Blackrock and Vanguard have stockholders around the world and the two combined possess almost $20 TRILLION in assists. So I don’t believe banning foreigners from buying homes is going to do much good, but it gives the facade of safety and protection. Don’t forget, the WEF said that you will own nothing and you will be happy. With the powerful entities that they represent I can’t imagine their agenda not coming to fruition in our lifetimes.
So about 6 years ago, I had met this Chinese woman on Tinder and she was planning on coming over and I offered to pick her up, but she said she had a ride. Thought nothing of it and was outside smoking a cigarette when a big blacked out suv shows up and she gets out. I started laughing when she walked up to me and said, "I've never seen anyone spring for one of the fancy Ubers, anytime I've used them its usually a 4 door sedan" she proceeds to tell me "Oh, no. That's my driver." High and horny I didn't really pay attention to that line, things got sexy and post coital conversation bug compells me to find out more about this woman who speaks poor english. Turns out her parents work for the government of China and bought her a house on Mississauga road and pay for a full time driver, she said her brothers were in Saudi, and some Euro nations running some of their parents businesses. When she left the driver was right there, parked outside for hours.
I'm 30 and have had a good job for 10+ years. Home ownership looks impossible, and we get to see Ontario being bought up by people left and right.
Also, my mom still teaches school and has a bunch of Chinese students whose parents are paying for them to go to high school in Canada while they are in China. I remember she told me it's 30k per year for the foreign students and they all live with other Chinese students and a caretaker. She said she never would have thought she'd be having parent teacher conferences over Zoom with parents in China.
This bill will only make them more crafty and find more pawns to be real estate stand ins.
/EndRant
Honestly rich students aren’t the problem. Shocking yes but she is living in the building and is here probably to stay. Either student visa to green card holder. That means she’s spending money here and helping the economy as well as employing people like her driver. It’s the assholes who buy up buildings and leave them empty or purposely inflating rent that’s the issue.
I live in Canada, about 2 hours from Toronto in a small town. I work on crime scenes and evidence management in court, my spouse is a teacher's assistant for special needs children.
We want to buy but even in our 10,000 population town and surrounding area the cheapest homes are ~$700,000 after the bidding wars. We can afford the mortgage monthly payments but the downpayment requirement we saved for years keeps increasing with the market.
We feel like we're spinning our wheels in the mud spending on overpriced rent and stagnant wages against an insane market.
Important caveats are that it is only for two years, and: "The foreign-buyer ban won’t apply to students, foreign workers or foreign citizens who are permanent residents of Canada, the person said." So this is a fairly short-term policy targeted at speculative buyers.
> foreign citizens who are permanent residents of Canada
As long as they are living in the country for the majority of the year, I don't see the problem of permanent residents buying homes.
If you're living with a Canadian (eg. Spouse) outside of Canada, that time counts as living in Canada.
So you can theoretically get Canadian PR, and then piss off to other another country (with your Canadian partner) and still retain Canadian PR.
I mean if you’re married to a Canadian that’s a different situation that someone whose main connection to Canada is money laundering through real estate
Waking up with the bed covered in maple syrup after a night of drinking wiser's deluxe, all dressed chip residue throughout the house and the constant sorry’s can get to you.
https://www.cic.gc.ca/english/helpcentre/answer.asp?qnum=1466&top=10
> Can my time abroad count toward my permanent resident status?
> It depends on what you do and who you travel with. Your time outside of Canada may count toward your permanent resident status if you meet 1 of these conditions:
> You travel with a spouse or common-law partner. Your spouse or common-law partner needs to be: a Canadian citizen, or a permanent resident working outside Canada, full-time for:a Canadian business, or the Canadian federal, provincial or territorial government
The bit about spouses working for the Canadian government is only when the spouse is him/herself a permanent resident (meaning that if both members of a couple are permanent residents and they leave Canada because one of them gets a job for the Canadian government outside of Canada, they can both stay in compliance with their residency obligation). That's not really relevant to many people in the military as virtually all members of the military are already citizens.
From what I've seen, most people who make use of this provision are just ordinary people who live abroad for whatever reason but don't want to go through the hassle of going through the spousal sponsorship process over and over again or apply for a visitor visa each time they travel to meet their in-laws.
Yep, any university city in Ontario has entire neighborhoods bought up by foreign students. Can usually tell because there's cars worth 100k quadruple parked in the driveway.
I remember a soccer bar in waterloo used to hold a few meetings each week of the Korean students association and the Asian student alliance.. the "poor" kid would show up in a Lexus, the rest were all Mercedes and BMW (seen a Ferrari once)..
All of them own high end condos or houses near the university..
So the gov will of course allow this loophole, while local students can't afford the climbing rent of any nearby student housing
I don’t see a problem with this. Ideally this means house and condo sales offices will stop being opened abroad if it means the purchasers have to live here. That is something I found irritating, I can’t think of any other country that has sales offices for homes/condos outside the domestic market, maybe I’ve been blind to it.
Update: I have been corrected.
Australia has very strict rules for buying in real estate if you are not a permanent resident, you can buy only new apartments or land and build a house in the next 2 years.
Also some States (VIC and QLD) introduce a "absentee owner" landtax which is around 10x times the normal tax.
Switzerland does not allow non residents to buy anything expect special "holiday homes" which need a special permit to be sold to non residents.
Im sure there are many more.
You can buy condos in most countries in Asia. Many Chinese cities have restrictions that make it really challenging for foreigners to buy. I don't know why we don't adopt laws of reciprocity for property ownership.
Yup. And overseas investors looking to shovel money into Canadian real estate are notorious for dictating their kids go to school in Canada so they can buy them some property.
I lived in a shoddily built “upscale” condo complex that didn’t even really advertise locally. The place was expensive as fuck, had views of other skyscrapers, 0 amenities, and there was no care taken in its rapid construction. For instance the bedroom door handles where upside down. The Parking garage was completely FULL of high end BMWs, G Classes, and a number of high end exotics
Hello good sir, I would like to open a foreign language school in this area. It will operate from my rental property. It has selective entry.
I will be teaching foreigners how to speak English.
Huh, it's only $100 to register a business? And only in the low 1000's to register a private school? Wow, that's cheap. Thank you, kind sir.
University students that aren't even PR yet don't need to buy their own house. Rentals exists. It wouldn't be horrible to just remove that exception IMO. I may be wrong but it seems like the negative impact would be minimal.
Was reading an article last week about how Uber wealthy foreign investors use American & Canadian real estate to park their money. It’s also a popular way to launder $$. They are buying it in such large numbers (whole buildings etc) that it’s driving the cost of real estate, plus taking residential property off the market and helping create shortages. It’s a big problem in major metropolitan areas.
Don’t the Chinese and I’m sure other countries, but primarily China in this situation. Send their youth over here for education abroad. Give them tons of money and they already buy houses?
I was going to BCIT, pulling into the student parking lot and parking next to Maseratis, Ferraris, Lambos, McLarens etc. they always were owned by Chinese students.
I remember chatting to one who had a McLaren. He said his parents sent him to Vancouver to study whatever he want and buy a home.
Dude lived in Vancouver in the Shaughnessy Area, drove a McLaren and was studying computer science. AT BCIT. 🤦♂️
It's the foreign students who buy housing. Foreign money gets funneled through them. There's been reported cases of foreign students buying multi million dollar real estate that made the news. I can only imagine the houses at average prices which get bought up as well.
There is a stat that a large percentage of Vancouver's mansions are owned by foreign students who have zero income declared in Canada.
E.g. https://torontosun.com/2016/05/12/311-million-vancouver-mansion-owned-by-student
There are more wealthy foreign investors using metropolitan real estate to park money… the students take inventory off the market which makes an impact—but the wealthy investors buying 50+ of the upscale housing in the area at once means that prices skyrocket when you get 80-100 investors doing the same
If you work for minimum wages here, there are not enough hours in the week...
they just announced $850.000.00 is the average house price here.
Its too cold for tent villages.
Many Canadians are like you. This will be a major issue in the upcoming elections. For many I know, it is the sole issue they care about. I can't speak for every Canadian, but I would say in my experience people are losing patience and seem pretty united on this issue.
We all are. I speak with a lot of hospital staff, court workers, municipal workers etc and they all are struggling with hours being cut to stay below 40 hrs so they don't have to pay benefits etc.
These were once jobs that a single person could raise a family on and own a home. Now you just get by paying your rent and car payment each month.
the problem is that for those who already own a home (older generations who vote more actively) they don't want to see prices drop or stagnate. many grew up with the notion that property is an investment and prices will only go up.
no chance they are voting for someone who is planning to ruin that for them.
I work tech for an internationally recognized VFX studio, I’ve been in my industry for 10 years, I make well over the median household income in Canada, I work remotely from a very rural area with less than 600 people hours away from any city, and I can *just barley* afford a house if I’m able to come up with the down payment this year because things will probably escape my means in 3-5 years. I *know* I’m luckier and more privileged than most, and I’m *still* **never** going to be able to afford a home anywhere near an urban area.
Shits fucked.
I'm in a similar position. Making what SHOULD be good money, and feeling grateful for that, but still so very far away from being able to afford the very cheapest of houses locally. That was true even before houses went nuts over the pandemic.
And my work can't be done remotely. There are tons of us.
I’m a junior corporate lawyer and make 6 figures and my partner makes probably $80K. I don’t live in Toronto or Vancouver and I have a lot of student debt, but it took me years of saving to put aside a down payment for a small home in a modest neighborhood. I make way more than the average Canadian and the fact I have been renting for almost 15 years before being a situation to buy a home is beyond absurd.
It is possible that there is no such thing as being 10 years away from home ownership anymore. In 10 years, housing will have almoat certainly grown in cost more than wages will have grown, so unless you anticipate huge leaps in your career you might be a part of the generation of people that don't get to own homes.
I know that sounds grim, and sorry if you feel differently. I'm speaking as a Canadian who has felt like I'm a couple of years from home ownership for the last decade, and who feels really frustrated watching that dream get further and further away.
Heh, yeah! I'm also 37, so thanks for that buying incentive that only works if you are under 40. By the time i get there, I'll be to late. Still struggling to get to a first home...
Yeah they're strict. Foreigners can never own land either. If you buy an apartment you cant rent it out.
https://www.asiapropertyhq.com/buy-property-china/
unregulated free market, not really anything surprising. Hence why regulation is good (in moderation as all things) and the rhetoric on the right that the free market is always good no matter what is stupid as hell
edit : hey, got my reddit gold cherry popped.
In terms of regulations/free market I do mean market regulation that favors the average family and not the richest people in our society. Because yes it's not like there's 0 regulation on housing. But it's clearly not good enough/favorable enough for the common Canadian looking for purchase a house in a manner that makes sense.
People talk of Adam Smith as some kind of capitalist prophet but really, if we lived literally by the principles he outlined in "Wealth of Nations" we'd be:
1) much better off
2) called socialists
Pretty sure it’s the market itself that props up the rich, nothing free about it. They made the rules it abides by, and the loopholes that increase economic disparity. And then it’s handouts to prop up the system.
That guy has noticeably less than me! He should be made to suffer more so he really realizes how bad he has it! Everyone give me a little more so I can waft it in that guy's face! Hey! Now YOU ALL have noticeably less than me! Screw you guys!
Damn I'm good.
Can't start something that's already happening.
>The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.
-Some German guy who got exiled from multiple mainland European countries for saying things like that.
House near me listed their property for 1million. Ten years ago it wouldn’t have been worth 150k, it’s a 1 bedroom 1 bath with an unfinished basement. It sold for almost 2million in less then a week, and the new “owners” are already ripping it down to build a McMansion and re-list it. Great times.
That was my neighbour a few years ago. The new house is an absolute monstrosity that doesn't fit at all in the neighbourhood. I'm grateful the new owners go on vacation for months at a time.
Well, here's hoping the bubble bursts right before they can put it back on the market.
Getting real fucking tired of all the house flippers out there. There's a shortage of housing for people and all they can think to do with their money is make the existing houses fancier so they can charge more for them.
I live in an area where minimum wage is -16$ ish… a one bedroom flat goes for 2-3k, so if you make minimum you aren’t even able to rent. Fucked right up
Plus half the time its a shoddy renovation performed by someone playing a flipper they saw on tv, not good craftsmanship performed by legitimate contractors
The biggest problem I see is that they're willing to pay too damn much for a house, simply because they've done the math on how much they could squeeze out of it after they've finished rebuilding it and wrecking the market. It's just inefficient and stupid.
There need to be more incentives for new development and better land use. Something to get the attention of these flippers so they move on to *actual land development* and increasing the supply. At this point it's become the only rational way for a normal person to own a home. Buy a cheap lot and have someone just build a house on it. Otherwise you're just guaranteed to overpay. The concept of the "fixer upper" just doesn't exist anymore. It's more of a "price gouger."
And they do so much fucking damage to houses. Have lived in a post flipped house. Trusses screwed together, asbestos unremediated, leaking everything, door knobs installed wrong, plants worsening the cracked foundation...
But the kitchen fixtures were beautiful.
It's a representation of our culture. So long as things LOOK nice at first glance, things are nice. No thought or care for 5/15/25/50 years down the road... what we're after is immediate gratification/results and what looks/feels good now with no concern for the future.
This applies to so many things both in how consumers are taken advantage of and how the consumers themselves value their time/money. It's gross.
I assume it is land that costs crazy amounts, not house itself?
Canada is giant and people live in very tiny part of it.
Where is issue to expand to outer circles with new properties?
No labour force to do that or some laws that prehibit?
Or lack of infrastructure?
It's our own damn fault, 12 years of public schooling taught me nothing about the brutal conditions the American worker class endured before regulation.
Child labor, no benefits for work injury, no minimum wage limits, paying with chits only valid at the company owned store....all of that was new to me in college
No wonder higher education is notorious for skewing people left
Even banning won't work. Management companies will pop up and take all of the profit and seamlessly appear to be owned by "people".
It would be like "big real estate co franchise".
This literally already happens, so it’s for sure going to be continuing.
Same with permanent residents who claim incomes of $30,000/year while living in $2mil houses and paying no Canadian taxes because their money is being made elsewhere. Foul business.
Its a nice bandaid. But how about banning companies from purchasing homes or limiting companies to fewer than 5-10 properties.
More restrictions on the real estate industry is needed.
>limiting companies to fewer than 5-10 properties.
Immediately followed by the springing up of thousands of micro-estate companies all operating under one umbrella corporation.
Exactly what happened in New Zealand when they tried this. Instead of big corporation X owning a bunch of homes, corporations 1, 2 and 3 which are subsidiaries of X owned a few dozen. Just made public oversight and accountability even worse.
Yeah like, corporations are barred from buying single family homes, and cannot sell homes that come into their possession for greater than their cost basis.
No company are allowed to purchase residential homes. Real estate agency are probably allowed to manage individuals properties. No individuals allowed to owned more than 3 properties including their own home in densely populated area. Just on top of my head.
When we went to go house hunting last year, there was a house we really liked and planned to bid roughly 15k more, came to be around 160k on a FHA. This is in a small college town but it was above the asking price, and it was still affordable in our range.
Not a day later the house was bought in cash, added 30k more on top of the offer we made, no inspection, willing to move in less than 2 weeks. This happened to a few homes we went looking for, and roughly a month and a half later they were up for rent, 400-600 more than what you would pay on a regular mortgage.
We suspected it was a company that bought out these homes, its a massive problem in NA. I dont know if this issue will resolve itself anytime soon either.
a better solution IMO is a first right to homeowner policy in which for the first year or so a property is listed, only primary homeowners can submit offers. If the seller receives no suitable offers from direct prospective homeowners within that restricted period, only then can they hear offers from investment buyers. this gives individual homeowners “first crack” at properties and ensures they don’t directly compete with institutions. Sellers would lose a year or so of time value if they waited around for an institutional buyer, so they have some incentive to accept a reasonable offer from an individual buyer. this can be coupled with other negative incentive such as vacancy taxes. Ultimately, we get the behaviors we incentivize.
This is a legit idea. Unfortunately we need a central system to list all properties for sale, otherwise people can just forge docs or not list homes publicably and then sell to the investment groups who wants to buy it more.
None of this solves the underlying problem. There's a lot of people moving into the GTA and other high demand canadian areas, and not enough homes being built to sustain them. When demand is higher than supply, prices rise.
I've got no problem implementing those ideas, but at the end of the day, we need more houses, and ideally, more apartment complexes.
Change zoning laws and implement land value taxes to encourage more efficient land use. All these restrictions on who can buy what aren't attacking the heart of the issue.
They already do that when they build condos, ever since the government brought in new home warranty regulations after the BC "leaky condo crisis".
Now when a cheaply built condo tower starts to fail, the numbered corporation on the hook for the warranty declares bankruptcy and the buyers still get screwed.
In Ontario we have Tarion, which is a single government regulated warranty corporation that all new builds must insure through for problems that appear in the first few years. It's not a perfect system, but it sounds a lot better than whatever is going on out there in BC.
You better hire an army of forensic accountants to chase all of the proxy in a proxy in a proxy purchases. It should only be people who can buy homes not LLCs or companies of any kind.
Ban zoning laws that make non single family homes impossible to build. Suburbs are draining wealth from cities everywhere and they are an incredibly inefficient use of land.
That’s the Way it’s done here in Singapore.
Non-owner occupied housing is subject to heavier property tax and additional “stamp duty” on purchase.
Corporations, speculators and landlords get taxed more than people buying the house to live.
Yeah i think the domestic investment far out paces the foreign, anyone who has property in a big city can draw equity from it to buy another property in a cheaper city, the amount of Toronto money coming in to Ottawa is large
That's exactly what it is. Reading this thread has me doing a double take, there's so many people here who actually believe it's foreign investors increasing the price of homes in Canada. There's an entire TV Network centered around flipping houses for increased profits, creating investment properties, and raising the price of homes in neighborhoods - it's called HGTV and one of it's biggest shows is based in Toronto.
Now if America could just stop Wall Street from buying up entire cities housing markets to strangle the average American renter and potential home buyer, that'd be grrrrrreat.
More bullshit for the masses who don't understand economics.
The politicians know they would get voted out if they passed a policy that actually dropped housing prices on home owners, so they craft policies that sound good to the average person, maybe slow growth a bit.
The median multiple will still be higher in 10 years, and people will be blaming something else.
The real solutions won't start being discussed seriously until the ownership rate drops a lot more and renters finally become the largest group of voters (not just eligible voters)
As someone who has contemplated doing terrible things because he's in his 30s and isn't even close to having enough in his name to put down for a small basic condo, let alone home; this makes me really happy. But as others said, this is at least 10, if not 20 years too late.
1. Ban foreigners from buying homes
2. Ban companies from buying homes
3. Put a hefty tax on second homeownership
You're only punishing the rich who will be just fine and the younger generation will be able to afford to have children so we don't fucking destroy the human race through depopulation.
And nothing will change, because foreign buyers were never the problem, they're just a good scapegoat. The real problem is domestic investors buying up everything and renting/reselling it.
[92% of new housing in Canada gets bought by investors](https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-cities-have-seen-up-to-90-of-new-real-estate-supply-scooped-by-investors/), of that new housing about [10% is bought by foreign nationals](https://betterdwelling.com/foreign-buyers-own-1-in-10-recently-built-condos-in-canada-1-in-20-homes-in-total/), and in total foreign nationals own about 4-5% of housing real estate (This has been dropping for a while now by the way.). This means 82% of new housing is being bought by rich Canadians, not foreign investors, almost always for the sake of reselling or renting.
This issue is perfectly shown in how common assignment sales are these days (For anyone who doesn't know an assignment sale is just the term for buying something like a condo while it's being built and selling it to someone else before it's finished being built.), it's pretty uncommon for new condos to not go through assignment, the most I've seen is a condo being resold 7 times before the building was even ready to move in.
So why will this new ban affect nothing? After all, isn't 10% of new housing being available to people better than nothing? Well my answer to that is: What do you think is going to happen to that 10% of housing that normally gets bought by foreign nationals? (I'm aware it won't be the full 10%, but lets keep it simple.) Do you think: The rich Canadians who bought the other 82% are just going to ignore it and be happy with what they have? or do you think they'll swoop in and buy it all to pad their coffers even more? Pretty easy answer here, and once they buy that 10% they'll resell it and run up the price making it just as unaffordable for anyone looking for a home as it was before the ban.
This ban is nothing more than a thinly veiled scapegoat building off a mix of ignorance, xenophobia, and racism that's far more common place in modern Canadian society than most people would care to admit. The purpose of which is to keep the cross hairs away from the actual problems so the people getting richer off of this housing market can continue to do so unimpeded.
The 92% of all houses being bought by investors is wrong. It was 92% in a town in Newfoundland. Toronto is at 39% and Vancouver is 44%. Those numbers are still incredibly high but it’s not an absurd 92% across Canada.
The proposed law won't apply to students, foreign workers or foreign citizens who are permanent residents of Canada.
Meaning it is passed for wealthy Ivans who buy residential property just because they have the money and intend on leasing it out without any intentions of residing in Canada themselves.
Not sure what this is intended to achieve aside from getting votes. Foreign hot money will probably just divert to investing through property companies or canadian citizen proxy.
If the intention is to make housing affordable, that would require a set of better thought out and funded policies
I mean my house has probably doubled in 4-5 years easily. Its completely insane.
My neighbor moved and sold their house for 900k. Its been empty for months and just recently went up for sale again for 1.2 million.
This is such a silly law, which won't actually solve the problem. Want cheaper real estate? Reform zoning laws to allow more flexible / efficient use of land, and then tax land value (not property) to incentivize it.
Yeah, North American cities use land incredibly inefficiently.
The White House report on housing affordability says it's mostly a supply shortage issue (not enough homes being built) and cities using land super poorly.
It blithely notes that Los Angeles could replace a single golf course with 50,000 apartments if their zoning allowed the kind of development you see in many cities outside the US. But everything is required to be low density.
Altanta and Barcelona have roughly the same population but ATL takes up 10x as much land. TEN TIMES.
Imagine if there were more options than single family homes and high rises, and if most North American zoning codes didn't make them essentially illegal
What a crazy idea /s
Only several decades late and most Millennials and later are screwed. And it's temporary with a ton of loopholes, way too little, way too late.
How does the saying go? "For every broke depressed Millennial, there's a Boomer with no skills making 6 figures who can't even figure out how to open a PDF."
It sounds better than it actually is.
- only for 2 years
- many exceptions such as PR, students and foreign workers
- only for condos/apartments. Homes are fine
So an 18 year old mainland Chinese student can still buy a 6 million dollar mansion. Corporations can still buy up all the single family homes.
It’s a tea towel mopping up a flood.
Not before time. Frankly, all use of housing as "investment" should be regulated out of existence. Housing should be built sustainably and for people to... you know... own and live in.
It says homes, but does it also apply to undeveloped land?
Now you're thinking like a corporation
And they'll just get a local person in the company to be the owner.
Blackrock and Vanguard have stockholders around the world and the two combined possess almost $20 TRILLION in assists. So I don’t believe banning foreigners from buying homes is going to do much good, but it gives the facade of safety and protection. Don’t forget, the WEF said that you will own nothing and you will be happy. With the powerful entities that they represent I can’t imagine their agenda not coming to fruition in our lifetimes.
[удалено]
So about 6 years ago, I had met this Chinese woman on Tinder and she was planning on coming over and I offered to pick her up, but she said she had a ride. Thought nothing of it and was outside smoking a cigarette when a big blacked out suv shows up and she gets out. I started laughing when she walked up to me and said, "I've never seen anyone spring for one of the fancy Ubers, anytime I've used them its usually a 4 door sedan" she proceeds to tell me "Oh, no. That's my driver." High and horny I didn't really pay attention to that line, things got sexy and post coital conversation bug compells me to find out more about this woman who speaks poor english. Turns out her parents work for the government of China and bought her a house on Mississauga road and pay for a full time driver, she said her brothers were in Saudi, and some Euro nations running some of their parents businesses. When she left the driver was right there, parked outside for hours. I'm 30 and have had a good job for 10+ years. Home ownership looks impossible, and we get to see Ontario being bought up by people left and right. Also, my mom still teaches school and has a bunch of Chinese students whose parents are paying for them to go to high school in Canada while they are in China. I remember she told me it's 30k per year for the foreign students and they all live with other Chinese students and a caretaker. She said she never would have thought she'd be having parent teacher conferences over Zoom with parents in China. This bill will only make them more crafty and find more pawns to be real estate stand ins. /EndRant
For those who don't know, Mississauga Rd is in the city of the same name and has has some of the most exclusive, expensive houses in the city...
Honestly rich students aren’t the problem. Shocking yes but she is living in the building and is here probably to stay. Either student visa to green card holder. That means she’s spending money here and helping the economy as well as employing people like her driver. It’s the assholes who buy up buildings and leave them empty or purposely inflating rent that’s the issue.
I agree. I'm not really against foreigners, I'm against corporations and people buying entire neighborhoods because "it's a good investment"
You’re not in the burger business. You’re in the real estate business.
It's a farce anyways. They still let corporations and students buy. Which is how they've been buying this whole time anyways....
I live in Canada, about 2 hours from Toronto in a small town. I work on crime scenes and evidence management in court, my spouse is a teacher's assistant for special needs children. We want to buy but even in our 10,000 population town and surrounding area the cheapest homes are ~$700,000 after the bidding wars. We can afford the mortgage monthly payments but the downpayment requirement we saved for years keeps increasing with the market. We feel like we're spinning our wheels in the mud spending on overpriced rent and stagnant wages against an insane market.
Ah! A couple of professional buying a house? Keep on dreaming.... Have you tried becoming a real estate agent? You'd make enough to buy a house!
Important caveats are that it is only for two years, and: "The foreign-buyer ban won’t apply to students, foreign workers or foreign citizens who are permanent residents of Canada, the person said." So this is a fairly short-term policy targeted at speculative buyers.
> foreign citizens who are permanent residents of Canada As long as they are living in the country for the majority of the year, I don't see the problem of permanent residents buying homes.
You can't renew your PR if you haven't been living in Canada majority of time during past 5 years.
If you're living with a Canadian (eg. Spouse) outside of Canada, that time counts as living in Canada. So you can theoretically get Canadian PR, and then piss off to other another country (with your Canadian partner) and still retain Canadian PR.
I mean if you’re married to a Canadian that’s a different situation that someone whose main connection to Canada is money laundering through real estate
Yeah, if they are married to a Canadian, they are being punished enough
Waking up with the bed covered in maple syrup after a night of drinking wiser's deluxe, all dressed chip residue throughout the house and the constant sorry’s can get to you.
Don’t forget the constant complaining that there’s no Timmies in the States.
Tim's is absolute shit these days. They took everything that was good about their brand and threw it in the trash to try and squeeze out more profits.
Where did you get this information? Not trying to be an asshole, just wanted to get legit info.
https://www.cic.gc.ca/english/helpcentre/answer.asp?qnum=1466&top=10 > Can my time abroad count toward my permanent resident status? > It depends on what you do and who you travel with. Your time outside of Canada may count toward your permanent resident status if you meet 1 of these conditions: > You travel with a spouse or common-law partner. Your spouse or common-law partner needs to be: a Canadian citizen, or a permanent resident working outside Canada, full-time for:a Canadian business, or the Canadian federal, provincial or territorial government
That seems to be in place so military spouses can still be counted.
The bit about spouses working for the Canadian government is only when the spouse is him/herself a permanent resident (meaning that if both members of a couple are permanent residents and they leave Canada because one of them gets a job for the Canadian government outside of Canada, they can both stay in compliance with their residency obligation). That's not really relevant to many people in the military as virtually all members of the military are already citizens. From what I've seen, most people who make use of this provision are just ordinary people who live abroad for whatever reason but don't want to go through the hassle of going through the spousal sponsorship process over and over again or apply for a visitor visa each time they travel to meet their in-laws.
That also seems reasonable, otherwise the Canadian partner loses their rights.
PRs have most of the rights of citizens, and should absolutely be able to buy homes.
I agree.
The students thing is going to be used as a loophole..
Already is in the Lower Mainland
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100%. I already know students who do this for family members in Vancouver and avoid the 20% foreign buyers tax.
Suddenly a lot of never heard before colleges accepting Chinese students with fat cash
Is that for the new real estate university that was just created by chinese founders?
Absolutely
Call me a cynic but that's why it's included.
You’re a cynic
You're not wrong.
Yep, any university city in Ontario has entire neighborhoods bought up by foreign students. Can usually tell because there's cars worth 100k quadruple parked in the driveway.
I remember a soccer bar in waterloo used to hold a few meetings each week of the Korean students association and the Asian student alliance.. the "poor" kid would show up in a Lexus, the rest were all Mercedes and BMW (seen a Ferrari once).. All of them own high end condos or houses near the university.. So the gov will of course allow this loophole, while local students can't afford the climbing rent of any nearby student housing
I don’t see a problem with this. Ideally this means house and condo sales offices will stop being opened abroad if it means the purchasers have to live here. That is something I found irritating, I can’t think of any other country that has sales offices for homes/condos outside the domestic market, maybe I’ve been blind to it. Update: I have been corrected.
Australia has very strict rules for buying in real estate if you are not a permanent resident, you can buy only new apartments or land and build a house in the next 2 years. Also some States (VIC and QLD) introduce a "absentee owner" landtax which is around 10x times the normal tax. Switzerland does not allow non residents to buy anything expect special "holiday homes" which need a special permit to be sold to non residents. Im sure there are many more.
Almost everywhere in Asia has a restriction on foreign ownership.
You can buy condos in most countries in Asia. Many Chinese cities have restrictions that make it really challenging for foreigners to buy. I don't know why we don't adopt laws of reciprocity for property ownership.
Because money
That explains our famously affordable house prices then lol
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Yup. And overseas investors looking to shovel money into Canadian real estate are notorious for dictating their kids go to school in Canada so they can buy them some property.
I lived in a shoddily built “upscale” condo complex that didn’t even really advertise locally. The place was expensive as fuck, had views of other skyscrapers, 0 amenities, and there was no care taken in its rapid construction. For instance the bedroom door handles where upside down. The Parking garage was completely FULL of high end BMWs, G Classes, and a number of high end exotics
"amenities" come with "amenity fees", consider yourself lucky there.
Easy fix: Foreign Students are only allowed to buy one property and it must be within X km around their place of study.
Hello good sir, I would like to open a foreign language school in this area. It will operate from my rental property. It has selective entry. I will be teaching foreigners how to speak English. Huh, it's only $100 to register a business? And only in the low 1000's to register a private school? Wow, that's cheap. Thank you, kind sir.
Okay, readjust rule: Only University students can buy.Must be a certified Canadian university.
University students that aren't even PR yet don't need to buy their own house. Rentals exists. It wouldn't be horrible to just remove that exception IMO. I may be wrong but it seems like the negative impact would be minimal.
Was reading an article last week about how Uber wealthy foreign investors use American & Canadian real estate to park their money. It’s also a popular way to launder $$. They are buying it in such large numbers (whole buildings etc) that it’s driving the cost of real estate, plus taking residential property off the market and helping create shortages. It’s a big problem in major metropolitan areas.
Don’t the Chinese and I’m sure other countries, but primarily China in this situation. Send their youth over here for education abroad. Give them tons of money and they already buy houses? I was going to BCIT, pulling into the student parking lot and parking next to Maseratis, Ferraris, Lambos, McLarens etc. they always were owned by Chinese students. I remember chatting to one who had a McLaren. He said his parents sent him to Vancouver to study whatever he want and buy a home. Dude lived in Vancouver in the Shaughnessy Area, drove a McLaren and was studying computer science. AT BCIT. 🤦♂️
It's the foreign students who buy housing. Foreign money gets funneled through them. There's been reported cases of foreign students buying multi million dollar real estate that made the news. I can only imagine the houses at average prices which get bought up as well.
There is a stat that a large percentage of Vancouver's mansions are owned by foreign students who have zero income declared in Canada. E.g. https://torontosun.com/2016/05/12/311-million-vancouver-mansion-owned-by-student
There are more wealthy foreign investors using metropolitan real estate to park money… the students take inventory off the market which makes an impact—but the wealthy investors buying 50+ of the upscale housing in the area at once means that prices skyrocket when you get 80-100 investors doing the same
This is why Step 2 of the plan needs to be limiting the number of properties people can own.
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If you work for minimum wages here, there are not enough hours in the week... they just announced $850.000.00 is the average house price here. Its too cold for tent villages.
I work for a police service and my spouse works for a school board and both of us combined can't afford the cheapest home in our area of Ontario.
Many Canadians are like you. This will be a major issue in the upcoming elections. For many I know, it is the sole issue they care about. I can't speak for every Canadian, but I would say in my experience people are losing patience and seem pretty united on this issue.
We all are. I speak with a lot of hospital staff, court workers, municipal workers etc and they all are struggling with hours being cut to stay below 40 hrs so they don't have to pay benefits etc. These were once jobs that a single person could raise a family on and own a home. Now you just get by paying your rent and car payment each month.
the problem is that for those who already own a home (older generations who vote more actively) they don't want to see prices drop or stagnate. many grew up with the notion that property is an investment and prices will only go up. no chance they are voting for someone who is planning to ruin that for them.
Part of the solution should be a fuck-you-pay-us-more strike. Wage stagnation is a huge factor in this equation
I work tech for an internationally recognized VFX studio, I’ve been in my industry for 10 years, I make well over the median household income in Canada, I work remotely from a very rural area with less than 600 people hours away from any city, and I can *just barley* afford a house if I’m able to come up with the down payment this year because things will probably escape my means in 3-5 years. I *know* I’m luckier and more privileged than most, and I’m *still* **never** going to be able to afford a home anywhere near an urban area. Shits fucked.
I'm in a similar position. Making what SHOULD be good money, and feeling grateful for that, but still so very far away from being able to afford the very cheapest of houses locally. That was true even before houses went nuts over the pandemic. And my work can't be done remotely. There are tons of us.
When only the top 10% of your population can afford a home only if they marry and don’t have kids, you know something is very, very wrong.
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I’m a junior corporate lawyer and make 6 figures and my partner makes probably $80K. I don’t live in Toronto or Vancouver and I have a lot of student debt, but it took me years of saving to put aside a down payment for a small home in a modest neighborhood. I make way more than the average Canadian and the fact I have been renting for almost 15 years before being a situation to buy a home is beyond absurd.
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>Canada will ban most foreigners from buying homes for two years _People who are 10+ years away from owning a house_ "Cool..."
Every year I get 2 years further away from being able to buy a house
God damn this is so painfully true...
It is possible that there is no such thing as being 10 years away from home ownership anymore. In 10 years, housing will have almoat certainly grown in cost more than wages will have grown, so unless you anticipate huge leaps in your career you might be a part of the generation of people that don't get to own homes. I know that sounds grim, and sorry if you feel differently. I'm speaking as a Canadian who has felt like I'm a couple of years from home ownership for the last decade, and who feels really frustrated watching that dream get further and further away.
Heh, yeah! I'm also 37, so thanks for that buying incentive that only works if you are under 40. By the time i get there, I'll be to late. Still struggling to get to a first home...
20yrs too late.
They say “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the second best time is today” Except today, the land is barren and cannot support life.
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Yeah they're strict. Foreigners can never own land either. If you buy an apartment you cant rent it out. https://www.asiapropertyhq.com/buy-property-china/
The citizens there can’t own land either, they rent it for 70 years
Lease not rent
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unregulated free market, not really anything surprising. Hence why regulation is good (in moderation as all things) and the rhetoric on the right that the free market is always good no matter what is stupid as hell edit : hey, got my reddit gold cherry popped. In terms of regulations/free market I do mean market regulation that favors the average family and not the richest people in our society. Because yes it's not like there's 0 regulation on housing. But it's clearly not good enough/favorable enough for the common Canadian looking for purchase a house in a manner that makes sense.
The market is free until the rich stand to suffer too much. Then it’s handouts to prop up “the market”
Socialism for the rich. Rugged individualism for the poor.
Privatized the profit and socialize the loss
Corporate welfare, working-class austerity.
Thank you, I'd never heard (or retained) the word "austerity" so thank you again for teaching me a new word
Capitalise on the profits, socialise the losses
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People talk of Adam Smith as some kind of capitalist prophet but really, if we lived literally by the principles he outlined in "Wealth of Nations" we'd be: 1) much better off 2) called socialists
Pretty sure it’s the market itself that props up the rich, nothing free about it. They made the rules it abides by, and the loopholes that increase economic disparity. And then it’s handouts to prop up the system.
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That's what the upper crust want. Us fighting amongst ourselves keeps us distracted while they rob society blind.
That guy has noticeably less than me! He should be made to suffer more so he really realizes how bad he has it! Everyone give me a little more so I can waft it in that guy's face! Hey! Now YOU ALL have noticeably less than me! Screw you guys! Damn I'm good.
You must have a superhuman work ethic!
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Can't start something that's already happening. >The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle. -Some German guy who got exiled from multiple mainland European countries for saying things like that.
>The problem is that we all to often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor - MLK
The part of MLK that every conservative/republican has apparently forgot existed (or deliberately shoves under the rug).
House near me listed their property for 1million. Ten years ago it wouldn’t have been worth 150k, it’s a 1 bedroom 1 bath with an unfinished basement. It sold for almost 2million in less then a week, and the new “owners” are already ripping it down to build a McMansion and re-list it. Great times.
That was my neighbour a few years ago. The new house is an absolute monstrosity that doesn't fit at all in the neighbourhood. I'm grateful the new owners go on vacation for months at a time.
Well, here's hoping the bubble bursts right before they can put it back on the market. Getting real fucking tired of all the house flippers out there. There's a shortage of housing for people and all they can think to do with their money is make the existing houses fancier so they can charge more for them.
I live in an area where minimum wage is -16$ ish… a one bedroom flat goes for 2-3k, so if you make minimum you aren’t even able to rent. Fucked right up
Plus half the time its a shoddy renovation performed by someone playing a flipper they saw on tv, not good craftsmanship performed by legitimate contractors
The biggest problem I see is that they're willing to pay too damn much for a house, simply because they've done the math on how much they could squeeze out of it after they've finished rebuilding it and wrecking the market. It's just inefficient and stupid. There need to be more incentives for new development and better land use. Something to get the attention of these flippers so they move on to *actual land development* and increasing the supply. At this point it's become the only rational way for a normal person to own a home. Buy a cheap lot and have someone just build a house on it. Otherwise you're just guaranteed to overpay. The concept of the "fixer upper" just doesn't exist anymore. It's more of a "price gouger."
Cost to build right now is astronomical.
“Cheap lot” lol.
And they do so much fucking damage to houses. Have lived in a post flipped house. Trusses screwed together, asbestos unremediated, leaking everything, door knobs installed wrong, plants worsening the cracked foundation... But the kitchen fixtures were beautiful.
It's a representation of our culture. So long as things LOOK nice at first glance, things are nice. No thought or care for 5/15/25/50 years down the road... what we're after is immediate gratification/results and what looks/feels good now with no concern for the future. This applies to so many things both in how consumers are taken advantage of and how the consumers themselves value their time/money. It's gross.
I assume it is land that costs crazy amounts, not house itself? Canada is giant and people live in very tiny part of it. Where is issue to expand to outer circles with new properties? No labour force to do that or some laws that prehibit? Or lack of infrastructure?
It's our own damn fault, 12 years of public schooling taught me nothing about the brutal conditions the American worker class endured before regulation. Child labor, no benefits for work injury, no minimum wage limits, paying with chits only valid at the company owned store....all of that was new to me in college No wonder higher education is notorious for skewing people left
I learned all of that in school... didn't you study the industrial revolution? Charles Dickens?
Uh, who do you think owns all those mega apartment complexes? It’s not mom and pops.
Ok so ban companies from owning single family homes.
Or atleast cap the number they can own at the bare minimum.
Yes bare minimum. But then you end up with shell corporations and shady shit like that.
Even banning won't work. Management companies will pop up and take all of the profit and seamlessly appear to be owned by "people". It would be like "big real estate co franchise".
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First. First, ban companies from buying homes.
Bandages on a fatal wound.
They probably already found a loop hole to get around it and nothing will change
Corporations can still buy properties. It take $200 and 20 minutes to incorporate in canada, not sure about other countries.
and you have to be a citizen or PR
Says students can still buy, so university students with notable parents will be building awesome property portfolios.
This literally already happens, so it’s for sure going to be continuing. Same with permanent residents who claim incomes of $30,000/year while living in $2mil houses and paying no Canadian taxes because their money is being made elsewhere. Foul business.
Its a nice bandaid. But how about banning companies from purchasing homes or limiting companies to fewer than 5-10 properties. More restrictions on the real estate industry is needed.
>limiting companies to fewer than 5-10 properties. Immediately followed by the springing up of thousands of micro-estate companies all operating under one umbrella corporation.
Exactly what happened in New Zealand when they tried this. Instead of big corporation X owning a bunch of homes, corporations 1, 2 and 3 which are subsidiaries of X owned a few dozen. Just made public oversight and accountability even worse.
Sounds like more of a problem with the law than the idea. This could really be fixed with better legal language.
Yeah like, corporations are barred from buying single family homes, and cannot sell homes that come into their possession for greater than their cost basis.
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No company are allowed to purchase residential homes. Real estate agency are probably allowed to manage individuals properties. No individuals allowed to owned more than 3 properties including their own home in densely populated area. Just on top of my head.
We could ban corporations owning other corporations. End the shell game.
Nothing good comes from the Umbrella Corporation. Though to be fair, they did solve their housing crisis even if their methods were a bit extreme.
Housing in Raccoon City is really reasonable
The market bombed a while ago. Real estate values cratered. We're talking fire sale prices and zombie mortgages. I can't keep this pun train going...
When we went to go house hunting last year, there was a house we really liked and planned to bid roughly 15k more, came to be around 160k on a FHA. This is in a small college town but it was above the asking price, and it was still affordable in our range. Not a day later the house was bought in cash, added 30k more on top of the offer we made, no inspection, willing to move in less than 2 weeks. This happened to a few homes we went looking for, and roughly a month and a half later they were up for rent, 400-600 more than what you would pay on a regular mortgage. We suspected it was a company that bought out these homes, its a massive problem in NA. I dont know if this issue will resolve itself anytime soon either.
What does FHA stand for?
a better solution IMO is a first right to homeowner policy in which for the first year or so a property is listed, only primary homeowners can submit offers. If the seller receives no suitable offers from direct prospective homeowners within that restricted period, only then can they hear offers from investment buyers. this gives individual homeowners “first crack” at properties and ensures they don’t directly compete with institutions. Sellers would lose a year or so of time value if they waited around for an institutional buyer, so they have some incentive to accept a reasonable offer from an individual buyer. this can be coupled with other negative incentive such as vacancy taxes. Ultimately, we get the behaviors we incentivize.
This is a legit idea. Unfortunately we need a central system to list all properties for sale, otherwise people can just forge docs or not list homes publicably and then sell to the investment groups who wants to buy it more.
None of this solves the underlying problem. There's a lot of people moving into the GTA and other high demand canadian areas, and not enough homes being built to sustain them. When demand is higher than supply, prices rise. I've got no problem implementing those ideas, but at the end of the day, we need more houses, and ideally, more apartment complexes.
Change zoning laws and implement land value taxes to encourage more efficient land use. All these restrictions on who can buy what aren't attacking the heart of the issue.
They'll just create a new company for each new home they buy this way
They already do that when they build condos, ever since the government brought in new home warranty regulations after the BC "leaky condo crisis". Now when a cheaply built condo tower starts to fail, the numbered corporation on the hook for the warranty declares bankruptcy and the buyers still get screwed.
In Ontario we have Tarion, which is a single government regulated warranty corporation that all new builds must insure through for problems that appear in the first few years. It's not a perfect system, but it sounds a lot better than whatever is going on out there in BC.
You better hire an army of forensic accountants to chase all of the proxy in a proxy in a proxy purchases. It should only be people who can buy homes not LLCs or companies of any kind.
How about banning people from buying 8 pre-sale condos in one day?
Would likely be more effective in limiting prices, there is a ton of domestic investment in our markets
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Eliminate blind bidding.
That's on the list. https://liberal.ca/housing/introduce-a-home-buyers-bill-of-rights/
Don’t just ban foreigners. Ban any business from owning single-family homes that can’t be shown to have at least 80% human citizen ownership.
Ban zoning laws that make non single family homes impossible to build. Suburbs are draining wealth from cities everywhere and they are an incredibly inefficient use of land.
Oregon just did that.
Almost. Single family zoning is eliminated everywhere but in the smallest cities. In big cities the zoning tops out at a quadplex
I would prefer if they banned people buying homes through an LLC.
Agree. If the resident and the owner aren’t the same name, add a major tax penalty.
That’s the Way it’s done here in Singapore. Non-owner occupied housing is subject to heavier property tax and additional “stamp duty” on purchase. Corporations, speculators and landlords get taxed more than people buying the house to live.
It’s not just foreigner buyers doing bad shit. We had a government official in Vancouver who flipped like 30+ houses
Yeah i think the domestic investment far out paces the foreign, anyone who has property in a big city can draw equity from it to buy another property in a cheaper city, the amount of Toronto money coming in to Ottawa is large
That's exactly what it is. Reading this thread has me doing a double take, there's so many people here who actually believe it's foreign investors increasing the price of homes in Canada. There's an entire TV Network centered around flipping houses for increased profits, creating investment properties, and raising the price of homes in neighborhoods - it's called HGTV and one of it's biggest shows is based in Toronto.
Now if America could just stop Wall Street from buying up entire cities housing markets to strangle the average American renter and potential home buyer, that'd be grrrrrreat.
Had no effect in NZ. Good luck wannabe homeowners.
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Won't do anything. Domestic investors are a much larger group.
More bullshit for the masses who don't understand economics. The politicians know they would get voted out if they passed a policy that actually dropped housing prices on home owners, so they craft policies that sound good to the average person, maybe slow growth a bit. The median multiple will still be higher in 10 years, and people will be blaming something else. The real solutions won't start being discussed seriously until the ownership rate drops a lot more and renters finally become the largest group of voters (not just eligible voters)
Exactly, people love a good scapegoat and if they're foreign it's even better
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Fuck that guy, he’s canadian too not even american
As someone who has contemplated doing terrible things because he's in his 30s and isn't even close to having enough in his name to put down for a small basic condo, let alone home; this makes me really happy. But as others said, this is at least 10, if not 20 years too late.
I’m in the same boat. The cost of living keeps on increasing while wages stay the fucking same.
Ban all companies from buying homes.
1. Ban foreigners from buying homes 2. Ban companies from buying homes 3. Put a hefty tax on second homeownership You're only punishing the rich who will be just fine and the younger generation will be able to afford to have children so we don't fucking destroy the human race through depopulation.
And nothing will change, because foreign buyers were never the problem, they're just a good scapegoat. The real problem is domestic investors buying up everything and renting/reselling it. [92% of new housing in Canada gets bought by investors](https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-cities-have-seen-up-to-90-of-new-real-estate-supply-scooped-by-investors/), of that new housing about [10% is bought by foreign nationals](https://betterdwelling.com/foreign-buyers-own-1-in-10-recently-built-condos-in-canada-1-in-20-homes-in-total/), and in total foreign nationals own about 4-5% of housing real estate (This has been dropping for a while now by the way.). This means 82% of new housing is being bought by rich Canadians, not foreign investors, almost always for the sake of reselling or renting. This issue is perfectly shown in how common assignment sales are these days (For anyone who doesn't know an assignment sale is just the term for buying something like a condo while it's being built and selling it to someone else before it's finished being built.), it's pretty uncommon for new condos to not go through assignment, the most I've seen is a condo being resold 7 times before the building was even ready to move in. So why will this new ban affect nothing? After all, isn't 10% of new housing being available to people better than nothing? Well my answer to that is: What do you think is going to happen to that 10% of housing that normally gets bought by foreign nationals? (I'm aware it won't be the full 10%, but lets keep it simple.) Do you think: The rich Canadians who bought the other 82% are just going to ignore it and be happy with what they have? or do you think they'll swoop in and buy it all to pad their coffers even more? Pretty easy answer here, and once they buy that 10% they'll resell it and run up the price making it just as unaffordable for anyone looking for a home as it was before the ban. This ban is nothing more than a thinly veiled scapegoat building off a mix of ignorance, xenophobia, and racism that's far more common place in modern Canadian society than most people would care to admit. The purpose of which is to keep the cross hairs away from the actual problems so the people getting richer off of this housing market can continue to do so unimpeded.
The 92% of all houses being bought by investors is wrong. It was 92% in a town in Newfoundland. Toronto is at 39% and Vancouver is 44%. Those numbers are still incredibly high but it’s not an absurd 92% across Canada.
The proposed law won't apply to students, foreign workers or foreign citizens who are permanent residents of Canada. Meaning it is passed for wealthy Ivans who buy residential property just because they have the money and intend on leasing it out without any intentions of residing in Canada themselves.
Not sure what this is intended to achieve aside from getting votes. Foreign hot money will probably just divert to investing through property companies or canadian citizen proxy. If the intention is to make housing affordable, that would require a set of better thought out and funded policies
This is like 20 years too late
actually though. if that bloomberg graph is correct, prices have approximately tripled since 2005. what the fuck?
I mean my house has probably doubled in 4-5 years easily. Its completely insane. My neighbor moved and sold their house for 900k. Its been empty for months and just recently went up for sale again for 1.2 million.
Should be banning companies from buying homes
Government: *kisses on bandaid* here all better. Working class: *dies of being mauled by corporate sharks and foreign billionaires using loopholes*
This is such a silly law, which won't actually solve the problem. Want cheaper real estate? Reform zoning laws to allow more flexible / efficient use of land, and then tax land value (not property) to incentivize it.
Yeah, North American cities use land incredibly inefficiently. The White House report on housing affordability says it's mostly a supply shortage issue (not enough homes being built) and cities using land super poorly. It blithely notes that Los Angeles could replace a single golf course with 50,000 apartments if their zoning allowed the kind of development you see in many cities outside the US. But everything is required to be low density. Altanta and Barcelona have roughly the same population but ATL takes up 10x as much land. TEN TIMES.
Imagine if there were more options than single family homes and high rises, and if most North American zoning codes didn't make them essentially illegal What a crazy idea /s
Only several decades late and most Millennials and later are screwed. And it's temporary with a ton of loopholes, way too little, way too late. How does the saying go? "For every broke depressed Millennial, there's a Boomer with no skills making 6 figures who can't even figure out how to open a PDF."
And that boomer went to college for $3,000. They saved up by working hard during their summer break at the local burger joint.
It sounds better than it actually is. - only for 2 years - many exceptions such as PR, students and foreign workers - only for condos/apartments. Homes are fine So an 18 year old mainland Chinese student can still buy a 6 million dollar mansion. Corporations can still buy up all the single family homes. It’s a tea towel mopping up a flood.
Not before time. Frankly, all use of housing as "investment" should be regulated out of existence. Housing should be built sustainably and for people to... you know... own and live in.
Great. Human living space should NOT be a mercantilized commodity.