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How can housing possibly be that expensive in Canada? The median salaries are lower than the US.

by api 3y ago

goosedragons 3y ago
Higher immigration per capita combined with poor planning for the future.
sudosysgen 3y ago
Concentration in two or three cities which can't sprawl much further anymore, poor planning, policies intended to inflate house prices, and higher building and infrastructure costs due to the winter complicating construction (as well as criminal involvement in construction)
dpc050505 3y ago
Our banking regulations kept the bubble from popping in 2008 and international capital figured out canadian real estate was a very safe bet. Housing prices never corrected and they kept growing at the same-ish rate as american housing. Add demographic (we increased our population by 3% this year, 1.2 million extra people while building 200k new houses) and geographic (most of our land is barely livable frozen rock where you can't just go park a camper) factors and you get the perfect storm. An enormous chunk of our GDP growth comes from real estate transactions, we don't have much productive endeavours other than natural resource extraction. Canada is still very much a colony.
- dalyons 3y ago
  word for word true for australia too, except hot/dry instead of frozen. :(
- voisin 3y ago
  > most of our land is barely livable frozen rock where you can't just go park a camper Come on now. Yes by total land mass you are correct, but if you’ve driven from southwestern Ontario to Halifax or Winnipeg to Calgary, you’d seen thousands of kilometres and millions upon millions of acres that could be developed. Practically developable land is 100% not our limiting factor. We artificially restrict both density in existing cities and expansion of cities due to zoning but this has nothing to do with being “barely livable frozen rock”.
  - dpc050505 3y ago
    I've crossed the country from Montréal to British Columbia on wheels three times. The farmland you're speaking of is still relatively expensive, there isn't much economic activity other than industrial farming (do you have access to several million $ for machinery and land?) in those areas to sustain a life, and it's still frozen 6 months a year. It's also owned by someone and developing it into endless suburban sprawl hurts our already limited food production (which is strategically essential when we consider the geopolitical instability our world is facing). Crown land is for the most part either Tundra, Canadian shield or west coast mountains that is even more difficult to live on than the farm land near the US border.
  - pxue 3y ago
    I recently had a random observation. My folks own a cottage 1.5h away from smack middle of Toronto (I drive it often) We call it a cottage because it has no running water, no broadband, overhead electricity lines that literally gets knocked out during bad storms. All of our neighbors are in the same boat. Thousands of southern rural Ontarians live like this. The difference is that they live this way full year round. We are so behind as a country in infrastructure that it's not even funny. To be developing those rural land you talk about will probably cost $100B over three decades at the rate we build things. I'm not hopeful.
    - moltar 3y ago
      Yeah my anecdote is similar. My parents lived 25 minute drive from Kanata (Ottawa suburb), a proper tech hub. The drive was over rural roads, not highways . And they had no infra. Internet was a terrible satellite. Water pump. Septic tank. It wasn’t wilderness or anything. Just farmlands, mostly occupied by non-farming owners at that point.
arecurrence 3y ago
Interestingly, instead of resolving this important problem... the legislation they're passing is ostensibly credits to allow people to spend even MORE on housing.
- dpc050505 3y ago
  Members of the Québec legislative assembly own 1.6 million $ worth of real estate on average (that's a province with much cheaper housing prices than you'll see in Ontario and British Columbia). It's likely very similar at a federal level and in every province. The conflict of interest is obvious.
  - TeeMassive 3y ago
    Same thing for the Canadian housing MP
- mattnewton 3y ago
  Subsidizing demand when there is a supply crunch is an ever-popular “solution”. Sounds great, but I haven’t seen it work.
Marsymars 3y ago
Because there isn't enough houses being built, and prices are set by supply/demand, rather than salaries vs. costs of building a house. Looking at it in another way, if you gave every homeowner in the country a lump sum of cash equal to the amount of equity gained through mortgage payments (not including equity gained through appreciation), many/most homeowners would not be able to afford to buy their homes at the current valuation even starting with that lump sum of cash.
qwertywert_ 3y ago
Rental investors, foreign investors, huge population growth supply cannot keep up. A little bit of mortgage fraud[0]. Highest debt to GDP in G7s, meaning a large portion of people bought recently or HELOC'd are leveraged up to secure their place in the market. Detached housing is at 40% non owner-occupied in BC, I'm sure it is worse in Vancouver metro area. [1] [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-mortgage-fraud-1.6614132 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-mortgage-fraud-... [1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=4610004101 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=461000...
justinhj 3y ago
You can get elected on just home owner votes so just ignore or inflame the problem and fuck everyone without a home

How can housing possibly be that expensive in Canada? The median salaries are lower than the US.

by api 3y ago

How can housing possibly be that expensive in Canada? The median salaries are lower than the US.

goosedragons 3y ago

Higher immigration per capita combined with poor planning for the future.

sudosysgen 3y ago

Concentration in two or three cities which can't sprawl much further anymore, poor planning, policies intended to inflate house prices, and higher building and infrastructure costs due to the winter complicating construction (as well as criminal involvement in construction)

dpc050505 3y ago

Our banking regulations kept the bubble from popping in 2008 and international capital figured out canadian real estate was a very safe bet. Housing prices never corrected and they kept growing at the same-ish rate as american housing. Add demographic (we increased our population by 3% this year, 1.2 million extra people while building 200k new houses) and geographic (most of our land is barely livable frozen rock where you can't just go park a camper) factors and you get the perfect storm. An enormous chunk of our GDP growth comes from real estate transactions, we don't have much productive endeavours other than natural resource extraction. Canada is still very much a colony.

dalyons 3y ago
word for word true for australia too, except hot/dry instead of frozen. :(
voisin 3y ago
> most of our land is barely livable frozen rock where you can't just go park a camper Come on now. Yes by total land mass you are correct, but if you’ve driven from southwestern Ontario to Halifax or Winnipeg to Calgary, you’d seen thousands of kilometres and millions upon millions of acres that could be developed. Practically developable land is 100% not our limiting factor. We artificially restrict both density in existing cities and expansion of cities due to zoning but this has nothing to do with being “barely livable frozen rock”.
- dpc050505 3y ago
  I've crossed the country from Montréal to British Columbia on wheels three times. The farmland you're speaking of is still relatively expensive, there isn't much economic activity other than industrial farming (do you have access to several million $ for machinery and land?) in those areas to sustain a life, and it's still frozen 6 months a year. It's also owned by someone and developing it into endless suburban sprawl hurts our already limited food production (which is strategically essential when we consider the geopolitical instability our world is facing). Crown land is for the most part either Tundra, Canadian shield or west coast mountains that is even more difficult to live on than the farm land near the US border.
- pxue 3y ago
  I recently had a random observation. My folks own a cottage 1.5h away from smack middle of Toronto (I drive it often) We call it a cottage because it has no running water, no broadband, overhead electricity lines that literally gets knocked out during bad storms. All of our neighbors are in the same boat. Thousands of southern rural Ontarians live like this. The difference is that they live this way full year round. We are so behind as a country in infrastructure that it's not even funny. To be developing those rural land you talk about will probably cost $100B over three decades at the rate we build things. I'm not hopeful.
  - moltar 3y ago
    Yeah my anecdote is similar. My parents lived 25 minute drive from Kanata (Ottawa suburb), a proper tech hub. The drive was over rural roads, not highways . And they had no infra. Internet was a terrible satellite. Water pump. Septic tank. It wasn’t wilderness or anything. Just farmlands, mostly occupied by non-farming owners at that point.

arecurrence 3y ago

Interestingly, instead of resolving this important problem... the legislation they're passing is ostensibly credits to allow people to spend even MORE on housing.

dpc050505 3y ago
Members of the Québec legislative assembly own 1.6 million $ worth of real estate on average (that's a province with much cheaper housing prices than you'll see in Ontario and British Columbia). It's likely very similar at a federal level and in every province. The conflict of interest is obvious.
- TeeMassive 3y ago
  Same thing for the Canadian housing MP
mattnewton 3y ago
Subsidizing demand when there is a supply crunch is an ever-popular “solution”. Sounds great, but I haven’t seen it work.

Marsymars 3y ago

Because there isn't enough houses being built, and prices are set by supply/demand, rather than salaries vs. costs of building a house. Looking at it in another way, if you gave every homeowner in the country a lump sum of cash equal to the amount of equity gained through mortgage payments (not including equity gained through appreciation), many/most homeowners would not be able to afford to buy their homes at the current valuation even starting with that lump sum of cash.

qwertywert_ 3y ago

Rental investors, foreign investors, huge population growth supply cannot keep up. A little bit of mortgage fraud[0]. Highest debt to GDP in G7s, meaning a large portion of people bought recently or HELOC'd are leveraged up to secure their place in the market. Detached housing is at 40% non owner-occupied in BC, I'm sure it is worse in Vancouver metro area. [1] [0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-mortgage-fraud-1.6614132 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-mortgage-fraud-... [1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=4610004101 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=461000...

justinhj 3y ago

You can get elected on just home owner votes so just ignore or inflame the problem and fuck everyone without a home