7 ms·

> I feel like it’s almost an attempt to appease citizens by blaming the issue on “foreigners” (always a move that is popular with politicians) Yeah the Right

by tqi 5y ago

> I feel like it’s almost an attempt to appease citizens by blaming the issue on “foreigners” (always a move that is popular with politicians) Yeah the Right loves to blame poor foreigners while the Left prefers to blame rich foreigners but at the end of the day they at least agree that it is never the voters themselves who are to blame.

hengri 5y ago
It's low interest rates to blame
- VincentEvans 5y ago
  Which should’ve helped a whole bunch of hard-working regular people to buy their first-time homes, but that is not what is happening it seems?
  - chollida1 5y ago
    > Which should’ve helped a whole bunch of hard-working regular people to buy their first-time homes, but that is not what is happening it seems? This is false if you think about it. What drives the price of a house is what people can pay on their monthly payments. As rates go down prices go up as people can afford to pay more. Unfortunately for home buyers this means the downpayment goes up. What you end up with is a bunch of first time home buyers who can in theory afford the mortgage payments but can't build up the $200,000 nest egg required as a 20% downpayment on a $1,000,000 home. When rates go back up home prices will drop and so will the size of the downpayment required, even though the person will pay about the same monthly on their mortgage. Lower rate help those with existing homes and therefor existing equity more than those without homes.
    - ethor 5y ago
      It would have been true if the supply side of the market was working. Low interest rates have increased demand but the market has not been apply to increase the number of available homes to meet the demand, hence existing properties have increased in price.
- lucidguppy 5y ago
  Its zoning and nimbyism.
  - jachee 5y ago
    It’s treating basic human needs as financial instruments.
    - ryan93 5y ago
      How does your theory explain the difference in housing prices between San Francisco and Lubbock?
      - bdcravens 5y ago
        The "theory" relates to increase over time for a single location, not differences between 2 locations at a single point in time. But to stick to your example, investors are more likely to flock to a location with greater returns. At the same time, Lubbock hasn't exactly remained stagnant. https://learn.roofstock.com/blog/lubbock-real-estate-market https://learn.roofstock.com/blog/lubbock-real-estate-market
        ryan93 5y ago
        Why are you so sure the outsized returns don't have anything to do with zoning?
    - chii 5y ago
      Plenty of basic human needs are financialized - crops and water and electricity - and they don't have any problems. Why is financializing land and real estate a cause for the problem? I argue it's not financializing, but the lack of allowance for production of more, when the price signals a demand for more. When crop prices are high, farmers grow more, or make use of more land to grow. Ditto with electricity or water. Why isn't more land opened up for development, when price of real estate is high?
- gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
  Nah, it’s the animal sprits
- tqi 5y ago
  Interest rates just went over 5% so I guess we'll test this hypothesis soon?
- honkdaddy 5y ago
  It's a lack of supply caused by costly and overzealous environmental assessments which strangle the process of land development in Canada, particularly Ontario. If you want a convenient scapegoat, blame the McGuinty government of the early 2000s. When the 2005 Greenbelt Act was passed, developers across the country warned of a housing crisis in the future due to the effect the bill would have on the price and timelines for new construction. 17 years later we'd prefer to blame China or NIMBYs, but the reality is Canadians, and especially Ontarians, did this to themselves when they allowed politicians and environmentalists to ignore the concerns of land developers and engineers.
Spivak 5y ago
Weird, I know the left likes to blame the rich, but I’ve never seen specifically rich foreigners. Also for real how can the voters (ie the average citizen) be the problem? The average citizen has no money and no political or regulatory power. The average citizen just exists in a system they have no control over and responds to incentives. Hoping that en mass people won’t do that is like politely asking a river to move.
- bin_bash 5y ago
  This is definitely a thing in Vancouver: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/05/726531803/vancouver-has-been-transformed-by-chinese-immigrants https://www.npr.org/2019/06/05/726531803/vancouver-has-been-...
  - johndfsgdgdfg 5y ago
    This is refreshing to see a left wing media writing on China. After COVID I pretty much lost trust in left wing media when it comes to China.
- giobox 5y ago
  Attacking rich foreigners for not paying enough <insert tax or contribution> to their adopted homes is fairly common throughout the world, no? America does make it harder to avoid paying tax with a system that taxes income regardless of which country you earned it in, but most of the rest of the world does not work this way. To use the UK as an example, attacking rich foreigners for their "non-domiciled" tax status is extremely common. This is where you live in the UK, but for tax purposes hide your wealth in another system with lower tax rates, effectively paying no income taxes at all in the UK. Variations of this concept exist throughout the world in many countries and routinely draw politically ire. Just this week: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-61017993 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-61017993 Wealth coupled with a collection of passports often creates far more opportunities to avoid tax than being stuck under the rules of one single State, rightly or wrongly.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
ameminator 5y ago
There are many likely reasons for the explosion in housing prices - but we can't pretend that immigration isn't one of them. A solution will likely need to be multi-factored, but reducing demand by reducing immigration will probably have to be part of that solution. To ignore that is to limit how effective your measures in reducing the cost of housing can be.
- bogota 5y ago
  Or we could have seen this coming a mile away and built more houses and reduced the idiocy of city zoning. But yeah it’s the immigrants fault. Lets reduce immigration while we are facing a labor shortage.
  - ameminator 5y ago
    Well, it's not the immigrants' fault - it's the government's fault. At the end of the day, this confluence of circumstances is its responsibility. The combination of low interest rates, no expansive public transport projects, no action on money-laundering, hurdles in supply (as you mentioned) - and yes, expansive immigration policies (Canada had the highest population growth in the G7, mostly due to immigration [0]). The truth is, this problem has been growing for many years and public servants have allowed the issue to grow beyond any control (and actually profiting off it in some cases). Now, the rest of the population will suffer and it's become a hard problem to solve. Finally, yes we have a labor shortage - but it may actually be a labor correction. Wages have been stagnant for years and inflation is running wild. Wages need to rise to catch up - artificially depressing wages with immigration is a recipe for disaster. [0] https://www.cicnews.com/2022/02/canada-fastest-growing-country-in-g7-thanks-to-immigration-0221964.html https://www.cicnews.com/2022/02/canada-fastest-growing-count...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - davidw 5y ago
      Here where I live, the people who show up at hearings to stop homes from being built are all wealthy-ish local people. Not immigrants, not some faceless government, not BlackRock, but our neighbors.
mistermann 5y ago
>> I feel like it’s almost an attempt to appease citizens by blaming the issue on “foreigners” (always a move that is popular with politicians) > Yeah the Right loves to blame poor foreigners while the Left prefers to blame rich foreigners but at the end of the day they at least agree that it is never the voters themselves who are to blame. Generally speaking I think you're mostly correct, but there are exceptions, and nuances. I am one of the odd outliers who believes that much of the blame lies with voters, but at the same time it is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. It's ~true that voters "should" "vote for better politicians", but consider: - what if the particular flavour of democracy that we practice does not make this possible? - what if the public's ability to make optimal decisions is a function of the quality of education they received, which is largely a consequence of government policy (and other things, like culture)? Take HN for example: observe how many comments there are in this subthread (or the overall thread) asserting that "The problem is X", as if the causality behind the situation is due to a single variable. Might this error be to some degree (perhaps even a large degree) a consequence of causality (philosophy, epistemology, logic, etc) not being first class subjects in school (and culture/society), on par with science, math, and language? And if one's answer to this question is something along the lines of "Oh, they didn't mean that literally, they were just speaking loosely, or expressing their opinion, etc", then I ask: why is it that we have ~culturally normalized (if not worse) speaking (and I would say: thinking) so inaccurately and imprecisely about so many matters that are extremely important, be it housing prices, immigration, war, politics, you name it? Might it be possible that we (~everyone) are "doing it wrong", at massive scale? If I was forced to nominate a single variable that lies behind not just this problem, but perhaps ~all problems (mostly excluding natural disasters), it would be the inability of the population of this planet to think and speak/listen/conceptualize/understand at a level that is adequate to rise above the local optima we find ourselves stuck in (note: there's substantial unaddressed complexity here: some things are improving on a relative basis, etc - I am speaking in an absolute sense, which includes that which is beyond our current knowledge, or ability to know).
- ceeplusplus 5y ago
  We can't even get people to consistently pass basic mathematics at a college 101 level, what you're asking is impossible. There is fundamentally a culture of anti-intellectualism in many American subcultures and the left tries to paper over it by shouting about racism and the right straight up supports it.

by tqi 5y ago

hengri 5y ago

It's low interest rates to blame

VincentEvans 5y ago
Which should’ve helped a whole bunch of hard-working regular people to buy their first-time homes, but that is not what is happening it seems?
- chollida1 5y ago
  > Which should’ve helped a whole bunch of hard-working regular people to buy their first-time homes, but that is not what is happening it seems? This is false if you think about it. What drives the price of a house is what people can pay on their monthly payments. As rates go down prices go up as people can afford to pay more. Unfortunately for home buyers this means the downpayment goes up. What you end up with is a bunch of first time home buyers who can in theory afford the mortgage payments but can't build up the $200,000 nest egg required as a 20% downpayment on a $1,000,000 home. When rates go back up home prices will drop and so will the size of the downpayment required, even though the person will pay about the same monthly on their mortgage. Lower rate help those with existing homes and therefor existing equity more than those without homes.
  - ethor 5y ago
    It would have been true if the supply side of the market was working. Low interest rates have increased demand but the market has not been apply to increase the number of available homes to meet the demand, hence existing properties have increased in price.
lucidguppy 5y ago
Its zoning and nimbyism.
- jachee 5y ago
  It’s treating basic human needs as financial instruments.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    How does your theory explain the difference in housing prices between San Francisco and Lubbock?
    - bdcravens 5y ago
      The "theory" relates to increase over time for a single location, not differences between 2 locations at a single point in time. But to stick to your example, investors are more likely to flock to a location with greater returns. At the same time, Lubbock hasn't exactly remained stagnant. https://learn.roofstock.com/blog/lubbock-real-estate-market https://learn.roofstock.com/blog/lubbock-real-estate-market
      - ryan93 5y ago
        Why are you so sure the outsized returns don't have anything to do with zoning?
  - chii 5y ago
    Plenty of basic human needs are financialized - crops and water and electricity - and they don't have any problems. Why is financializing land and real estate a cause for the problem? I argue it's not financializing, but the lack of allowance for production of more, when the price signals a demand for more. When crop prices are high, farmers grow more, or make use of more land to grow. Ditto with electricity or water. Why isn't more land opened up for development, when price of real estate is high?
gunfighthacksaw 5y ago
Nah, it’s the animal sprits
tqi 5y ago
Interest rates just went over 5% so I guess we'll test this hypothesis soon?
honkdaddy 5y ago
It's a lack of supply caused by costly and overzealous environmental assessments which strangle the process of land development in Canada, particularly Ontario. If you want a convenient scapegoat, blame the McGuinty government of the early 2000s. When the 2005 Greenbelt Act was passed, developers across the country warned of a housing crisis in the future due to the effect the bill would have on the price and timelines for new construction. 17 years later we'd prefer to blame China or NIMBYs, but the reality is Canadians, and especially Ontarians, did this to themselves when they allowed politicians and environmentalists to ignore the concerns of land developers and engineers.

Spivak 5y ago

Weird, I know the left likes to blame the rich, but I’ve never seen specifically rich foreigners. Also for real how can the voters (ie the average citizen) be the problem? The average citizen has no money and no political or regulatory power. The average citizen just exists in a system they have no control over and responds to incentives. Hoping that en mass people won’t do that is like politely asking a river to move.

bin_bash 5y ago
This is definitely a thing in Vancouver: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/05/726531803/vancouver-has-been-transformed-by-chinese-immigrants https://www.npr.org/2019/06/05/726531803/vancouver-has-been-...
- johndfsgdgdfg 5y ago
  This is refreshing to see a left wing media writing on China. After COVID I pretty much lost trust in left wing media when it comes to China.
giobox 5y ago
Attacking rich foreigners for not paying enough <insert tax or contribution> to their adopted homes is fairly common throughout the world, no? America does make it harder to avoid paying tax with a system that taxes income regardless of which country you earned it in, but most of the rest of the world does not work this way. To use the UK as an example, attacking rich foreigners for their "non-domiciled" tax status is extremely common. This is where you live in the UK, but for tax purposes hide your wealth in another system with lower tax rates, effectively paying no income taxes at all in the UK. Variations of this concept exist throughout the world in many countries and routinely draw politically ire. Just this week: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-61017993 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-61017993 Wealth coupled with a collection of passports often creates far more opportunities to avoid tax than being stuck under the rules of one single State, rightly or wrongly.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago

ameminator 5y ago

There are many likely reasons for the explosion in housing prices - but we can't pretend that immigration isn't one of them. A solution will likely need to be multi-factored, but reducing demand by reducing immigration will probably have to be part of that solution. To ignore that is to limit how effective your measures in reducing the cost of housing can be.

bogota 5y ago
Or we could have seen this coming a mile away and built more houses and reduced the idiocy of city zoning. But yeah it’s the immigrants fault. Lets reduce immigration while we are facing a labor shortage.
- ameminator 5y ago
  Well, it's not the immigrants' fault - it's the government's fault. At the end of the day, this confluence of circumstances is its responsibility. The combination of low interest rates, no expansive public transport projects, no action on money-laundering, hurdles in supply (as you mentioned) - and yes, expansive immigration policies (Canada had the highest population growth in the G7, mostly due to immigration [0]). The truth is, this problem has been growing for many years and public servants have allowed the issue to grow beyond any control (and actually profiting off it in some cases). Now, the rest of the population will suffer and it's become a hard problem to solve. Finally, yes we have a labor shortage - but it may actually be a labor correction. Wages have been stagnant for years and inflation is running wild. Wages need to rise to catch up - artificially depressing wages with immigration is a recipe for disaster. [0] https://www.cicnews.com/2022/02/canada-fastest-growing-country-in-g7-thanks-to-immigration-0221964.html https://www.cicnews.com/2022/02/canada-fastest-growing-count...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - davidw 5y ago
    Here where I live, the people who show up at hearings to stop homes from being built are all wealthy-ish local people. Not immigrants, not some faceless government, not BlackRock, but our neighbors.

mistermann 5y ago

>> I feel like it’s almost an attempt to appease citizens by blaming the issue on “foreigners” (always a move that is popular with politicians) > Yeah the Right loves to blame poor foreigners while the Left prefers to blame rich foreigners but at the end of the day they at least agree that it is never the voters themselves who are to blame. Generally speaking I think you're mostly correct, but there are exceptions, and nuances. I am one of the odd outliers who believes that much of the blame lies with voters, but at the same time it is a bit of a chicken and egg problem. It's ~true that voters "should" "vote for better politicians", but consider: - what if the particular flavour of democracy that we practice does not make this possible? - what if the public's ability to make optimal decisions is a function of the quality of education they received, which is largely a consequence of government policy (and other things, like culture)? Take HN for example: observe how many comments there are in this subthread (or the overall thread) asserting that "The problem is X", as if the causality behind the situation is due to a single variable. Might this error be to some degree (perhaps even a large degree) a consequence of causality (philosophy, epistemology, logic, etc) not being first class subjects in school (and culture/society), on par with science, math, and language? And if one's answer to this question is something along the lines of "Oh, they didn't mean that literally, they were just speaking loosely, or expressing their opinion, etc", then I ask: why is it that we have ~culturally normalized (if not worse) speaking (and I would say: thinking) so inaccurately and imprecisely about so many matters that are extremely important, be it housing prices, immigration, war, politics, you name it? Might it be possible that we (~everyone) are "doing it wrong", at massive scale? If I was forced to nominate a single variable that lies behind not just this problem, but perhaps ~all problems (mostly excluding natural disasters), it would be the inability of the population of this planet to think and speak/listen/conceptualize/understand at a level that is adequate to rise above the local optima we find ourselves stuck in (note: there's substantial unaddressed complexity here: some things are improving on a relative basis, etc - I am speaking in an absolute sense, which includes that which is beyond our current knowledge, or ability to know).

ceeplusplus 5y ago
We can't even get people to consistently pass basic mathematics at a college 101 level, what you're asking is impossible. There is fundamentally a culture of anti-intellectualism in many American subcultures and the left tries to paper over it by shouting about racism and the right straight up supports it.