quote:

The foreign buyer issue is a misdirect; we must loosen housing supply
BRIAN LEE CROWLEY AND SEAN SPEER
Special to The Globe and Mail

Brian Lee Crowley is managing director and Sean Speer is a Munk senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

The secret to most magic tricks is misdirection: The magician works tirelessly to make you look in one place while the trick is actually being accomplished elsewhere. Politicians in British Columbia, Ontario and Ottawa have been brushing up on their magic skills recently as they struggle to make us look in one direction – namely at foreigners – for the culprits behind the outsized house-price rises in metropolitan Toronto and Vancouver. The truth, however, is that those politicians have spent decades creating the conditions for out-of-control housing costs.

While they’re energetically drawing our attention to foreign purchasers with one hand, their other hand has been surreptitiously engaged in a campaign of provincial and local restrictions on the housing supply.

Housing affordability has rightly become one of the top policy issues facing the country. Median households must now dedicate 71.7 per cent and 119.7 per cent of their pretax incomes to own a single-family detached house in the Toronto and Vancouver areas, respectively. Taxes on foreign purchasers have already been enacted in British Columbia, and may be coming in Ontario in response.

Yet foreigners didn’t cause the number of single-family detached houses in the Vancouver area to remain essentially unchanged for the past quarter-century. Nor did they limit detached-house construction in the Toronto area in 2015 to its lowest level in 36 years. It’s time for politicians to own up to their role in pushing house prices out of reach for the middle class.

This is now a matter of national interest. Not only is home ownership positively associated with a raft of economic and social benefits that strengthen families, communities and the country, it’s a national imperative that affordable and responsible home ownership be available in Toronto and Vancouver.

These two centres are where virtually all the net job creation has occurred in Canada in recent years, and they are increasingly the apex of investment, innovation and middle-class opportunity. Unaffordable prices in these cities not only preclude low- and middle-income Canadians from climbing the economic ladder, but they also constrain the national economy.

The evidence that foreign investment is the key cause of rising prices is, to say the least, unconvincing. The same cannot be said for the role that poor government policy is playing to limit middle-class aspirations and constrain the economic potential of our major cities.

Present policies such as green belts and land reserves, exclusionary zoning and obstructive building and construction regulations are directly or indirectly designed to manage the housing supply – including the types of homes that are constructed. One can debate the utility of these “urban containment strategies,” but it’s not debatable that they’re making home ownership more difficult, rather than easier. A major body of research, including by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, has shown that restrictive land-use regulations are a major impediment to housing supply and in turn drive up prices.

Just consider: B.C.’s Agricultural Land Reserve encompasses 20 per cent of the land in the Lower Mainland and is roughly the size of full countries such as Slovenia, Israel and the Bahamas, and twice as large as the amalgamated city of Toronto. Yet B.C.’s land reserve is largely off-limits for home building.

The question is: What can and should the federal government do about housing affordability challenges and the extent to which provincial and local policies are largely responsible?

The answer we offer in a new Macdonald-Laurier Institute study being released today is that Ottawa should use its spending programs to spur provinces and municipalities to stop obstructing housing supply, the rise of the middle class and the chief engines of growth in the country.

Ottawa’s new social housing and infrastructure funding to the provinces and cities should be conditional on liberalizing reforms to restrictive zoning and housing regulations.

Why reward provinces and municipalities with affordable housing and infrastructure funding if these same governments are impairing housing affordability and in turn undermining the national economy and middle-class aspirations?

Federal power should thus be used to catalyze reform to government-imposed barriers to affordable and responsible home ownership.

It would be an important step in delivering on Ottawa’s goals of inclusive growth and middle-class opportunity. And this starts by calling a halt to the provincial and municipal misdirection that has allowed this tired magic act to continue far too long.

Femtosecond posted:

Actually, the local and provincial governments made up the foreign investment boogieman to distract us from their nefarious scheme to artificially limit the supply of housing.

The Littlest Hobo posted:

But what problem can't be solved by the free-market land developers and massive government subsidies.

Femtosecond posted:

Actually, the local and provincial governments made up the foreign investment boogieman to distract us from their nefarious scheme to artificially limit the supply of housing.

namaste faggots posted:

https://twitter.com/BizDatabase/status/781555090738057217?s=09

I have no idea what this means

Twerk from Home posted:

The Peso's a garbage currency, this is like my Indian friends telling me that savings accounts in India pay 7% APY.

PK loving SUBBAN posted:

I had a landlord once tell me not to bother with references because even if your a bad tenant the odds of getting a bad review are virtually nil, because landlords WANT bad tenants to move out.

Rime posted:

:If they actually enforce this, and that's a huge if given how little they enforce any housing-related bylaws in this city, this will be fantastic.

quote:

Why you should keep AirBnB'ing
submitted 3 hours ago by van_nong (CI's reddit trolling account spotted?)

It was always illegal and never enforced. City claims they are going to do random audits this time and if you get caught you get a warning.

Obviously you should keep renting illegally until you get a warning. If you ever get one.

We live in a city where large percentage of residents don't pay tax and are not investigated. In Vancouver, unless someone is hurt or killed actions have no consicuences. So do whatever you need to do to get a head because that is exactly what everyone else is doing.

namaste faggots posted:

https://twitter.com/BizDatabase/status/781555090738057217?s=09

I have no idea what this means

quote:

Foreign-buyers tax too little, too late, Vancouver mayor says

The B.C. government waited too long to crack down on soaring home prices in Vancouver, and middle-class families can now no longer afford a detached house in the city, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson says.

The federal and provincial governments ignored the problem, which also affects the Toronto market, until Canada’s banks began to voice concern this year, he said in an interview with The Globe and Mail’s editorial board on Thursday.

“Middle-class Canadians being able to buy a house in Vancouver and Toronto, those days have probably passed because the interventions didn’t come,” he said.

Mr. Robertson was among those who had been telling federal and provincial policy-makers for years to do something to curb skyrocketing prices in Vancouver, now considered to be among the world’s most overvalued housing markets.

The issue finally reached a “breaking point” this year after the country’s banks also began to warn of the risks from soaring home prices, he said. “The dire warnings of the banks and financial institutions about the precipice that Vancouver or Toronto stand on with real estate and foreign investment have triggered waves of concern through the political ranks.”

While a crackdown on foreign buyers was not among the measures to cool the market that the Vancouver mayor had urged the B.C. government to consider, the province’s surprise introduction of a 15-per-cent tax on home purchases by foreign buyers in Metro Vancouver last month was long overdue, he said.

Home sales plunged 26 per cent in August from the same month last year, although prices remained steady. “The jury is still out on whether it will have the desired effect,” Mr. Robertson said. “Whether it was going too far is the big question. But we needed something to cool the market.”

He urged Ottawa to move quickly on other measures to ease Vancouver’s affordability crunch, such as providing support to build more rental housing, collecting more data on foreign investment in Canada’s real estate market and cracking down on speculators who avoid paying capital gains taxes on investment properties.

Mr. Robertson was in Toronto to attend a meeting of big city mayors to discuss solutions to the affordable housing crisis plaguing Canadian cities. He said he had “brief discussions” with Toronto Mayor John Tory over whether Ontario should follow B.C.’s move and tax foreign home buyers.

When it comes to home prices “Toronto has a little more breathing space, which is helpful,” he said. “But it also has some unique challenges. What works in Vancouver won’t necessarily work in Toronto.”

Mr. Tory, speaking at City Hall after meeting Mr. Robertson, said he will ask the provincial government to use data from the land-transfer tax to start keeping statistics on how many foreign buyers are snapping up single-family homes, as B.C. now does.

Ontario does not have this data, he said, and as a result, Toronto does not have a clear picture of the forces potentially driving up the city’s housing market.

“That information is not, to our knowledge, collected in Ontario,” Mr. Tory said. “And without it, we really can’t have an informed response as to whether measures, for example, similar to Vancouver’s as they regard single-family homes [are appropriate]. We don’t know.”

He said it is still too early to say whether a B.C.-style foreign-buyers’ tax would work in Toronto, but that he is watching the impact of that policy.

Both mayors are also looking at policies in cities, such as San Francisco and Hong Kong, that are similarly dealing with rising home prices and a suspected influx of foreign investment, Mr. Robertson said.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has said he will investigate how foreign investment is driving up his city’s real estate prices, a move Mr. Robertson is monitoring. “There’s a group of cities globally that are struggling with this challenge, and we’re all watching each other,” he said.

Vancouver is also exploring its own tools to address its housing issues. The city plans to begin taxing vacant homes next year as a way to help boost the supply of rental housing. Mr. Robertson has also proposed to offer $250-million worth of city-owned land for affordable housing if Ottawa helps pay for construction.

Those measures, along with support from Ottawa and the province, are crucial, he said. Vancouver is “right on that edge” of becoming a city like London, San Francisco or Hong Kong – too expensive for middle- and working-class people to live in.

“We’ve got to have other ways for Canadians to participate in the real estate market,” he said. “Young Canadians are being left behind right now. That’s a much bigger problem that we’re only beginning to grapple with.”

quote:

Vancouver’s problem is empty homes, not foreign ownership: Mayor Gregor Robertson

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson is getting a crash course in Vancouver’s housing market as he searches for a new home in a city struggling to keep a lid on escalating real estate prices.
“I’ve got my work cut out for me house hunting,” said Robertson, who sees no end in sight to the sellers’ market in a city where 52 per cent of residents rent and vacancy rates have plummeted to 0.5 per cent.
But the mayor blames empty homes and real estate speculation – not foreign ownership – for creating problems in Vancouver’s housing market.
The lack of affordable housing, whether it’s for people who are homeless or young professionals trying to stay in the city, is the top issue Vancouver faces in the upcoming year, Robertson said in a wide-ranging interview at Metro’s office with the editorial team on Thursday – and yes, the mayor arrived by bike. (He cycles in his suit, jacket off, tie loosened and pants tucked into his socks.)
“The city’s primary concern is around empty homes and market speculation skewing the prices. Foreign ownership is a separate issue, that’s not something that should be a big factor here,” Robertson said, adding he is concerned foreign ownership is a trigger for other issues.
Foreign ownership made headlines this week. Premier Christy Clark dismissed the idea of placing an additional tax on foreign buyers, yet an online petition calling for restrictions on foreign ownership in B.C. reached more than 21,000 signatures.
“We’ve welcomed immigrants as long as this city has been here,” Robertson said. “It’s a very inclusive and harmonious city of many cultures, and we want to continue ensuring that’s our strength and focusing on what the real problem is, which is vacancy and ensuring we get best use of the space we have.”
The city’s housing agency is trying to compile data on how many homes are vacant and how long they’ve been empty for, although Robertson said it would be ideal if the province would collect the data and show more leadership on the housing file.
If the city can create disincentives for people to leave their homes empty and incentives for them to rent their houses and condos, Robertson believes that would help boost vacancy rates and affordability by increasing the housing stock.
“If there’s no incentive to rent your empty place, people can sit on it as a business holding. That’s keeping people out of our city or preventing locals from staying, which just doesn’t make sense,” Robertson said. “If you want to hold a property empty, that’s a business decision and I believe it should cost more.”
Robertson sees empty homes changing the fabric of neighbourhoods across the city with fewer people around and fewer children in schools.
“Whether it’s high-end homes on the west side or condos downtown, it’s good for the city to use that space well and provide opportunities for people to live,” Robertson said.
London, New York, Paris, Vancouver, Toronto and Sydney are also facing this challenge of global investors parking money, Robertson added.
“We’ve become havens for safe real estate investment,” he said, adding buyers come from everywhere but most are from the U.S. and Asia.
“Here in Vancouver the core issue is empty homes when there’s no vacancy and people are having trouble finding a place to live.”
As for Robertson, he's looking around the city and he said he doesn't have a favourite hood.
"Vancouver has so many great neighbourhoods with different qualities... they’re all my favourite," he said with a laugh.

Ceciltron posted:

Barring routine devaluations, which I don't know enough about, 7% is still 7%, regardless of currencies.

quote:

There’s no better advertisement for Vancouver than mayor Gregor Bethune Robertson.
Like his city, Robertson is laid-back, generally scandal-free and extremely picturesque. Regarded as the most handsome politician in Canada, Robertson is testament to the rewards of clean living, having made a politically correct fortune with his Happy Planet organic juice brand.
In short: He’s no Rob Ford.

So it’s little surprise that Robertson turns out to be a pretty awesome diplomat, too. A relative of Chinese revolutionary hero Dr Norman Bethune, Robertson was in Hong Kong last week where he brushed off suggestions that mainland migration might be to blame for Vancouver’s stratospheric property prices. He told the SCMP the assertion was “ridiculous”, adding that mainlanders brought a “great influx of talent and culture”.

Baronjutter posted:

God drat Canadians love useless handsome politicians to run their poo poo into the ground while feeling good.

namaste faggots posted:

seriously you've never heard of norman bethune

namaste faggots posted:

I've never been turned down for a rental because I just give my landlord a copy of my pay stub and they're like yes pls

Also I've never given references lmao

Gennifer Flowers posted:

Lobok posted:

Toronto won't enact any kind of tax or cooling-off measure on home sales anytime soon. During the last and current administrations Toronto's long-term budgets were shifted more and more to rely on land transfer tax revenues. If those revenues ever go down, at all, there will be massive budget craters to fill.


Ohhhh, that's Norman Bethune? Yeah I've seen him on the news quite a bit.

PK loving SUBBAN posted:

Dear thread, if you don't know who Norman Bethune is please go look him up on wikipedia. tia

Hal_2005 posted:

7% sounds great until you learn inflation is 13% in country, dumbass.

Ceciltron posted:

You do know you can put money in a bank in a foreign currency account, right? Like, you get good rates that way on, say, holding US dollars.

Twerk from Home posted:

If this is true, then why aren't people putting their USD and/or CAD into Ukranian or Belarusian banks paying more than 10% interest on savings accounts?

Twerk from Home posted:

If this is true, then why aren't people putting their USD and/or CAD into Ukranian or Belarusian banks paying more than 10% interest on savings accounts?

Argentina's paying 22% interest on savings accounts!

PK loving SUBBAN posted:

This is literally a 2 hr economics lecture. Short version: If it was that easy everyone would be doing it. There are reasons not to.

Twerk from Home posted:

If this is true, then why aren't people putting their USD and/or CAD into Ukranian or Belarusian banks paying more than 10% interest on savings accounts?

Argentina's paying 22% interest on savings accounts!