2 ms·

But if they're buying houses and paying property taxes but not using any of the services their taxes pay for, aren't they doing us a service? It sounds like pr

by mcny 8y ago

But if they're buying houses and paying property taxes but not using any of the services their taxes pay for, aren't they doing us a service? It sounds like property taxes are unsustainably low the more I hear arguments against the Chinese money. Disclaimer: I'm not of Chinese descent and I'm definitely poor so none of this benefits me. I'm just trying to understand what people are saying because it all sounds like a bunch of dog whistling where people say something but mean something else. I just want us to be open and honest with our bigotry if it is bigotry or greed if it is greed.

Latteland 8y ago
The expense of housing comes from the people outside buying up all the open supply at high prices, so it's hard to afford a house. Also the supply of houses is lower, making apartments even more dear. Next many of the houses aren't lived in, so local area businesses don't have enough customers and close (grocery, clothing, restaurants).
- mcny 8y ago
  > Also the supply of houses is lower, making apartments even more dear. Please don't buy into this nonsense. Your sibling comment brought in some actual numbers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18269257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18269257 BC has relatively low property taxes for the area. But you can't raise them now or all the current homeowners would revolt as their taxes goes to unsustainable levels. Nearby seattle's king county has a tax rate of %1, texas has rates around %2, while saanich is %0.4. The UK doesn't even really have property taxes, just council taxes which charge flat rates for things like garbage collection AFAIK. http://www.saanich.ca/assets/Community/Documents/Property~Tax/Tax%20Rate%20Chart%20-%202018.pdf http://www.saanich.ca/assets/Community/Documents/Property~Ta... The property taxes are too low to be sustainable. Progress always causes some problem for some people but we must go forward with it. Raise property taxes for everyone. > Also the supply of houses is lower, making apartments even more dear. Next many of the houses aren't lived in, so local area businesses don't have enough customers and close (grocery, clothing, restaurants). What kind of hot garbage is this? Isn't the whole point of a market economy that we don't have to centrally manage grocery stores (and indeed that it asserts we cannot do this efficiently in the long run)? Of course, planning has its place. Higher taxes in itself does not solve any problem. We still need to plan city expansion and not just build new suburbs because "ZOMG the Chinese will pay for it". That's not what I am saying but I am saying that existing home owners have been benefiting in a manner that I consider unsustainable and we should thank the Chinese elite for exposing our double standards. We live in a democracy and as such we have an obligation to think beyond our immediate short term benefit when we vote. Vote for sustainable tax structures. I am not saying property taxes should be 50% of appraisal value. In fact, I think we should aggressively cut salaries and wages in the public sector (especially at the top). But lets not delude ourselves by pretending we can think "smart". The extra money raised from increased property taxes (which should damper home prices somewhat already) must be spent in a very disciplined and planned way to increase capacity (which will further decrease home prices). I think we can do it but we can only do it if we want to do it. There will be a little pain but there's simply no way around it I can think of that leaves our moral fiber not too frayed.
  - Latteland 8y ago
    I think it's basic economics that when there is increasing demand and an increasing shortage, that the cost of the decreasing housing will go up in price, and I think that is what happened in Vancouver. This article suggests that it's very likely decreasing house prices has been pushing apartment prices down, because housing is more available b/c it's cheaper [1] "he's willing to suggest that declining property sales could be leading many real estate speculators to rent their properties out rather than put them up for sale." which is connected to more houses available and thus less demand on apartment. That seems pretty clear. I'm not pushing an agenda for the government to intervene, I'm just reporting on the basic economics - demand went up, supply went down (more people moving there, and also houses bought but not on the market) led to higher prices. Also, on my second point about neighborhoods losing their commercial infrastructure because of empty houses, isn't that obvious too? I honestly feel like you were replying to another post and accidentally used mine. [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/are-vancouver-s-sky-high-rents-finally-falling-1.4735345 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/are-vancouve...
jrace 8y ago
Any outside money that buys property and does not live in the area prevents people who live and work there from having homes. This means the locals eventually leave, businesses close and the community suffers. A huge issue in Vancouver is the lack of rental units. When a significant amount of property is owned - but not lived in this creates significant community debt. Same thing happened to my community - we became a vacation community for a neighboring province, which in turn has left homes empty on my street for 9 months of the year. Local business cannot survive when a large bulk of the residents only live and buy 3 months out of the year. I saw my home price triple - sounds great, but so did all the homes that I would want to purchase (after selling mine for a huge profit) - so to me, zero benefit. My friends who did have them means to buy 10 years ago...now they will never be able to purchase. Nor can they find a home to rent as there is a huge rental void.
woolvalley 8y ago
BC has relatively low property taxes for the area. But you can't raise them now or all the current homeowners would revolt as their taxes goes to unsustainable levels. Nearby seattle's king county has a tax rate of %1, texas has rates around %2, while saanich is %0.4. The UK doesn't even really have property taxes, just council taxes which charge flat rates for things like garbage collection AFAIK. http://www.saanich.ca/assets/Community/Documents/Property~Tax/Tax%20Rate%20Chart%20-%202018.pdf http://www.saanich.ca/assets/Community/Documents/Property~Ta... You also cannot just say 'recently foreign buyers pay a higher tax continuously' due to various obvious discrimination and unfairness issues as these people convert into citizens. So you get stuff like the unoccupied residence tax (which should triple IMO to make it exceed texas's property tax rates) and the foreign purchase tax. I think fears of racism is what partly delayed a lot action that has happened recently. This has been an issue 10-15 years in the making at the least. My goal would be to eventually raise property taxes to make them negative investments unless rented out on an active basis, and divert those new taxes into something like the singaporean HBD flats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore
mrep 8y ago
Because having unused capacity requires you to build out more (more skyscrapers, suburbs further away) which makes everything further apart.
Tsubasachan 8y ago
Its not an issue normal Canadians should care about. The Chinese are buying up the higher end of the property market after all not social housing. Rich Canadians or rich Chinese, who cares which really? Instead looking at the long term the 21st century is Asian not American. Canada is handed an opportunity.

by mcny 8y ago

Latteland 8y ago

The expense of housing comes from the people outside buying up all the open supply at high prices, so it's hard to afford a house. Also the supply of houses is lower, making apartments even more dear. Next many of the houses aren't lived in, so local area businesses don't have enough customers and close (grocery, clothing, restaurants).

mcny 8y ago
> Also the supply of houses is lower, making apartments even more dear. Please don't buy into this nonsense. Your sibling comment brought in some actual numbers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18269257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18269257 BC has relatively low property taxes for the area. But you can't raise them now or all the current homeowners would revolt as their taxes goes to unsustainable levels. Nearby seattle's king county has a tax rate of %1, texas has rates around %2, while saanich is %0.4. The UK doesn't even really have property taxes, just council taxes which charge flat rates for things like garbage collection AFAIK. http://www.saanich.ca/assets/Community/Documents/Property~Tax/Tax%20Rate%20Chart%20-%202018.pdf http://www.saanich.ca/assets/Community/Documents/Property~Ta... The property taxes are too low to be sustainable. Progress always causes some problem for some people but we must go forward with it. Raise property taxes for everyone. > Also the supply of houses is lower, making apartments even more dear. Next many of the houses aren't lived in, so local area businesses don't have enough customers and close (grocery, clothing, restaurants). What kind of hot garbage is this? Isn't the whole point of a market economy that we don't have to centrally manage grocery stores (and indeed that it asserts we cannot do this efficiently in the long run)? Of course, planning has its place. Higher taxes in itself does not solve any problem. We still need to plan city expansion and not just build new suburbs because "ZOMG the Chinese will pay for it". That's not what I am saying but I am saying that existing home owners have been benefiting in a manner that I consider unsustainable and we should thank the Chinese elite for exposing our double standards. We live in a democracy and as such we have an obligation to think beyond our immediate short term benefit when we vote. Vote for sustainable tax structures. I am not saying property taxes should be 50% of appraisal value. In fact, I think we should aggressively cut salaries and wages in the public sector (especially at the top). But lets not delude ourselves by pretending we can think "smart". The extra money raised from increased property taxes (which should damper home prices somewhat already) must be spent in a very disciplined and planned way to increase capacity (which will further decrease home prices). I think we can do it but we can only do it if we want to do it. There will be a little pain but there's simply no way around it I can think of that leaves our moral fiber not too frayed.
- Latteland 8y ago
  I think it's basic economics that when there is increasing demand and an increasing shortage, that the cost of the decreasing housing will go up in price, and I think that is what happened in Vancouver. This article suggests that it's very likely decreasing house prices has been pushing apartment prices down, because housing is more available b/c it's cheaper [1] "he's willing to suggest that declining property sales could be leading many real estate speculators to rent their properties out rather than put them up for sale." which is connected to more houses available and thus less demand on apartment. That seems pretty clear. I'm not pushing an agenda for the government to intervene, I'm just reporting on the basic economics - demand went up, supply went down (more people moving there, and also houses bought but not on the market) led to higher prices. Also, on my second point about neighborhoods losing their commercial infrastructure because of empty houses, isn't that obvious too? I honestly feel like you were replying to another post and accidentally used mine. [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/are-vancouver-s-sky-high-rents-finally-falling-1.4735345 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/are-vancouve...

jrace 8y ago

Any outside money that buys property and does not live in the area prevents people who live and work there from having homes. This means the locals eventually leave, businesses close and the community suffers. A huge issue in Vancouver is the lack of rental units. When a significant amount of property is owned - but not lived in this creates significant community debt. Same thing happened to my community - we became a vacation community for a neighboring province, which in turn has left homes empty on my street for 9 months of the year. Local business cannot survive when a large bulk of the residents only live and buy 3 months out of the year. I saw my home price triple - sounds great, but so did all the homes that I would want to purchase (after selling mine for a huge profit) - so to me, zero benefit. My friends who did have them means to buy 10 years ago...now they will never be able to purchase. Nor can they find a home to rent as there is a huge rental void.

woolvalley 8y ago

BC has relatively low property taxes for the area. But you can't raise them now or all the current homeowners would revolt as their taxes goes to unsustainable levels. Nearby seattle's king county has a tax rate of %1, texas has rates around %2, while saanich is %0.4. The UK doesn't even really have property taxes, just council taxes which charge flat rates for things like garbage collection AFAIK. http://www.saanich.ca/assets/Community/Documents/Property~Tax/Tax%20Rate%20Chart%20-%202018.pdf http://www.saanich.ca/assets/Community/Documents/Property~Ta... You also cannot just say 'recently foreign buyers pay a higher tax continuously' due to various obvious discrimination and unfairness issues as these people convert into citizens. So you get stuff like the unoccupied residence tax (which should triple IMO to make it exceed texas's property tax rates) and the foreign purchase tax. I think fears of racism is what partly delayed a lot action that has happened recently. This has been an issue 10-15 years in the making at the least. My goal would be to eventually raise property taxes to make them negative investments unless rented out on an active basis, and divert those new taxes into something like the singaporean HBD flats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore

mrep 8y ago

Because having unused capacity requires you to build out more (more skyscrapers, suburbs further away) which makes everything further apart.

Tsubasachan 8y ago

Its not an issue normal Canadians should care about. The Chinese are buying up the higher end of the property market after all not social housing. Rich Canadians or rich Chinese, who cares which really? Instead looking at the long term the 21st century is Asian not American. Canada is handed an opportunity.