Population and Housing

[plam]

Housing minister: Canada needs temporary ban on foreign buyers to ease affordability crisis: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/b...ba52f37bd/

Well, the foreign buyer ban totally didn't work in NZ (prices continued to rise through lockdown but may be moderating now), but it's also a really different cultural context with respect to investing. It seems that everyone middle-class and up wants to own as many rental properties as possible because they don't really know how to invest their money (the correct answer is: low-fee passive all-market funds e.g. Vanguard ETFs). In the 80s everyone seems to have bought individual stocks and then the NZ market crashed and they're still leery of buying stocks. So a lot of people are amateur landlords, many more there than in Canada, at least with respect to people I talk to.

Also, I've thought that if you are actually renting out your investment property, you're not decreasing the amount of inventory available on the market. (There should be better renter protections, but that's another story). So, vacant home tax? Sure. Banning foreign buyers? Meh.