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These kind of little tweaks to symptoms of the housing shortage are ultimately useless band aids. After a decade of stopping foreigners and corporations from bu

by woah 5y ago

These kind of little tweaks to symptoms of the housing shortage are ultimately useless band aids. After a decade of stopping foreigners and corporations from buying houses, slapping the wrists of landlords who have vacant units, and mandating that the bidding process is emotionally nurturing, house prices will still be higher if there is more demand than supply. In a world where there was enough housing supply, you would just walk away from a blind bidding auction since it's a pain, and buy a bigger house for cheaper across the street.

FredPret 5y ago
This, 100%. The rules can be whatever they are, but the participant with the most market power will always end up having the upper hand somehow
- throw82473751 5y ago
  Sure! But still or even more then, wouldn't hurt to remove this intransparency aspect and what feels very unfair? Or what's the downside?
  - bobabob 5y ago
    You're just arguing with sellers that's why. There's no downside for buyers.
  - atroche 5y ago
    There are costs to creating and enforcing regulation, and then more costs if it needs to be rolled back (say, if there are unforeseen downsides to it).
kbenson 5y ago
I don't disagree that they don't fix the problem entirely, nor that they don't address the core problem of housing affordability. I don't think they're useless though. They affect what many people see as an unfair practice. If stopping it is as easy as regulating it away, why not do so? Nobody is going to then turn around and assume the housing affordability problem is fixed, and if they did nobody is going to believe them. It's not like this is some new and not understood problem, nobody believes blind bidding is causing all the problems.