Population and Housing

[ac3r]

Ottawa will ban foreigners from buying homes in Canada in $10B plan to tackle soaring house prices: https://www.thestar.com/politics/politic...rices.html

[plam]

Ottawa will ban foreigners from buying homes in Canada in $10B plan to tackle soaring house prices: https://www.thestar.com/politics/politic...rices.html

As Eddie Clark puts it:

https://twitter.com/Publicwrongs/status/...2795051008

"Oh awesome NZ exporting it's[sic] crappy ineffective policy ideas in this area overseas."

(He is a NZ law prof who spent 7 years in Toronto.) Yeah, like, NZ has had this for a few years now and prices just kept on going up.

[Joedelay Highhoe]

Useless feelgood legislation with plenty of loopholes for foreign speculators.

[ijmorlan]

Instead of tackling a symptom, tackle the cause: not enough homes being built.

Same comment for rents as for purchase prices.

[ac3r]

Canada to Ban Blind Bidding As Part of Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights: https://storeys.com/canada-home-buyers-b...d-bidding/

[cherrypark]

Canada to Ban Blind Bidding As Part of Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights: https://storeys.com/canada-home-buyers-b...d-bidding/

This seems more like something that could help a bit. In the least, shining a bit of daylight on a stupid practice, especially in tight markets like the current one where fair value is next to impossible to be sure of.

[Bytor]

Ottawa will ban foreigners from buying homes in Canada in $10B plan to tackle soaring house prices: https://www.thestar.com/politics/politic...rices.html

Useless, as we already know that even in places where there' lot's of foreign ownership, like Vancouver, Toronto, and Montréal, it's still below 5%.

[danbrotherston]

Identity politics in the guise of doing something.

They make this change and they get to pretend for just a little bit longer that NIMBYs and wealthy homeowners aren't part of the problem.

But it's a house of cards, eventually it'll fall.

[tomh009]

Making gains from house flipping (within 12 months) taxable and charging HST on pre-sale assignments are likely to be considerably more effective than the restriction on non-resident purchases.

[Acitta]

New condos need affordable options
Local councils should do more to ensure that some kind of affordable component becomes part of every big new housing project.

[nms]

New condos need affordable options
Local councils should do more to ensure that some kind of affordable component becomes part of every big new housing project.

Hear, hear!

[tomh009]

They can only negotiate affordable housing contributions (whether cash or actual affordable units) when the developer asks for bonusing. And what we are getting is pretty limited.

I think a better option would be to include an affordable housing charge as part of the development charges. Setting it at even $500 for apartments, $750 for townhouses and $1000 for single-family homes (about 5% of current regional development charges, which are roughly half of the total) would generate roughly $50M/year regionally for affordable housing. And it's really not a significant cost increase for a new home.

I don't see why only condo developers should contribute, it should be the same for the developers creating new subdivisions?

[ac3r]

I find it sad you guys think we can solve our housing crisis by relying on the generosity of for profit, capitalist condo/subdivision developers. Relying on the breadcrumbs these people may or may not scrape off their plate. That's got to be the most backwards solution to our problems. There are a million and one other ways we could be lowering the costs of housing, the problem is our provincial and federal governments don't care enough about us to fix things despite our pleading. And yet...we keep electing them and letting the existing ones off the hook.

You get what you vote for.

[tomh009]

Who's talking about relying on generosity? I suggested increasing development charges to fund affordable housing.

There are other issues (rough sleepers, general housing affordability etc) but those will require separate solutions.

[bravado]

I think the free market relies on the selfishness of developers... Which we then purposefully interrupt with excessive zoning and requirements. I iknow this is a simple argument that's been made plenty of times, but this tweet is the same as my opinion on this:

https://twitter.com/patio11/status/939581079328919552

There should be only so much demand for luxury condos, but since there is no supply of low and medium housing, only luxury condos find customers. Any fees we extract from developers will just be extracted from all of us in the end.