8 ms·

It'll be interesting in a couple years when prices are still crazy and someone has to come up with an excuse for why. It's amazing to me how resistant people a

It'll be interesting in a couple years when prices are still crazy and someone has to come up with an excuse for why. It's amazing to me how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because there aren't enough homes for people to live in. It's always a search for exotic explanations like foreign buyers and mysterious empty apartments.

ihaveajob 4y ago
What concerns me, as a non-Canadian not living in Canada, is that if a separate cause (i.e. global recession) makes housing prices drop in Canada during this period, NIMBYs everywhere will use that as evidence that "it works", and will try to replicate elsewhere.
- weeksie 4y ago
  It'll be interesting. Unless the population shrinks I think people will still feel squeezed, since things still won't feel affordable if e.g. interest rates go up and prices stagnate.
johnnyanmac 4y ago
>how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because there aren't enough homes for people to live in. I imagine there are enough homes in both America and Canada (they are two of the largest countries after all). But it's all about location. Very few can even afford to move out to the middle of nowhere just to own land. And not many people that can are willing to turn their potentially short commute to work into a 90+ minute trek everyday. Even with an increase in work from home, there's the whole entertainment aspect of living in the city that makes it a hard sell. When I mean middle of nowhere, I mean a small "town" whose businesses amount to a liquor store, some off brand shopping market, a burger joint, and a 20 year outdated public library. Anything else you need is in the suburbs 30 miles out, and Downtown will be another 30-40 after that. You will quickly bore of any ventures in town and seek a drive to the city where there's actual events going on. If you're a recluse you can make it work, but I can understand millenial aged people not jiving with that style
- scld 4y ago
  Yeah, the NIMBY argument that there are "plenty of homes" is like going into a supermarket whose shelves are completely full of only sardines and saying "there is plenty of food".
  - munificent 4y ago
    I think an extension of that analogy is that there are thousands of supermarkets. A few of them are well-stocked while the rest are full of sardines. There are two proposed solutions: * Let everyone shop at the couple of good supermarkets and hope the supermarket can keep the shelves stocked and deal with the crowds. * Get those other supermarkets to start stocking stuff other than sardines. The right answer is probably a blend of those.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Or just learn to love sardines.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  >If you're a recluse you can make it work, but I can understand millenial aged people not jiving with that style Which further creates a spiraling effect where even recluses will feel obligated to move to the city just for anything that you can't / is very difficult to get from a town. Turns out it isn't that fun when the majority of your neighborhood doesn't share your generation or interests. Especially for young people still looking to find someone to settle down with.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    I dont get why a recluse would not want to live in a city. It is anonymous (no super friendly neighbours), you get the most food delivery choice and faster internet probably.
btbuildem 4y ago
All the same, in the recent years wealthy foreigners have been parking their cash in Canadian real estate, and yes, lot of these places tend to sit unoccupied. It's not the sole factor driving up the prices, but don't discount it either.
alar44 4y ago
I think the problem is that people want to buy 3 bedroom homes with a 3 stall garage on 2 acres of land. In my market, there are tons of affordable homes, but they aren't brand new, huge, with a ton of land. People are going to have to pay for that. It's a matter of keeping up with the Joneses from my perspective. People just don't want an average size home built in the 60s. They need a brand new 3k SQ ft home and bitch that's it's not affordable. They can't all be.
- fizzizist1 4y ago
  I live in Toronto, and there is no way that I could buy a small (not even average size) home built in the 60s for less than a million dollars, unless it's in a really bad neighborhood or needs so much work that I will end up spending that much anyway
  - alar44 4y ago
    That's true, but it's generally people from LA, Toronto, and NYC that really have a problem. They are massive metropolises. Extremely high demand and very little undeveloped land. Supply and demand. For everywhere else that isn't adjacent to a megalopolis, I think the housing "crisis" is massively overstated.
    - freeone3000 4y ago
      Yes, for the minority of people who live outside of a major city, they likely aren't seeing huge increases. But for most people, affordable housing is an issue.
      - alar44 4y ago
        No, most people do not live within a market that has these problems. Yes, something like 80% live in a metro area, but this isn't applicable to all metro areas. In the US, maybe the top 5ish cities. Even Chicago, for example, has tons of undeveloped, or underdeveloped land. It's not even close to Toronto or NYC. For most people, moving a little farther from work is what they need. A Chicago suburb commute isn't even close to the same thing as LA or NYC.
gedy 4y ago
It's also amazing to me how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because of near zero interest rates and tons of money being flooded into the economy.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Are people resistant to that? All i see in the mainstream news in Australian (and we know dumbed down it is) is future prediction of house prices based in future prediction of interest rates. They are predicting falls now.
tomc1985 4y ago
> It's amazing to me how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because there aren't enough homes for people to live in. It's always a search for exotic explanations like foreign buyers and mysterious empty apartments. It shouldn't be. That is describing the demand side of the equation.
michaelje 4y ago
The issue is people need homes to live, but people also use homes as an investment vehicle. These are fundamentally at odds with each other.
jjav 4y ago
> It's amazing to me how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because there aren't enough homes for people to live in. I have to wonder if it is ever possible to build enough in the places everyone wants to live for it to become cheap? Manhattan is extremely dense and yet, incredible expensive. More expensive than nearly every less-dense area. So density isn't helping drive cost down.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  Isn't this only possible with Alberta due to all the extra near flat land available? It reminds me of Texas.
- jackcosgrove 4y ago
  As late as the mid-90s the vast majority of American cities had a median house price to income ratio of 3. California was 3.5-4 and New York was 5 iirc. A lot of factors converged to upend this, but within living memory housing markets were affordable. Whether everyone lived "where they wanted to" is unknowable.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sportslife 4y ago
There is nothing exotic or mysterious about empty recently-built houses. They are about 0.5% of my neighborhood and are built by all sorts of people, but always for the same reason: Housing is an asset class. In some places, its expected return is always positive even without rental income. You should buy in those places. If you leave it empty, you get an appreciating asset, and the demand for homes to live in remains the same. And then, there are places like Kharian, where there is huge demand for the idea of housing, but the living is mostly done elsewhere. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fOYJ3_ZppM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fOYJ3_ZppM
chaostheory 4y ago
Yeah, no one wants to admit that musical chairs is a terrible game to play when the authorities refuse to allow the number of chairs to be increased. Shutting out players who already are no longer playing the game doesn't help. China has blocked money from leaving their country for two years now. EDIT it's been three years and not two https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3012312/chinas-capital-outflow-controls-have-gone-extreme-former https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3012312/c...
burnished 4y ago
Why do you think people (lets say people like you and I) will come up with excuses? We will all find out together in a couple years what impact this may have had. I think its a good idea but if nothing changes I'll have some evidence that it was not a high impact intervention. Like, there is no need to rail against people not changing their mind two years before you might reasonably expect them too. Besides, it would behoove you to reserve your judgement here and let results speak for themselves lest you fall into the same behavior you decry. Good shout on the whole "build more houses to have more houses" thing though.

ihaveajob 4y ago

What concerns me, as a non-Canadian not living in Canada, is that if a separate cause (i.e. global recession) makes housing prices drop in Canada during this period, NIMBYs everywhere will use that as evidence that "it works", and will try to replicate elsewhere.

weeksie 4y ago
It'll be interesting. Unless the population shrinks I think people will still feel squeezed, since things still won't feel affordable if e.g. interest rates go up and prices stagnate.

johnnyanmac 4y ago

>how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because there aren't enough homes for people to live in. I imagine there are enough homes in both America and Canada (they are two of the largest countries after all). But it's all about location. Very few can even afford to move out to the middle of nowhere just to own land. And not many people that can are willing to turn their potentially short commute to work into a 90+ minute trek everyday. Even with an increase in work from home, there's the whole entertainment aspect of living in the city that makes it a hard sell. When I mean middle of nowhere, I mean a small "town" whose businesses amount to a liquor store, some off brand shopping market, a burger joint, and a 20 year outdated public library. Anything else you need is in the suburbs 30 miles out, and Downtown will be another 30-40 after that. You will quickly bore of any ventures in town and seek a drive to the city where there's actual events going on. If you're a recluse you can make it work, but I can understand millenial aged people not jiving with that style

scld 4y ago
Yeah, the NIMBY argument that there are "plenty of homes" is like going into a supermarket whose shelves are completely full of only sardines and saying "there is plenty of food".
- munificent 4y ago
  I think an extension of that analogy is that there are thousands of supermarkets. A few of them are well-stocked while the rest are full of sardines. There are two proposed solutions: * Let everyone shop at the couple of good supermarkets and hope the supermarket can keep the shelves stocked and deal with the crowds. * Get those other supermarkets to start stocking stuff other than sardines. The right answer is probably a blend of those.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Or just learn to love sardines.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
BlargMcLarg 4y ago
>If you're a recluse you can make it work, but I can understand millenial aged people not jiving with that style Which further creates a spiraling effect where even recluses will feel obligated to move to the city just for anything that you can't / is very difficult to get from a town. Turns out it isn't that fun when the majority of your neighborhood doesn't share your generation or interests. Especially for young people still looking to find someone to settle down with.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  I dont get why a recluse would not want to live in a city. It is anonymous (no super friendly neighbours), you get the most food delivery choice and faster internet probably.

btbuildem 4y ago

All the same, in the recent years wealthy foreigners have been parking their cash in Canadian real estate, and yes, lot of these places tend to sit unoccupied. It's not the sole factor driving up the prices, but don't discount it either.

alar44 4y ago

I think the problem is that people want to buy 3 bedroom homes with a 3 stall garage on 2 acres of land. In my market, there are tons of affordable homes, but they aren't brand new, huge, with a ton of land. People are going to have to pay for that. It's a matter of keeping up with the Joneses from my perspective. People just don't want an average size home built in the 60s. They need a brand new 3k SQ ft home and bitch that's it's not affordable. They can't all be.

fizzizist1 4y ago
I live in Toronto, and there is no way that I could buy a small (not even average size) home built in the 60s for less than a million dollars, unless it's in a really bad neighborhood or needs so much work that I will end up spending that much anyway
- alar44 4y ago
  That's true, but it's generally people from LA, Toronto, and NYC that really have a problem. They are massive metropolises. Extremely high demand and very little undeveloped land. Supply and demand. For everywhere else that isn't adjacent to a megalopolis, I think the housing "crisis" is massively overstated.
  - freeone3000 4y ago
    Yes, for the minority of people who live outside of a major city, they likely aren't seeing huge increases. But for most people, affordable housing is an issue.
    - alar44 4y ago
      No, most people do not live within a market that has these problems. Yes, something like 80% live in a metro area, but this isn't applicable to all metro areas. In the US, maybe the top 5ish cities. Even Chicago, for example, has tons of undeveloped, or underdeveloped land. It's not even close to Toronto or NYC. For most people, moving a little farther from work is what they need. A Chicago suburb commute isn't even close to the same thing as LA or NYC.

gedy 4y ago

It's also amazing to me how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because of near zero interest rates and tons of money being flooded into the economy.

quickthrower2 4y ago
Are people resistant to that? All i see in the mainstream news in Australian (and we know dumbed down it is) is future prediction of house prices based in future prediction of interest rates. They are predicting falls now.

tomc1985 4y ago

> It's amazing to me how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because there aren't enough homes for people to live in. It's always a search for exotic explanations like foreign buyers and mysterious empty apartments. It shouldn't be. That is describing the demand side of the equation.

michaelje 4y ago

The issue is people need homes to live, but people also use homes as an investment vehicle. These are fundamentally at odds with each other.

jjav 4y ago

> It's amazing to me how resistant people are to the idea that housing is expensive because there aren't enough homes for people to live in. I have to wonder if it is ever possible to build enough in the places everyone wants to live for it to become cheap? Manhattan is extremely dense and yet, incredible expensive. More expensive than nearly every less-dense area. So density isn't helping drive cost down.

chaostheory 4y ago
Isn't this only possible with Alberta due to all the extra near flat land available? It reminds me of Texas.
jackcosgrove 4y ago
As late as the mid-90s the vast majority of American cities had a median house price to income ratio of 3. California was 3.5-4 and New York was 5 iirc. A lot of factors converged to upend this, but within living memory housing markets were affordable. Whether everyone lived "where they wanted to" is unknowable.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

sportslife 4y ago

There is nothing exotic or mysterious about empty recently-built houses. They are about 0.5% of my neighborhood and are built by all sorts of people, but always for the same reason: Housing is an asset class. In some places, its expected return is always positive even without rental income. You should buy in those places. If you leave it empty, you get an appreciating asset, and the demand for homes to live in remains the same. And then, there are places like Kharian, where there is huge demand for the idea of housing, but the living is mostly done elsewhere. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fOYJ3_ZppM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fOYJ3_ZppM

chaostheory 4y ago

Yeah, no one wants to admit that musical chairs is a terrible game to play when the authorities refuse to allow the number of chairs to be increased. Shutting out players who already are no longer playing the game doesn't help. China has blocked money from leaving their country for two years now. EDIT it's been three years and not two https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3012312/chinas-capital-outflow-controls-have-gone-extreme-former https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3012312/c...

burnished 4y ago

Why do you think people (lets say people like you and I) will come up with excuses? We will all find out together in a couple years what impact this may have had. I think its a good idea but if nothing changes I'll have some evidence that it was not a high impact intervention. Like, there is no need to rail against people not changing their mind two years before you might reasonably expect them too. Besides, it would behoove you to reserve your judgement here and let results speak for themselves lest you fall into the same behavior you decry. Good shout on the whole "build more houses to have more houses" thing though.