Noblesse Obliged posted:

Concrete brutalist is back baby awooooooo

Cold on a Cob posted:

Someone less lazy than I am did the math on how long incomes would take to catch up to TO housing prices if the prices stayed flat:

So yeah, if government policy is to protect homeowner equity above all else then the rest of us are straight up hosed.

MickeyFinn posted:

Oh wow, just need to cut home prices by a modest 60%.

A guy I work with just accepted a job in Vancouver. He was totally shocked to find out how expensive housing is.

Cold on a Cob posted:

Someone less lazy than I am did the math on how long incomes would take to catch up to TO housing prices if the prices stayed flat:

So yeah, if government policy is to protect homeowner equity above all else then the rest of us are straight up hosed.

Cold on a Cob posted:

Someone less lazy than I am did the math on how long incomes would take to catch up to TO housing prices if the prices stayed flat:

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1381977921838055425?s=20

https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1381978747323232262?s=20

So yeah, if government policy is to protect homeowner equity above all else then the rest of us are straight up hosed.

Sassafras posted:

RBC posted:

ah yes, let me just buy this mystical 400k toronto property

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_economy#The_Financial_Crisis_of_33_A.D. posted:

The financial crisis of 33 A.D. is largely considered to be caused by policies that Tiberius took in order to limit the aristocrats' wealth and land-ownership, and done in response to Augustus's massive private and public expenditures. Augustus engaged in lavish spending in the public and private sector, while greatly encouraging land ownership and investment in real estate.[95][96] Augustus thought that all citizens should have access to land and money. As a result, he aggressively engaged in a massive extension of credit into the real estate and public sector, and engaged in riskier and riskier loans.[96] Due to his policies, land and real estate prices rose dramatically, benefitting his wealthy and noble land-owner friends who owned large amounts of property and invested heavily in real estate.[96] Tiberius noticed such collusion, and looked to curb the amount of land that the wealthy and elites owned, as well as control the rapidly inflating money supply. He engaged in heavy austerity policies such as ordering for all loans be paid off immediately, and began confiscating property from the wealthy land-owners.[96] By restricting loans for land purchasing, and the demand to pay loans in full, debtors were forced to sell off their property and real estate, which drastically dropped real estate and land prices.[95] Tiberius' credit restriction policies and the Senate's passing a resolution that people continue to invest in land despite the massive deflation caused the financial markets to collapse.[95][96] To stem the crisis Tiberius provided a huge amount of credit at zero interest which stemmed the tide of bankruptcies and steadied money lending.[97]

Femtosecond posted:

Adam Vaughan is so terminally online and prone to bad twitter fights that surely its only a matter of time before Trudeau cycles him out of cabinet right? right?

quote:

http://www.vancouvermarket.ca/2021/04/14/bosa-submits-revised-rental-plan-for-west-end-towers/

Bosa Properties has submitted new rezoning applications for two tower sites they own in the West End that had previously been envisioned for condos & social housing in 2017. With a slowdown in the condo market in 2018-2019, the projects were put on hold.


The former development proposals sought 191 condos and 59 social housing units spread between the two sites, or 75% market condos with 25% social housing; however, a City of Vancouver policy change in November 2020 allowed a switch to rental housing with below-market rental in place of social housing.

The proposal for the two site is two 34-storey residential towers and includes:

575 rental units (with 462 market rental units and 113 below-market rental units)
...

quote:

Since 2017, local and provincial initiatives have sought to limit the escalation of housing prices
and rents, specifically the City’s Empty Homes Tax, the Province of BC’s Speculation and
Vacancy Tax, and Foreign Buyer’s Tax. These policy interventions, along with other
macro-economic influences, have contributed to a softening of Vancouver’s high-value strata
condominium housing market.

qhat posted:

I've grown a bit sour to Steve Saretsky recently. He still has good insight into Vancouver real estate, but is really really out of his depth when it comes to talking about monetary policy. He also seems like a huge BTC bug now which is another thing that rubs me the wrong way about him. Once again, realtors are not accredited investment advisers.

"Douglas Todd: Canadian real-estate market better for foreign investors than locals, admits housing secretary posted:

Canadians can be grateful Ottawa’s parliamentary secretary for housing isn’t afraid of saying what’s on his mind in front of a microphone.

Liberal apparatchiks must be going squirrely after loquacious MP Adam Vaughan inadvertently outed what has been the party’s real scheme on housing for six years — pushing a policy that only worsens extreme unaffordability in cities like Toronto and Vancouver.

Vaughan, who is also the Liberal MP for Spadina–Fort York, acknowledged in a rare display of federal government candor that Canada has become “a very safe market for foreign investment.”

But, Vaughan added, it is “not a great market for Canadians looking for choices around housing.”

Without blinking, Vaughan went on to tell TV Ontario host Steve Paikin that attracting foreign capital is the key to building more housing supply in Canada.

“We have a very good system of foreign investment creating a lot of new housing in Canada as we add immigrants and grow the population,” said Vaughan, a former Toronto city councillor who is now parliamentary secretary for families, children, social development and housing.

Whatever is going on in Vaughn’s heart, the reality is the Liberals’ housing strategy is privileging foreign investors and directing billions to Canada’s politically powerful development lobby at the same time it’s drastically undermining local families who have been waiting for an opening into owning.

Ron Butler, a prominent Canadian mortgage provider and real-estate analyst, says a few housing-policy observers have been complaining about this unspoken Liberal policy for years. Developers and their allies have often shut them down by labelling them xenophobic.

“The influx of foreign money started small, then grew. At first the government denied it, calling anyone who pointed it out as racist. By the time it was ridiculously obvious, it was easier to turn it into a policy,” said Butler, who has been spoken highly of by Evan Siddall, who was until recently head of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Fuelled by the way Ottawa has been printing money, handing out pandemic benefits at a globally record rate and offering extremely low interest rates, house prices in Greater Toronto, Metro Vancouver and the Fraser Valley have gone up 20 to 25 per cent since COVID-19 hit a year ago.

Last fall, Vancouver ranked as the second most unaffordable city out of 100 major metropolises in the English-speaking world and beyond, according to Demographia. Toronto is fifth worst.

Given the parliamentary secretary’s talkative frame of mind during his extended interview, Vaughan did express concern for renters who want to get into what he called middle-class security through owning a home.
Article content

But it seemed Vaughan, and by extension the minister responsible for housing, Jean-Yves Duclos, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself, are far more worried about not alienating those who already own homes.

Vaughan argued it would be terrible to bring in any policy that could cause current homeowners to see “ten per cent of the equity in their home suddenly disappear overnight.”

Host Paikin couldn’t hide his shock at Vaughan’s priorities, as he tried to explain people outside the market need to see drops of 20 to 30 per cent.

Real-estate analyst John Pasalis said Vaughan’s admission that Canada’s housing market better serves foreign investors than locals flows from Ottawa’s own inflationary policies, which are designed to push housing prices higher to drive the economy.

When Vaughan admitted that Canada’s housing market is “driven by speculation” and that “it gets very tricky to curb speculation,” Pasalis said the housing secretary was ignoring what other countries have already done.

“I really don’t know what to say when our federal government admits that it has made housing in Canada better for foreign investors than for Canadians. Who are they serving? Clearly not Canadians,” said Pasalis, who has also recently praised by Siddall.

To take just one regional example, the price of a typical house on Vancouver’s west side has soared by more than $300,000 since early last year, largely due to Ottawa’s policies. The average price is $3.3 million.

Realtor David Hutchinson said high-end homes “are completely out of reach of even some of the highest paid locals on the west side of Vancouver,” where SFU housing analyst Andy Yan has said the only ones who can afford to buy are families with access to offshore wealth.

“I currently have four sets of buyers — three of them are highly paid professional couples and one is a local business owner, all with very good incomes — and these prices are even out of reach for them. Two of these have given up looking at all,” Hutchinson said.

It’s hard to figure out whether money going into Vancouver housing is foreign-sourced or not, Hutchinson said, especially since a buyer who is not a citizen, but is simply in Canada on permanent resident status, is not subject to B.C.’s 20 per cent foreign-buyers tax. “And foreign investors can easily purchase through a permanent resident.”

It’s important to keep in mind SFU policy analyst Josh Gordon’s definition of foreign ownership, which is “housing purchased primarily with income or wealth earned abroad and not taxed as income in Canada.” Gordon’s recent peer-reviewed paper says lack of connection between soaring housing prices and tepid local wages in Metro Vancouver is caused in large part by hidden foreign ownership.

The B.C. NDP have attempted to deal with foreign ownership by bringing in a non-resident buyers tax and the vacancy and speculation tax, which targets so-called ‘satellite” families in which the breadwinner earns most of their money outside Canada. They’re better than nothing, even with this current pandemic run-up in prices.

But don’t expect anything at all from the federal Liberals. Trudeau, during a 2019 campaign stop in B.C., promised to bring in a one per cent tax on all property purchases by “non-resident, non-Canadian” buyers. But not a peep has been raised since then about Trudeau’s promise to “ensure foreign speculation doesn’t make housing less affordable for Canadians.”

For that matter, we’re not getting policy updates on a similar campaign promise by the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh, who also two years ago said he wants to impose a nationwide 15 per cent tax on foreign ownership.

Many North Americans these days applaud New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for her leadership, including on housing. She banned foreign ownership in 2018. And, to reduce speculation, she has cut immigration and required new home buyers to have large down payments.

Ardern is a politician who has shown there are many things governments can do to rein in speculation in housing, particularly for young people. All it requires is the will.

Noblesse Obliged posted:

Concrete brutalist is back baby awooooooo

Hubbert posted:

qhat posted:

For what it’s worth, you don’t even need citizenship, you can literally buy permanent residence in a very non-clandestine manner in Canada, and PRs also don’t show up on foreign buyers statistics.

Beelzebufo posted:

They ended the "foreign inventor" PR pathway, but I think Quebec still maintains it.

qhat posted:

This is the major problem. Nine out of ten people who get PR through that route renege on their promise to live in quebec. Just give a $1.2million loan to quebec at 0% interest for five year and you get a PR card. Assuming an opportunity cost of 3% a year, that's a fee of around 190k to avoid the foreign buyer's tax entirely and forever. Frankly it's insane that one part of the country can set their own immigration policy which is completely at odds with everyone else.

qhat posted:

This is the major problem. Nine out of ten people who get PR through that route renege on their promise to live in quebec. Just give a $1.2million loan to quebec at 0% interest for five year and you get a PR card. Assuming an opportunity cost of 3% a year, that's a fee of around 190k to avoid the foreign buyer's tax entirely and forever. Frankly it's insane that one part of the country can set their own immigration policy which is completely at odds with everyone else.

Lead out in cuffs posted:

Yeah.

I think a few things that often get forgotten are:

1) Foreign speculation on Canadian housing isn't just from China. Rich assholes from the USA and Europe have been doing this literally since Vancouver was founded. But the rich Chinese assholes are a visible minority, so they do attract actual racism, which then gives real estate agents the cover to call out anyone talking about foreign speculation as racist.

2) A bunch of rich assholes have basically bought citizenship through various immigration programs. They then buy a bunch of property, but don't bother to even live in Canada. They do not get counted in foreign ownership stats. They also don't get taxed by foreign ownership taxes, although they may fall afoul of vacancy taxes and the like.

3) As others have noted, foreign real estate speculation is mostly being done through foreign investment in REITs and their ilk now anyway.

4) We're only barely beginning to have laws requiring disclosure of beneficial ownership, so most of the degree of foreign ownership of Canadian real estate is still heavily obfuscated.

But good luck getting any of that nuance into the mainstream political discourse.

Hubbert posted:

Personally, I'm more worried about the fact that the Liberal party is now explicit about their desire to acquire foreign investment over the needs of its voting population.

Hubbert posted:

Personally, I'm more worried about the fact that the Liberal party is now explicit about their desire to acquire foreign investment over the needs of its voting population.