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Canada's housing market is F'd and this is the reason. There's a lot of noise made about "foreign investors" (which is really just an epithet for Chinese people

Canada's housing market is F'd and this is the reason. There's a lot of noise made about "foreign investors" (which is really just an epithet for Chinese people) but the investors screwing everything up are Canadians themselves.

Tiktaalik 3y ago
Maybe from the POV from someone who badly wants to buy a condo, but from the POV of a renter who will never buy, these investors are the ones that are creating their housing.
- chongli 3y ago
  No they're not. This is like saying the scalpers who bulk-buy all the concert tickets and resell at huge markups are "ticket creators." If you take investors (30 percent of home buyers, according to TFA) out of real estate then demand goes way down, taking prices with it and making housing a lot more affordable.
  - Tiktaalik 3y ago
    There's a Canadian specific nuance here. In Canada for decades there has been virtually no construction of purpose built rental housing. The primary new rental housing that is being created is wholly through condos being built and people renting out their condos. Accordingly the only new product being created for renters is being created by investors buying condos. Like it's bad that this is the case and this should change, but I'm just pointing out the reality right now of this present environment. There would need to be enormous systemic changes to the dynamics of the Canadian housing market if we wanted to start banning investors from buying and renting homes. Otherwise rental vacancy will plunge even further and rents will go up.
    - chongli 3y ago
      I live in Waterloo. There's tons of rental housing being built here but all of it is targeted at students. It's third-rate shoddy construction by an unsavoury developer. Students complain endlessly about these rental companies but they have little recourse. I'm not convinced that what we need is more of this low-quality "affordable" housing. I think the problem would be solved by cracking down on all the people buying second, third, fourth, ... single family homes and converting them into Airbnb flophouses.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    Scalpers would be more like sub leasers here. The actual builders build the housing, but you aren't going to pay your rent to 1000 different people who all played a part in building it, and those builders want to be paid now, not over 30 years. So the landlord pays them all out now and consolidates the debt. Landlords provide housing in the same way the supermarket provides food. They didn't grow the food, but they did enable it to get to you.
    - 26fingies 3y ago
      That is certainly a take.
adverbly 3y ago
Bingo. If the system allows significant money to be made then it continue to be an investment vehicle regardless of who does the investing. You can't make housing a good investment while simultaneously making it affordable. Land value tax would have fixed this decades ago, and it would still work today. I would love to see a single-issue political party push for it at this point.

Tiktaalik 3y ago

Maybe from the POV from someone who badly wants to buy a condo, but from the POV of a renter who will never buy, these investors are the ones that are creating their housing.

chongli 3y ago
No they're not. This is like saying the scalpers who bulk-buy all the concert tickets and resell at huge markups are "ticket creators." If you take investors (30 percent of home buyers, according to TFA) out of real estate then demand goes way down, taking prices with it and making housing a lot more affordable.
- Tiktaalik 3y ago
  There's a Canadian specific nuance here. In Canada for decades there has been virtually no construction of purpose built rental housing. The primary new rental housing that is being created is wholly through condos being built and people renting out their condos. Accordingly the only new product being created for renters is being created by investors buying condos. Like it's bad that this is the case and this should change, but I'm just pointing out the reality right now of this present environment. There would need to be enormous systemic changes to the dynamics of the Canadian housing market if we wanted to start banning investors from buying and renting homes. Otherwise rental vacancy will plunge even further and rents will go up.
  - chongli 3y ago
    I live in Waterloo. There's tons of rental housing being built here but all of it is targeted at students. It's third-rate shoddy construction by an unsavoury developer. Students complain endlessly about these rental companies but they have little recourse. I'm not convinced that what we need is more of this low-quality "affordable" housing. I think the problem would be solved by cracking down on all the people buying second, third, fourth, ... single family homes and converting them into Airbnb flophouses.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Scalpers would be more like sub leasers here. The actual builders build the housing, but you aren't going to pay your rent to 1000 different people who all played a part in building it, and those builders want to be paid now, not over 30 years. So the landlord pays them all out now and consolidates the debt. Landlords provide housing in the same way the supermarket provides food. They didn't grow the food, but they did enable it to get to you.
  - 26fingies 3y ago
    That is certainly a take.

adverbly 3y ago

Bingo. If the system allows significant money to be made then it continue to be an investment vehicle regardless of who does the investing. You can't make housing a good investment while simultaneously making it affordable. Land value tax would have fixed this decades ago, and it would still work today. I would love to see a single-issue political party push for it at this point.