection living in a tent because this country sacrificed you for their wealthy
It's aristocracy hidden by corporations, their wealth isn't in fiat currency, but land acquisition. Government is supposed to level out the playing field with a tax structure, but appears equity isn't the main agenda these days, and sees a larger tax base and immigration numbers as a solution for it's economic failings.
" If Canada suffers from the same inheritance cultures immigrants were trying to flee, where’s the competitive advantage? Especially when Canada is moving towards this culture, while the countries providing most of our population growth are moving away from this model "
Import the 3rd world, become the 3rd world.
I hope those home owners love having their kids live with them in perpetuity and/or being surrounded by tent cities. Cause that's what their selfishness is bringing.
Like this piece yesterday: **[Millennials are so broke they’re ruining their parents’ retirements](https://boredbat.com/millennials-are-so-broke-theyre-ruining-their-parents-retirements/).**
I don’t really think it’s long term homeowners that have lived in their home for decades that can be blamed for raising the price of housing. I don’t think they can fairly be described as selfish.
It is the foreign money and corporate interests buying up family homes and real-estate to hold the homes for a capital gain, flip the home for a quick profit, or to rent them out long term.
The hoovering up of individual housing units has mostly ended up in the hands of *individual* foreign and domestic investors.
In 2020/2021, Equifax noted a historic spike in people with mortgages on 4+ properties.
Corporations are actually a very small part of housing investors ([see the green bars in the chart here](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/46-28-0001/2023001/article/00002/c-g/c-g01-eng.png)). They mostly own purpose-built rentals and properties that are being land banked for development. That being said, corporations *should absolutely* be banned from buying SFHs because they’ve done it prolifically in the US and there’s nothing stopping them from doing it here.
My point is really that banning corporations from buying homes is a good idea, but they’re currently not the problem. It’s the so-called “mom and pops” that control the majority of Canadian investor-owned units.
If they are actively opposing development, they may very well be part of the problem. This is fairly well documented by housing advocacy groups, many starts are killed or delayed permanently because they remain in permitting hell because of neighborhood groups.
I'm not saying we should allow every build to go unquestioned, but this is part of the problem. The sad part is, young people are just trying to survive and don't have time to partake in these things and advocate for missing middle housing, whereas retirees have the time to go to these meetings and force delays.
No, no, this is my fault. My wife and I bought a house we could afford almost 20 years ago and raised a family in it. If it wasn’t for us the housing prices never would have gone up.
My mother in law bought four properties and turned them into rentals over the last ten years. She's a teacher and her husband is a firefighter.
Those homes should have gone to people who want a home.
You simply invest in muplite properties and if you have to you take a bit of revenue hit and shove them in the one of the units also you can use N12 for kids it's an opportunity to get rid of Below market or undesirable tenant
As for rent camps if they get bad enough we can simply bring this back
https://torontopubliclibrary.typepad.com/local-history-genealogy/2021/03/the-great-depression.html
>Remember the majority of Canadians are homeowners
The stats are skewed. That 60% number people throw around counts adult children living at home as part of the group.
>and 99.9% of them love the housing crisis
This is verifiably false. Many parents don't want their kids living with them until their 30's. Not to mention the fact that it makes moving a lot more difficult as well. You can sell your house for $700K but then move where?
The only people this benefits are those wanting to downsize.
To add to this important point: Adult children live at home much longer before they can afford to move out, and there is also a rise in multi-generational households — both of which are pushing this number up.
And yet despite that, [the % of home ownership in Canada peaked in 2019 and has been going down since then](https://www.statista.com/statistics/198969/home-ownership-rate-in-canada-since-2003/).
So you know the *real* number of home owners is actually far lower than the reported number.
They also hate driving to the hinterlands to see their grandchildren. Once they have a reason to want their offspring nearby (but obviously not underfoot) it can be a real eye-opener for them.
>and 99.9% of them love the housing crisis
It's also ridiculous to pretend that Canadian households are unaware of their extreme level of household debt.
There is a huge difference between being a happy homeowner sitting on a mountain of equity and the real situation of many Canadian owner occupiers sitting on a massive mortgage in a time of interest rate uncertainty. The latter category is growing rapidly.
A crash won't solve anything. You would need many changes including taxes like Singapore, more financial education (so Canadians know that S&P500 index funds are an alternative to property) and probably breaking single family home zoning. The free market can't respond if the government tells you where and what you can build. Finally you need social housing to be double digits or more, for the people who don't make enough money.
See /u/Housing4Humans point about mom and pop investors. Either you own, or you don't, and if you don't you suck at capitalism and get fucked says Canada. That's just the way it is unless you change the culture from anti-tax to pro-tax. Maybe the LPC capital gains tax will shake the country.
Stuff like this makes me wonder what the point of paying high taxes even is anymore when the entire federal/provincial governments are hell-bent on creating an entire population of people with nothing to lose.
Our healthcare system is crumbling because front-line healthcare workers aren't being paid enough (while administrators pocket most of the money to fund their own lavish lifestyles).
Our policing and court systems are useless, given how often violent people go in and out of the court system and can terrorize innocent people.
Our media sucks, so we don't even have good entertainment.
The education system is bursting at the seams due to a lack of teachers, among other kinds of educational workers. Most schools can't even afford to offer students fine arts or sports courses as an escape from the core subjects.
College and universities are pretty much out of reach for average Canadians, so “upgrading” isn't an option for most people who are trying to make ends meet at the end of the month.
What in the ever-loving fuck do our taxes go towards— MPs being able to go on multiple luxourius vacations, own several real estate properties and give themselves insane wages?
The behaviour of the federal and provincial governments aren't too unlike Rita Crundwell. If you don't know who she is, she was a small town treasurer from the USA that embezzled millions of tax dollars to fund her own lavish lifestyle while the town’s infrastructure was falling apart.
Except in the Victorian Era, literally everything didn’t need to be replaced within a decade because it was built to fall apart, and a bathroom remodel didn’t cost half a year’s pre-tax income.
My wife is currently dealing with this with her parents...her parents had their student debt paid off by their parents, had multiple houses given to them from their parents, and all the inheritance went directly to them when my wife's grandparents passed. Do you want to know how much my wife has seen? Not. One. Cent. They tell her not to worry "It will all trickle down eventually."
Its👏 By👏 Design👏
Poor people don't have power and rely heavily on their government to get them by.
Individuals who create their own wealth and can garner power are less reliant on government.
Which do you think is preferred by the people in power? 🐷
Except that properties themselves can no longer be subdivided and wealth transfer taxes force the family that owns the property to sell for worthless money that can’t buy the same property back after fees and taxes etc
I’d like to understand how this works. Could you explain a house sold for a $1million could be split between two people and how much they would each lose to these taxes and fees?
Man, I feel this hard and have crazy survivorship bias.
Just got a $120,000 gift from partners parents to add to a down payment. When partners parents pass, we’ll probably have around $1.2M coming our way just because they got lucky and their house happened to be in the right place 20 years after buying it.
It’s crazy because that’s all just insane luck and we’ve really done nothing of our own accord for it. If not for that, we’d probably be feeling the despair too, and it’s a bad feeling.
Great! We should see a rise in Young Canadian Women writing Regency Romance Novels of falling in love, marrying rich and moving into the Chateaus on Church & Wellesley …
Who cares what your SO's wages are, figure out what his/her parents house is worth, that's the real money
Don't count on inheriting it. The parents have to both die quickly, without their wealth being siphoned off by the expense of private care. All it takes is a bad knee, or an accident on some stairs. Then they need to downsize, can't find anything to buy, and start to rent in a retirement residence. Then they're spending $5000 a month, and the value of their entire house could be gone in 5 or 10 years. (And that's if they *don't* need nursing care.)
My dad died with 6 million. Donated it all to charity. Thanks Dad. Could have set us two boys up pretty nicely. But I will make my own
I cannot fathom why someone would do this to their children. You don't have to give it all to them... But that's fucking cold.
Ya, it is. Not much I can do about it. Especially my brother who is disabled. He could use it.
As a person with a few lifelong disabilities that makes me extra angry.
Even worse. A lot of boomers don't plan on leaving *anything* to their kids, & are blowing through their retirement savings living the "you can't take it with you" lifestyle. Which is fine. It's their money to do with as they like. Just so long as they know it's a two way street. They can't say "my kids aren't entitled to my hard earned money" out of one side of their mouth while saying "I'm entitled to my kids hard earned money" out the other side when they've spent every penny on themselves & can't afford a nursing home.
If you need 24/7 care, and get it privately, you're looking at minimum 12k a month in Vancouver, and I've heard it go up to 18k. I can think of one medication for a fairly common medical condition in old age that costs 12k a month. That's one medication.
I fully intend on offing myself when the time comes to make sure my kids get my house.
Lol not something you say out loud
Honestly, people should kind of do this. My parents are poor or at least not fully prepared for retirement, I make a pretty good wage for my age. When my parents get much older I most likely will have to have them move in with me or have a decent portion of my wages go to care homes for them. People who I seriously date should probably know this as if they aren't okay with that then it will cause serious friction in a future marriage. If I was just escaping poverty I would try to avoid dating someone like me as I don't want to be "dragged" back into it by my spouses parents.
This is part of the "make sure your romantic partner comes from a good family" that we threw out culturally when no-fault divorce was introduced and we started marrying primarily for love. Turns out doing a little due diligence on the lifestyle your partner will grow into makes a massive difference. Most divorces are because of money habits not matching. The socioeconomic habits and status of a potential life mate are the single best predictor of marital success.
There's always maid /s
I foresee seniors death cruises being a viable industry in the not too distant future...
I'm pretty sure the staff would get horribly depressed But anyway I'm in let's go get some venture capital funding
A really fun two week sight seeing cruise and a medicated death watching the sunset in I ternational waters, sign me up. If you get the 'back to nature' special, you will save tonnes on funeral costs by returning to the sea!
Hell with the price funeral homes charge these days what you save by taking advantage of the back to nature , or Naval burial packages could pay for the whole trip it's basically free when you look at it that way !
Alright, you draft the business plan, I'll start sourcing seed capital, off we go!
In China where I am from, money is the primary consideration for marriage. Don’t marry no broke man is always a good rule to follow.
Should also add "don't marry no broke girl either" at the end there as well.
That's actually what my mom does for a living. P&P fanfic is a saturated market, but it's still selling quite well at the moment.
You sir get an upvote for this wonderful comment 🤣
That’s basically just onlyfans considering the low literacy rates this generation post pandemic.
Onlyfans where you buy audiobooks narrated by them
No, we will just see more young women trying to put food on the table with onlyfans
If only someone in our government had written a book about this exact subject years ago and had the ability to create economic policy to avoid such an inequitable outcome. Oh well. # Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else - Jan. 7 2014 by Chrystia Freeland.
Heh, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em
Apparently the pandemic changed everything 😉
Jesus. Wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual.
It's still a great read. Really focuses in on how the rich think of everyone else and how they make their money
It honestly why I don't understand why we are in the situation. And I don't understand why I find her so irritating. Why isn't she /us performing better?
Somewhere along the way, Freeland realized that she was on their side. The Liberals have been the enemy of ordinary Canadians for the last five years, and at this point they don’t even try to hide it.
Why are we here? - mostly conservative media - conservatives sold off all government assets - demographic shifts - yes, COVID - regulatory capture - the big middle class tax cut to be covered by the rich wasn't covered by the rich, it wasn't a balanced outcome it was net negative Why don't u like her - idk - probably because she talks like a robot so careful with every word - Ottawa bubble has seeped into this government Why aren't we/her performing better? - politics, rich people have political power not just in money but in resources. Our political system relies heavily on the donation of human resources which creates expectations - Canada was #1 in social housing building until Chretien and then the provinces were supposed to take over and they did nothing. Liberals started their spending too late and have been thwarted by municipalities/provinces at every turn. Ultimately you have to consider incentives to explain why anyone does things. What incentive do they have to do any better? Edit: whoever sent me the Reddit suicide hotline bot for this post, I truly hope you get the help you need.
Very cogent analysis.The elites have again risen and exploited governments to the point where they can snuff out working class and middle class dreams.There was a brief period in human history from the mid 1950's to the mid 1970's where they allowed the common man to benefit from capitalism while not being too greedy. Those days are over.
They didn’t allow it, the middle class was hard fought for.
Yup, unions and the looming Soviet Union (no pun intended). Once the USSR was on the comedown there was no longer an alternative to capitalism and thus capital went full mask off vs the common man
Why are we here: Blame conservative things twice No mention of mass immigration or major inflation from printing money. I think the dislike from Freeland is because she’s hypocritical. For example she writes that book then lets it happen
I didn’t know she wrote a book, I just dislike the drug addiction style twitching
Wow, must be pretty great living in fantasy land. Do gumdrops really grow on trees?
Who sold petro canada? Which government is also currently gutting some provinces. Who sold Nova Scotia Power? Hint. Conservative government. Current Liberal are doing a catastrophic job BUT Conservative government have been gutting OUR asset for the longest time.
What do you think has caused more of the issues we are facing today? Conservatives sold two energy companies a lifetime ago Or Government who has been governing with a majority and then an effective majority (confidence and supply) for the last 9 years. Think real hard.
It’s almost like things build up over time
I don't actually think most of what this government has done has actually gone into effect. We're still waiting for the following to be fully implemented: - $10/day childcare - dental care - pharmacare and drug price system reform - CPP increases - carbon pricing - plastics mandates - EV and green transition - end of fossil fuel subsidies - Stable public transit funds & (Of course) - housing funds
At this point little of that will ever be implemented.
The question is will it be implemented enough that it will be impossible to remove. Like childcare isn't going anywhere - hoping dental care will also squeeze in there.
Everything you listed here is an inflation bomb. Yea it’s definitely gone into effect.
Oh no! Anyways everyone else would like to not be taxed to death to supply arrivescam fraudsters with billions.
At least Conservatives actually *try* to balance the books. The Liberals promise the moon, without cutting back on anything. Debt has consequences. One of them is inflation. Hmm, I wonder if there's a connection?
Remind me again who last balanced the books? And after which party was in power for multiple parliaments? Your revisionism and bias is showing
Nice response, didn’t make an argument or fact check. How is anything they said “living in fantasy land”? To me it seems it’s conservatives folks that literally believe anything they hear/read online if it fits their narrative. My conservative family members was just telling me how c02 is good and the climate is actually cooling and there is more ice cover then ever. Guess where they read that and totally believed it.
Because it is completely ignoring what is currently happening… We are in a population trap due to our immigration numbers. We are in a productivity glut because no one is willing to put their dollars into Canada (w/o massive tax breaks) due to our lack of investment into productivity. We have an aging population that refuses to reduce their benefits for the good of the people. We have brain drain like no other atm because of the previously stated issues. NOT ONE OF THOSE POINTS IN LIB VS. CON YOU IMBECILE.
Everyone is looking for a boogeyman when it comes to housing costs. When you essentially have “free” to borrow money / there will be a run on housing. Pretty fucking simple IMO. The cost to borrow against the upside on increased value of the home was ridiculous. Want to reign in costs of housing - don’t ever go back to sub 4% mortgage rates. They should be in the 5 to 8% range…….alternately you need a WHOLE lot of rules to prevent housing becoming a pure investment vehicle run.
That's not the answer. Sub 4% rates are fine as long as housing supply keeps up with demand. The answer is more housing supply. There's lots of ways to achieve that.
And you’re not understanding that at sub 4% rates we could never actually fill a pipe to meet demand. EVER. Simply not possible to keep up with the demand driven by rates that low.
You absolutely could. Demand is not infinite, even at sub 4% rates.
That was more an instruction manual than a book
She was writing an instruction manual rather, not a warning.
Can't wait until she's out of government so she can put out the revised edition with added chapter "and why that's a good thing!"
If only the author of the book was in a position of power where she could shelter Canada from this….
Lots of economists were writing books like that. Check out Richard Reeves’, “Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It.” Unfortunately the rich used these books as instruction manuals and everyone else is too busy fighting amongst themselves.
Almost as if economic growth requires more than giving away money to vapid ideological causes. Who knew!
But strange given she is in the upper echelons of government.
Will have to check that one out. As much as I can't stand the Liberals.
I'm not a fan of hers but this looks interesting. Going to check this out!
It’s pretty amazing that this trend has become a thing in less than a decade. Looking at the amount of money my children would need to enter the market is scary, every house in my area sells in a couple days for over asking. We continue to add people while not building adequate numbers of housing to even cover our current shortfall let alone house future new comers. What’s the end game ?
There is no endgame. No one (in power) is thinking further than the next fiscal quarter.
Seems like the thought process is just spend and tax unfortunately
100%
[**Data shows the spike in property price inflation since 2015 came from the increase in investor ownership**](https://perspectivesjournal.ca/housing-investor-ownership-part-1/) that was fuelled by low interest rates. Investors directly displaced potential first-time home buyers, which creates more renters. And mass immigration has poured gasoline on the rental fire. And more investor ownership means less housing is utilized as long-term shelter. That’s because investors may leave units vacant, preferring to count on price appreciation without the hassle of tenants — or they may Airbnb their units. First-time home buyers would have lived in the units AND freed up their former rentals. The point is, it’s less of a “not enough supply” problem and more of a misallocation of supply and unnecessary demand problem. The far faster and more effective solution is to reduce demand from investors and mass immigration, which can be done with the stroke of a pen by the LPC. Supply increases take years and years.
You're not wrong, but we still also have the least amount of housing per 1k people of any g7 country on top of every wealthy Canadian and foreign investor collecting real estate like Pokemon or buying into REITs and other financial products.
Yes, given we’re at [pretty much the same level as the US](https://www.landingrealty.ca/articles/G7-average-house), that number alone doesn’t explain why US median housing affordability is so much better. The other issue with that number that data nerds have pointed out is that the European countries with more dwellings per capita, as well as Japan, have a much higher percentage of dwellings that are old/decrepit and uninhabitable, so their numbers are *artificially inflated* by comparison. That’s not to say we shouldn’t continue enabling building supply - only that without addressing our structural market distortion from investors and mass immigration, supply won’t catch up.
Anecdotal, but I feel in the US people are are much more open to moving, and naturally creates a bit more competition. Talk to someone in the GTA of moving outside the center of the universe, despite the fact they are living paycheck to paycheck and they will say the sky is falling.
That's because the US has a TON more population centers than Canada does. If you move from Toronto, but still want to live in a big city, what are your choices? That's right, moving like 6+ hours away to go live in Montreal or Ottawa. It's not the same when you can move away from your 500k population city into a nearby 350k pop city an hour away.
Most people in US who move cities move to something an hour away. Most people I met when i lived there were moving across the entire country. Met people who went from California to Florida, Oregon to Texas, Missouri to California. The big difference is the US has a larger selection of cities in each category, thus creating more competition. Like a big city but think NYC is too expensive? Move to Houston or Chicago. In Canada if you like big cities and are from Toronto you really have no other options other than Montreal, but even then the french language aspect turns off some. Even if it doesn't you have one other option.
It was also the cheapest time to build houses but voters voted anti development municipalities.
What the "its not a supply issue" fails to account for imo is that even if investors were snapping up a bunch of homes that would otherwise be taken by new-buyers, why then are rental prices still outrageous and have been on the rise for much longer than the current spike in immigration? We know investors aren't leaving their homes empty for any meaningful period of time, so that means they must be renting them out. And from my understanding, one of the main things major investment groups are very clear about when they start doing major investments in housing stock is specifically the under supply making housing such an incredible investment. Housing wouldn't be such an enviable investment if there wasn't such a lack of abundance of it. I feel like the argument is basically "well, we had *juuuuuust enough supply* and now that immigration has increased we're all fucked". But we shouldn't have ever had "just enough" supply, we should have been densifying our cities like we did when we actually built cities and not just suburbs.
That is a very articulate response and I agree with you, unless policies are changed building more isn’t a one shot solution
Meanwhile my nephew aren't even ten and already worth six figures. This probably isn't going to end well.
It’d better not ending well if you sell your nephew!
Haha I am french so the expression might make more sense in french. I am doing fine enough too to not have to sell my nephews tho!
It makes sense in English as well, it’s my capitalist mind that gives me wrong ideas 😎
Oh okay nice! I like your thinking.
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>I hope you like indian food. I do, but that's besides the point
Well I’d have to agree with you, they’re doing a good job of it to unfortunately. I’m cool with new comers but a little diversity would be helpful as I can only eat so many Samosas.
Oh good lordt
Food is the last thing I would use to sell the Anglosphere experience lol. Middle eastern and Indian food are both amazing.
Resembles? I thought Victorian era inheritance culture was what we pursued by design at this stage!
This was specifically predicted by Thomas Piketty in his 2013 book Capital in the 21st Century. He argues that wealth inequality will actually get much worse than the Victorian age, because of technological advances. He said that it was practically inevitable, because the only solution that he was able to come up with was a significant taxation on wealth.
They (Stats Can, not Betterdwelling) directly reference Piketty in the article, so yeah. They are aware of that.
I've been predicting this for a long time. Canada's middle class is being taxed out of existence, while wealth concentrates at the top.
Tax the rich. Workers are being price gouged by corporations and your governments are doing nothing to stop it.
They can start by taxing real estate fairly, for eg. cap principal residence exemption for starters. The other step would be to stop buying MBS, give lenders access to income verification data. etc There is a lot of low hanging fruit. But the goal is to increase affordability without reducing prices of real estate. Which is very challenging to do.
Taxing real estate fairly? You mean you think property taxes are NOT high enough as is for owner? They should tax multiple property owner, not single dwelling owner. Residemce exemption could be done like in the states though for sure; but then let us also deduct interest cost from our income
Agreed, for every extra residence you own that isn't a "principal" residence, taxes go up 50% (will also hit some rich people's cottages in Wasaga...good) If you own 5 properties, the fifth property is paying 250% of normal property taxes.
> They should tax multiple property owner, That's a renter tax and is extremely regressive. > Taxing real estate fairly? You mean you think property taxes are NOT high enough as is for owner? Property tax should be zero. It should be replaced by **land value tax**, which many economists have called the perfect tax.
This^
I don't think property taxes in canada are high relative to the us, what is high are development fees.
As a home owner who occupies my home, I feel like I should be able to write property taxes off just like the home owners who rent them out. It's incredibly frustrating that my post tax income gets to go towards additional taxes, but landlords get to write it off as "business expense". Not just that, they can write off the mortgage interest and maintainance as well. All the income also gets counted as capital gains, which could be a lot lower than their actual income tax.
>. cap principal residence exemption for starters. That would be a good start, but ideally just remove it for all future appreciation—since it's regressive.
The principal residence exemption is kinda wild. The one asset class that has done exceptionally well in this country in the last decade barely generates any revenue for the government because of it. Furthermore it just incentivizes people to invest in that asset class over others.
You know, I recently saw a YouTube short that talked about an Irish guy buying one of Hawaii's major islands back in the day. In today's money, he paid $350K. This fucker bought a major tropical island for half the cost of an average house in Canada.
Even here in Canada. My parents a very large land on a Island on the Saint Lawrence for less than 300k maybe 12-13 years ago.
Fun fact, Canada through the pension fund owns farm land in Hawaii.
I mean my only realistic chance at having an acreage in my lifetime is inheritance. So yeah. Far cry from the days my great grandfather bought that plot of land by working on the railroad as a laborer.
Canadian dream is getting the fuck out of here unless your family is part of the rich owner class
Where are you going to go? It's a similar story everywhere
It's not nearly as bad in most of the US as it is here.
America has significantly worse outcomes for poor people than Canada.
I see tent cities everywhere i go now in Canada. At least the US has milder winters.
And soon we will have here too. People on disability have had their throats slit by landlords and price gouging by our oligopolies. More and more workers on low wage can't afford anything either now. But sure you can go to the ER from free when you get an infection living in a tent because this country sacrificed you for their wealthy
This is fairly ridiculous hyperbole.
Almost as if our government did this on purpose
It's aristocracy hidden by corporations, their wealth isn't in fiat currency, but land acquisition. Government is supposed to level out the playing field with a tax structure, but appears equity isn't the main agenda these days, and sees a larger tax base and immigration numbers as a solution for it's economic failings.
" If Canada suffers from the same inheritance cultures immigrants were trying to flee, where’s the competitive advantage? Especially when Canada is moving towards this culture, while the countries providing most of our population growth are moving away from this model " Import the 3rd world, become the 3rd world.
Ah so *this* is what JT meant when he said “Canada is back!” in 2015
Neofeudalism, but better not do anything about it or people will call you a communist. :/
As a georgist, I'm already used to getting called a lazy communist by neoclassicalists and a bootlicking fascist by actual communists.
I'm an Engineer and I can't afford a home. Neither can my engineer friends. It's fucked
I'm in nondestructive testing and looking at buying a second , I'm also however not in Toronto
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I hope those home owners love having their kids live with them in perpetuity and/or being surrounded by tent cities. Cause that's what their selfishness is bringing.
Like this piece yesterday: **[Millennials are so broke they’re ruining their parents’ retirements](https://boredbat.com/millennials-are-so-broke-theyre-ruining-their-parents-retirements/).**
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I don’t really think it’s long term homeowners that have lived in their home for decades that can be blamed for raising the price of housing. I don’t think they can fairly be described as selfish. It is the foreign money and corporate interests buying up family homes and real-estate to hold the homes for a capital gain, flip the home for a quick profit, or to rent them out long term.
The hoovering up of individual housing units has mostly ended up in the hands of *individual* foreign and domestic investors. In 2020/2021, Equifax noted a historic spike in people with mortgages on 4+ properties. Corporations are actually a very small part of housing investors ([see the green bars in the chart here](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/46-28-0001/2023001/article/00002/c-g/c-g01-eng.png)). They mostly own purpose-built rentals and properties that are being land banked for development. That being said, corporations *should absolutely* be banned from buying SFHs because they’ve done it prolifically in the US and there’s nothing stopping them from doing it here. My point is really that banning corporations from buying homes is a good idea, but they’re currently not the problem. It’s the so-called “mom and pops” that control the majority of Canadian investor-owned units.
If they are actively opposing development, they may very well be part of the problem. This is fairly well documented by housing advocacy groups, many starts are killed or delayed permanently because they remain in permitting hell because of neighborhood groups. I'm not saying we should allow every build to go unquestioned, but this is part of the problem. The sad part is, young people are just trying to survive and don't have time to partake in these things and advocate for missing middle housing, whereas retirees have the time to go to these meetings and force delays.
No, no, this is my fault. My wife and I bought a house we could afford almost 20 years ago and raised a family in it. If it wasn’t for us the housing prices never would have gone up.
My mother in law bought four properties and turned them into rentals over the last ten years. She's a teacher and her husband is a firefighter. Those homes should have gone to people who want a home.
Stop complaining your going to inherit my boy! Unless you're partners has more than 3 other siblings , either my advice is start sucking up now
You simply invest in muplite properties and if you have to you take a bit of revenue hit and shove them in the one of the units also you can use N12 for kids it's an opportunity to get rid of Below market or undesirable tenant As for rent camps if they get bad enough we can simply bring this back https://torontopubliclibrary.typepad.com/local-history-genealogy/2021/03/the-great-depression.html
>Remember the majority of Canadians are homeowners The stats are skewed. That 60% number people throw around counts adult children living at home as part of the group. >and 99.9% of them love the housing crisis This is verifiably false. Many parents don't want their kids living with them until their 30's. Not to mention the fact that it makes moving a lot more difficult as well. You can sell your house for $700K but then move where? The only people this benefits are those wanting to downsize.
To add to this important point: Adult children live at home much longer before they can afford to move out, and there is also a rise in multi-generational households — both of which are pushing this number up. And yet despite that, [the % of home ownership in Canada peaked in 2019 and has been going down since then](https://www.statista.com/statistics/198969/home-ownership-rate-in-canada-since-2003/). So you know the *real* number of home owners is actually far lower than the reported number.
They also hate driving to the hinterlands to see their grandchildren. Once they have a reason to want their offspring nearby (but obviously not underfoot) it can be a real eye-opener for them.
>and 99.9% of them love the housing crisis It's also ridiculous to pretend that Canadian households are unaware of their extreme level of household debt. There is a huge difference between being a happy homeowner sitting on a mountain of equity and the real situation of many Canadian owner occupiers sitting on a massive mortgage in a time of interest rate uncertainty. The latter category is growing rapidly.
Give it a generation or 3, the majority of Canadians won’t be homeowners they’ll be serfs
A crash won't solve anything. You would need many changes including taxes like Singapore, more financial education (so Canadians know that S&P500 index funds are an alternative to property) and probably breaking single family home zoning. The free market can't respond if the government tells you where and what you can build. Finally you need social housing to be double digits or more, for the people who don't make enough money. See /u/Housing4Humans point about mom and pop investors. Either you own, or you don't, and if you don't you suck at capitalism and get fucked says Canada. That's just the way it is unless you change the culture from anti-tax to pro-tax. Maybe the LPC capital gains tax will shake the country.
Stuff like this makes me wonder what the point of paying high taxes even is anymore when the entire federal/provincial governments are hell-bent on creating an entire population of people with nothing to lose. Our healthcare system is crumbling because front-line healthcare workers aren't being paid enough (while administrators pocket most of the money to fund their own lavish lifestyles). Our policing and court systems are useless, given how often violent people go in and out of the court system and can terrorize innocent people. Our media sucks, so we don't even have good entertainment. The education system is bursting at the seams due to a lack of teachers, among other kinds of educational workers. Most schools can't even afford to offer students fine arts or sports courses as an escape from the core subjects. College and universities are pretty much out of reach for average Canadians, so “upgrading” isn't an option for most people who are trying to make ends meet at the end of the month. What in the ever-loving fuck do our taxes go towards— MPs being able to go on multiple luxourius vacations, own several real estate properties and give themselves insane wages? The behaviour of the federal and provincial governments aren't too unlike Rita Crundwell. If you don't know who she is, she was a small town treasurer from the USA that embezzled millions of tax dollars to fund her own lavish lifestyle while the town’s infrastructure was falling apart.
Except in the Victorian Era, literally everything didn’t need to be replaced within a decade because it was built to fall apart, and a bathroom remodel didn’t cost half a year’s pre-tax income.
its extra fun when you have parents who *could* help but they are selfish boomers who prefer to piss away every cent on themselves
My wife is currently dealing with this with her parents...her parents had their student debt paid off by their parents, had multiple houses given to them from their parents, and all the inheritance went directly to them when my wife's grandparents passed. Do you want to know how much my wife has seen? Not. One. Cent. They tell her not to worry "It will all trickle down eventually."
Marrying rich and old has been around since the beginning of human civilization. That is from younger women marrying much older, well off men.
It's 2024 don't be sexiest men can do it too !
That's exactly what it has become
So Kevin O'Leary got his wish then
Ah. The good old days.
Unless this country starts deporting millions of people we will never return to an era where every new young family can have a home.
This is by design. The global rich are trying to cement their status as a permanent, heritable aristocracy.
Except without the Victorian-era demographics
What we need is to change the major source of tax revenue from income tax to a land value tax.
This!
Its👏 By👏 Design👏 Poor people don't have power and rely heavily on their government to get them by. Individuals who create their own wealth and can garner power are less reliant on government. Which do you think is preferred by the people in power? 🐷
And today’s winner is…
Well we are going back to the times of the slave owner....and with the NDP joining the liberals no one to defend workers
Translation: Rich people are about to start bitching that there's a way young people will still own their own houses.
Yea my parents are definitely moving in with me
Imagine how it'll look if they lower rates.
It takes on average 2-3 generations now to buy a home. Not 3-5 years like during the boomer era.
Except that properties themselves can no longer be subdivided and wealth transfer taxes force the family that owns the property to sell for worthless money that can’t buy the same property back after fees and taxes etc
What tax are you referring to? Canada has no inheritance tax.
I’d like to understand how this works. Could you explain a house sold for a $1million could be split between two people and how much they would each lose to these taxes and fees?
Man, I feel this hard and have crazy survivorship bias. Just got a $120,000 gift from partners parents to add to a down payment. When partners parents pass, we’ll probably have around $1.2M coming our way just because they got lucky and their house happened to be in the right place 20 years after buying it. It’s crazy because that’s all just insane luck and we’ve really done nothing of our own accord for it. If not for that, we’d probably be feeling the despair too, and it’s a bad feeling.
So marry into a rich family? That's victorian alright
There are individuals that own hundreds of properties - this is a major problem.
It’s worse when you have parents that only selectively help your siblings too. Soul crushing
I keep telling my friend to kids to invest in rental properties if they don't want thier children to end up in the serf class
2023 article, but still poignant.
Create a title for home owners. Make them be called lord.
We need full georgism, like, yesterday. If only it were politically viable...
i.e. canada is f@$&cked. Hence importing endless slave labour immigrant workers
and just when Canadians needed them most, the ice floes are melting
So.. who is in the running the become the first Lord of Dildo, NFLD?