leftist heap posted:

They can do exactly that, it's basically why they exist and they do it all the time but it's usually just as part of affordable housing initiatives. If you really want to read the nitty gritty you can read the Local Government Act or the Community Charter, but they have pretty broad powers to reject or approve any development. A municipality can enact a community plan that essentially says "No more lovely condos gently caress off" and reject all condo applications that come across their desks. Easy. A supply sider like yourself should know these things.

quote:

http://tinyurl.com/h4sflvn
479...
(c) regulate the following within a zone:
(i) the use of land, buildings and other structures;
(ii) the density of the use of land, buildings and other structures;
(iii) the siting, size and dimensions of
(A) buildings and other structures, and
(B) uses that are permitted on the land;
(iv) the location of uses on the land and within buildings and other structures;

quote:

Housing agreements for affordable housing and special needs housing
483 (1) A local government may, by bylaw, enter into a housing agreement under this section.

(2) A housing agreement may include terms and conditions agreed to by the local government and the owner regarding the occupancy of the housing units identified in the agreement, including but not limited to terms and conditions respecting one or more of the following:
(a) the form of tenure of the housing units;
...
(4) A housing agreement may be amended only by bylaw adopted with the consent of the owner.

Femtosecond posted:

I'm not sure. Here's the section from the Local Government Act


My read of this is that the city can say things like a building can be upto 6.6 Floor Space Ratio, and be no taller 150 feet and could be an office or hotel, but not a scrap yard. It depends on what "the use of land, buildings and other structures" means.

Later on in the act is:


I didn't know that "tenure" was the lingo relating to form of occupancy of housing. This is the only part in the document where that word appears.

IANAL but to me 483 sounds like restrictions on tenure are not related to zoning of the land, but can only come about from a housing agreement that the owner must consent to.

If municipalities have no ability to create zoning restrictions with tenure, then their only ability to restrict condos would be to zone everything single family housing.

leftist heap posted:

I'm not sure why you're so hung up on the zoning part of it? I'm not really sure what your point is now.

quote:

RBA boss Glenn Stevens: Parents should expect they'll have to help their kids buy a house

The surge in property prices, especially in Sydney and Melbourne has made home owners extremely wealthy but cruelled the prospect of home ownership for many who aren’t already in the market.

That’s especially true for younger Australians.

That is causing some intergenerational issues in housing, which is a bigger question than “is there a housing bubble or not” according to RBA governor Glenn Stevens in the full transcript of his interview with the Australian and Wall Street Journal.

Stevens acknowledged “it’s always been hard to be that cohort that’s trying to enter the market. There’s always been a hurdle. It may be getting worse, though part of this is – I mean, there’s a lot of things happening here”.

One of things that’s happening, Stevens believes, is that a chunk of the wealth home owners think they are sitting on in their house will prove ephemeral. That’s because if they want their children to own a home then they are going to have to give them some of that cash to do so.

Here’s Stevens (our emphasis):

I think that a lot of people of my generation are actually going to find themselves, if they haven’t already, helping their children into the housing market because that may be almost the only way that their children can enter the Sydney market, anyway, and be not too far from mum and dad. And I suspect that will happen a lot, and that, of course, means that for people of my age, that the wealth we think we have in our house, actually, we don’t have quite as much as we thought because we’re going to have to give some of it to the next generation.

He acknowledged that for renters locked out of the property market this could mean the issue perpetuates into the next generation.

But his point about the shared wealth of families is also an important one for the future. It suggests for many children of those with property, who feel locked out of the market, the problem of home ownership can be self-curing.

That’s because, as Stevens notes, older Australians can share their wealth now.

But equally at some point, there will be an inter-generational wealth transfer when the older, home owning, family members leave their property to their kids, or quite possibly their grandchildren, as an inheritence.

With the nuclear family shrinking, and the number of children and grandchildren on average reduced from a generation or two ago, there is likely to be a large number of younger Australians coming into some serious wealth when their parents or grandparents pass on.

It could take a decade or two, but ultimately younger Australians could end up the longest living and richest generation in the nation’s history.

MeinPanzer posted:

Find me a Chinese student/foreign white family crying b/c the capital gains tax exemption hurt them and and ill write u a story

jm20 posted:

The exemption is one of the primary drivers of the bubble. All this extremely short term flipping and shady assignment poo poo couldn't happen otherwise.

leftist heap posted:

They can do exactly that, it's basically why they exist and they do it all the time but it's usually just as part of affordable housing initiatives. If you really want to read the nitty gritty you can read the Local Government Act or the Community Charter, but they have pretty broad powers to reject or approve any development. A municipality can enact a community plan that essentially says "No more lovely condos gently caress off" and reject all condo applications that come across their desks. Easy. A supply sider like yourself should know these things.

Femtosecond posted:

I'm not sure. Here's the section from the Local Government Act

[...]

If municipalities have no ability to create zoning restrictions with tenure, then their only ability to restrict condos would be to zone everything single family housing.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Central Bankers......


http://www.businessinsider.com.au/stevens-parents-should-expect-theyll-have-to-help-their-kids-buy-a-house-2016-8

"THE BEATWEAVER" posted:

Freezer posted:

The Jane Austen times are back, baby! New life objective: marry into a family that owns at least one house.

namaste faggots posted:

relax it's just a ridiculous airbnb squeeze on supply

nobody is moving to victoria for the bountiful employment

namaste faggots posted:

his point is supply supply supply

Mandibular Fiasco posted:

This is my sister-in-law's strategy there. They have several apartments that they have on AirBnB and it's largely a full-time job looking after them. I can't see how this isn't having a disproportionate effect on rentals for people who actually reside in Victoria.

Lexicon posted:

Still don't get why so many of you are hostile to the supply idea. Even if you think it's a red herring with respect to the housing market state, don't you think it would be a positive outcome, not to mention amusing, for the market to be flooded with rentals? You all hate the tinpot dictator amateur landlord types... why would you not want to see their asset scarcity utterly undermined?

namaste faggots posted:

I think his argument is stupid because it detracts from the real problem which is lack of financial regulation and bullshit housing policy which encourages dumb motherfuckers to own homes.

Also he actually thinks this housing market isn't a stack of cards.

jm20 posted:

I'm curious, how many apartments are they squatting with to justify this as a full time job?

Lexicon posted:

Still don't get why so many of you are hostile to the supply idea. Even if you think it's a red herring with respect to the housing market state, don't you think it would be a positive outcome, not to mention amusing, for the market to be flooded with rentals? You all hate the tinpot dictator amateur landlord types... why would you not want to see their asset scarcity utterly undermined?

namaste faggots posted:

I think his argument is stupid because it detracts from the real problem which is lack of financial regulation and bullshit housing policy which encourages dumb motherfuckers to own homes.

Also he actually thinks this housing market isn't a stack of cards.

Subjunctive posted:

Let's say CMHC and others get their macropru on, and dumb motherfuckers stop buying houses. Won't they need rental units to live in instead?

(Stacks of cards are pretty stable.)

quaint bucket posted:

They will continue to buy more of those rental properties to increase the size of their fiefdom.

Subjunctive posted:

Let's say CMHC and others get their macropru on, and dumb motherfuckers stop buying houses. Won't they need rental units to live in instead?

(Stacks of cards are pretty stable.)

namaste faggots posted:

I don't know if you remember the bay area from 2008 to 2011 or so but employment declined so hard I could drive from San Jose to SFO in rush hour in like 20 minutes

If you don't think Vancouver's going to empty out like rats on the Titanic when the crash comes I don't know what to say

Mandibular Fiasco posted:

Two that they own, plus three that they are servicing for other people. They seem to think its workable, but I'm not reviewing their books. They're also thinking the condo value will SKYROCKET for some reason, so who knows what sort of magical math is truly being applied.

leftist heap posted:

CI is just here for bubble schadenfreude and lulz, don't bore him with urban planning wankery!!

Subjunctive posted:

I'm just trying to play along with my threadcrush.

quote:

Foreign buyers pay less than $700,000 in fines to the ATO despite illegal buyer crackdown

In the first seven months after tougher penalties for illegal foreign property investors were introduced the Tax Office collected less in fines than the cost of an average Sydney house.

In response to a 2014 House of Representatives inquiry that revealed there had been no prosecutions for a breach of the rules since 2006 and that penalties were manifestly inadequate, the Abbott government responded with beefed up penalties and by moving enforcement to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

When the tougher penalties were announced on May 2, 2015, then treasurer Joe Hockey warned:

"We will find those people that have engaged in unlawful acquisition of Australian real estate and we will prosecute you and we will be very hard about it."

However, since the ATO took over the approvals, enforcement and penalties process on December 1 last year, the penalties seem anything but "very hard".

In response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request from the ABC, the ATO said it had identified more than 270 breaches of the foreign investment rules and issued 150 penalty notices by the end of the financial year on June 30.

Those penalties totalled $695,980, or an average of $4,640 each.

That is a far cry from the much touted maximum penalties of $127,500 for individuals, $637,500 for companies and up to three years in jail introduced by the Abbott government.

The total amount of penalties issued in the first seven months of ATO enforcement is worth less than the typical Sydney home price of $775,000.
Forced sale of 30 properties worth $78m

The ATO said the penalties were issued to people who failed to seek the required foreign investment approval before purchase or who breached a condition of their investment approval, such as temporary residents failing to sell when they leave the country.

In addition to the penalties, Treasurer Scott Morrison has approved the forced sale of 30 foreign-owned properties valued at $78 million.

While the Government does not receive all of those proceeds, illegal foreign owners are not permitted to profit from the sale.

However, the ATO said only 21 per cent of breaches have resulted in a forced sale or voluntary divestment, while 23 per cent received amendments to a previous investment approval and 56 per cent have been granted retrospective approval for their purchase.
Amnesty nets $438.5m worth of property disclosures

The Federal Government's amnesty period before the tougher penalties for illegal buyers of residential property were introduced netted $438.5 million worth of disclosures.

Data provided by the ATO shows 302 people came forward to the ATO during its reduced penalty period between May 2 and November 30, 2015.

Victoria accounted for well over half the amnesty period applications, with New South Wales having the biggest proportion of the remainder.
Embed: Distribution of self-disclosed breaches

The ATO said more than half of the investors who dobbed themselves in have been granted retrospective approvals because they would have been approved had they applied to the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) before purchasing.

Those cases which were not eligible for retrospective approval have resulted in "concessional divestment", self-divestment or a variation to a prior FIRB approval, such as an extension of time to develop vacant land.
Nearly 50 ATO staff enforce foreign buyer rules

The ABC also asked for information about staffing levels within the unit charged with enforcing the rules.

Since assuming control of regulating foreign investment in residential property, the ATO has maintained a staff of just under 50.
Embed: ATO foreign investment team headcount

The ATO said this unit also receives support and resources from the rest of the organisation.

"The team is supported by the ATO's data analytics branch, legal counsel and works closely with the ATO's high wealth individuals and international audit areas," it told the ABC.

"Potential breaches are examined for tax compliance, immigration and law enforcement issues.

"This approach helps to guard against Australian property being used in connection with serious and organised crime, including the laundering of money through property in Australia."

It is a massive increase on the resources the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) had available when it was tasked with the same responsibilities.

FIRB told the Parliamentary inquiry into foreign investment in residential real estate that it had just eight staff to review applications, monitor compliance and try to detect and prosecute breaches.

Aside from performing all the tasks that FIRB used to do, the ATO said its has presented to over 2,000 people at community engagement events, run stalls at business exhibitions and advertised the changes to penalties on two real estate websites targeting Chinese buyers that have a combined monthly audience of around 2 million.

leftist heap posted:

CI is just here for bubble schadenfreude and lulz, don't bore him with urban planning wankery!!

quote:

Evidence from realtors and MLS data is showing the Vancouver real estate market is in the midst of a major slow down, with prices dropping and sales plummeting, but some experts say it’s too soon to tell.

While August is typically one of the slowest months for real estate transactions, MLS sales data from the first two weeks of the month shows what many have been hoping for during the last few years of escalating prices.

There were only three home sales in West Vancouver between Aug. 1 and 14 this year, compared to 52 during the same period last year. That’s a decrease of 94 per cent.

The numbers come from long-time realtor Brent Eilers, who’s been tracking the data with the same system since he joined the business in 1983. He studied MLS listings to count how many homes were sold so far this month.

“It’s pretty tough to go from 52 to three and pretend things are fine,” said Eilers. “That is a pattern that can’t go ignored.”
Eilers says he’s been warning of a real estate slow-down for at least a year due to the region’s unsustainable and unsupportable prices. West Vancouver, where he does a large part of his business, had a benchmark detached home price of almost $3.4 million in July according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV).

The median household income in the region was $84,345 in 2011, according to the District of West Vancouver.

“The market in West Van is up 450 per cent since 2001. So is everyone making 600 per cent more income than they were so they can pay their taxes and buy their houses? Of course not. So how is this inflation been financed? By off-shore money and record debt.”

And while Eilers says the slow-down is at least partly due to the implementation of the Metro Vancouver foreign buyer tax on July 25, which has caused a firestorm of anecdotal evidence saying it has killed the housing market, he adds sales were dropping even before the tax.

According to the data, July was another slow month in West Vancouver with only 44 sales, down from 80 in 2015. June saw 74 sales, also down from 102 the year before.

The pattern has left the market “devastated”, according to Eilers.

But experts are warning that two weeks of data isn’t enough to ring the alarm bells.

Andy Yan, acting director of The City Program at Simon Fraser University, says we need more time.

“It’s really hard to say if it’s just cooling off. It could be that everybody who could or would buy at those really high prices a couple months ago are now already in, and now we just really see how the market is retracting itself,” he said.

Prices going down

Earlier this month, the REBGV released its statistics for the month of July, saying the data showed the market had slowed down to “normal levels”. But one thing missing from the data was evidence of any price decrease. Fortunately for buyers, real-time data proves otherwise.

READ MORE: Vancouver real estate market slows in July to “normal” levels

Zolo, a Canadian real estate brokerage, keeps track of MLS home sales in real-time and reports prices as an average rather than the “benchmark price” used by the REBGV.

It currently shows a major correction underway in most Metro Vancouver markets.

Untitled-1

According to the website, the City of Vancouver currently has an average home price of $1.1 million, down 20.7 per cent over the last 28 days and down 24.5 per cent over the last three months.

The average detached home is $2.6 million, down seven per cent compared to three months ago.

Richmond is no different. Zolo CEO Barry Allen says the market in Richmond has “gone off a cliff” with the average home now priced at $779,000, down 20.7 per cent from three months ago and 17.6 per cent from last month. Detached homes in Richmond took the hardest hit compared to other markets with a 10 per cent price correction over the last three months down to $1.7 million.

North Vancouver detached homes fell 10 per cent in price in three months down to $1.8 million. Their average home price for all properties fell 17.3 per cent in that time period to $1 million.

It’s more of the same in Burnaby and Surrey.

GALLERY: See just how much prices have dropped in key Metro Vancouver markets:

vancouver data
west van data
123456
However tantalizing the drop in price may be, economists and experts warn that using averages in real estate prices is inherently problematic.

“That’s a really bad idea,” said UBC economist Tsur Somerville, who adds that the drop in average prices may be due to a drop in high-end home sales.

“Averages are always tricky to use, because when you have sales at the high end they have a way of skewing the value of homes that are sold, and that’s really particularly the case in Vancouver,” said Yan.

Allen says their data showed the market had already started to turn before the foreign buyer tax.

“It’s only slowing down at the top where there is uncertainty,” he said.

And that uncertainty is “diabolically dangerous”, according to Eilers, who has sold real estate during four different correction periods in Vancouver.

“When the market changes, it typically changes over night or within a couple of weeks, but it often takes two to three months for everybody to figure it out. That’s why it can be so scary,” he said.

A strong price correction often takes months to appear because sellers are unwilling to lower their prices until they have to.

According to the realtor, often sellers have their houses appraised months before they put them on the market, meaning in the climate we are currently witnessing, sellers are expecting to list their homes at record-high prices, even though the number of sales and listings indicate prices should be lowering.

“Typically what happens when the market starts to flip is all the buyers go into hibernation and all the listings come on. What are the odds on getting that seller to price his home at a fraction of where the market is now? It’s zero,” Eilers said.

What causes prices to lower is “urgency, anxiety, and fear,” according Eilers. He says a climate of financial overexposure, a treadmill of buying and selling and flipping homes, owning multiple properties, and buying before selling will test how long sellers can hold on without selling in desperation.

He points to the 1980 housing crash that dropped prices by 40 to 60 per cent within a year and took six years to recover.

“So your $2 million house became $800,000 in five months. There’s a lot of economists and a lot of wise people that believe that our financial structure is much closer to that structure from a corrections’ point of view,” Eilers explained.

The Bank of Canada recently warned that those invested in the Vancouver housing market are particularly vulnerable to a price correction due to the large share of “highly indebted households.”

And the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation increased Vancouver’s risk rating to “high“, due to “evidence of problematic conditions” including price acceleration and overvaluation.

Lots selling, few buying

Zolo’s CEO says the foreign buyer tax has certainly stopped speculative buyers. This has caused many other buyers to take on a “wait and see” approach, which has essentially frozen the market.

East Vancouver’s Nina MacDonald echoes that belief telling Global News she hasn’t had any nibbles on her $1.28 million, 59-year-old bungalow on Napier Street that she’s owned for over 20 years. She’s even cancelled an upcoming open house because she felt like it would be pointless.

She initially wanted to sell because the real estate windfall would allow her to purchase a turn-key property and pay the down-payment on houses for her grandchildren.

“I went from having a phone call everyday [from realtors] to not having any,” she said.
Global News obtained MLS sales data from several key Metro Vancouver markets and found the number of homes sold during the first two weeks of August in Greater Vancouver dropped by 85 per cent on average.

Richmond experienced a 96 per cent drop in the number of sales and Burnaby North fell by 95 per cent. Vancouver’s West Side, West Vancouver, and Coquitlam also took major hits.

home sales

While the number of sales has been dropping for a couple months, August is a particularly difficult time to predict an ongoing trend as the market is generally less active, according to Somerville.

Yan agrees it will take at least three months of solid data to prove a pattern exists.

“You need a much larger data frame to say ‘aha, here’s a trend’ or ‘no, there’s no trend.'”
Somerville also points out that the timeline of the foreign buyer tax may have caused data distortion for this month.

“There’s all these sales that got rushed to be done before Aug. 2 that would have normally taken place in August, then of course they’re going to be lower,” he said.
But regardless Somerville said, “declines in sales are usually the precursor to the market slowing or even turning.”

News of the foreign buyer tax has spread to China, where Chinese real estate website Juwai now promotes other Canadian cities as foreign capital destinations.

The website used to promote Vancouver as one of the best places for wealthy Chinese to invest, but has now switched to publicizing Calgary and Alberta due to the tax.

READ MORE: 90% of Metro Vancouverites support foreign buyer tax

“According to the National Bank of Canada, Chinese buyers [are] estimated to have bought up one-third of Vancouver homes in 2015… However, a recently imposed 15% foreign buyer tax in British Columbia to cool the soaring housing prices in Vancouver may turn the tide, causing Chinese property investors to search for better options elsewhere in Canada,” the company wrote online in a blog post.

Juwai says Calgary offers “better value for money when compared with the inflated housing prices in Vancouver.”

Eilers says both the foreign buyer tax and the ensuing market uncertainty is a double-whammy that will keep investors away, but it will likely take until October to see just how much of an effect it has on prices.

NDP MLA David Eby says the tax has caused a lot of people to hit the pause button on buying homes, but all those people might come back into the market in September.

Despite his reservations on how the tax was implemented – he would have preferred an incrementally-increasing tax – he says a market slow down is good news.

“A lot of people have said to me quietly that they hope there is a substantial housing crash.”

Yan admits the data could be pointing toward a downward trend, but it could also be a minor blip in Vancouver’s hot housing market.

“It’s part of what you’d expect out of a cycle, in terms of rapid expansion and now a small contraction. Is it an indication of a bubble bursting? Wouldn’t be able to tell you.”

leftist heap posted:

It's true because two weeks of data thinks it's true.

The Butcher posted:

I'm just pissed there's no effective way for me to bet on this.

The Butcher posted:

I'm just pissed there's no effective way for me to bet on this.

The Butcher posted:

I dig that it will take months of data to draw any definite conclusions, but I'm pretty sure this is actually ItsHappening.gif. At least a top and pullback if not a crash.

I'm just pissed there's no effective way for me to bet on this.