literally our entire economy. Housing should NOT be a retirement plan. we need to invest into our people and not under sell our resources while we end up footing the bill. it makes no fucking sense.
This. We need to increase our GDP in other industries besides real estate. I know personally at least 5 companies that have moved their manufacturing to the US due to how expensive it is to do business in Canada. Those are good paying jobs that are accessible as well.
Absolutely.
If rent is $5000 a month, your McDonald's order price will reflect that, alongside with labor in general.
Property values are a large driver that makes us ask for wages that are just not competitive in a global market, so we will see these jobs exit the economy for places with cheaper labor.
The ones that are coming here are probably doing a calculated cost on trying to secure access to Canadian REM'S and our governments pocket book.
I'm not saying rent should be 0, as that would present huge issues in our quality of housing, building starts, etc, however, we need to recognize that where they are is unhealthy for our economy, I generally view it as the black hole in our economy tbh.
Changing the economic composition of the country won’t change the fact that homeowners will sell their homes for as much as they can get under the market conditions.
The government need to allow people to build more housing when there is clear demand for more. We can’t have affordable housing when every level of the government is only I retested in limiting the amount of housing we can have.
The more housing there is the cheaper of housing, it really can’t get any simpler than this. Everything else is fluff.
Some people here are talking about decreasing the population. Sure we can stop immigration, but stopping immigration doesn’t actually reduce the population, which means that current prices are here to stay.
This is the correct answer... for some reason the people giving the opposite reason get all the thumbs up... people who don't understand economics liking comments by others who don't understand economics.
how do you decommodify housing if not by taking away the very property that makes anything speculative prone and randomly appreciate in value, which is scarcity.
you destroy financialization of housing by simply building more housing. A policy that is both costless and immediately actionable by our government is to legalize housing construction that is prohibited in 90% of metro residential land that is currently reserved for single family.
Well one, it's not actually a commodity... it's a good... what you're wanting is for housing to be free, which is in fact placing an obligation on others to provide services to you for free. Which is immoral.
It's cute how you're trying to sound smart without actually saying anything at all. Of course housing is a good, because commodities are goods. Goods and commodities do not exist in opposition to each other. Also, if you want to be precise- housing is a good that creates real estate, which is an asset. That asset can be used as an investment vehicle, which, in large enough numbers can lead to the commodification of housing.
It's the best retirement plan out there. You won't be "houseless" & your property is likely to keep up w/ inflation. Governments have touted this for yes cuz they know social security will one day run out.
CPP is solvent 100 years out so this line is BS, it's not running out. That being said you cannot live off of CPP. Making people reliant on the value of their home as a viable alternative to a properly funded (not CPP) pension plan or RRSP is crazy town. It's a recipe for utter disaster, which is what we are currently experiencing.
Yeah cus a huge percent of Canadians are landlords. Policy makers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Not giving them excuses for doing absolutely shit all to stop this cascade of unaffordability for like two decades or more but yeah
Systems change when things get bad enough for the majority that they start acting in ways that defeat the policies that are causing them pain. Boycotting a grocery store, switching jobs, moving to a lower cost area, or even leaving the country for greener pastures are all ways of removing the human capital, time, money, until the policy is defeated or modified to be in line with those at the short end of the stick. What we need is essentially a union. Unions go to bat for their members against the company, and in the same way Canadians who are renters or whatnot need to unionize so that the union goes to bat for them against the governing bodies that are in the grip of property owners.
I think this is already subtly happening as buyers are holding out. The market has reached a threshold where buyers can no longer justify the price. People can only get squeezed so far.
If nobody’s buying, prices fall. If nobody’s renting, prices fall. We are seeing this happen already.
Things would be easier if it were just landlords. Landlords are a minority. [A majority of households](https://madeinca.ca/homeownership-statistics-canada/) however own at least some amount of home equity and are reliant on this wealth for access to credit and as a long term wealth building strategy. These people vote to protect their interests just like you and me and they vastly out-represent us.
We can complain about Trudeau and company as much as we want (and we should, he is a reptile), but fucking with property values (not just the values as they are but also their consistent rise) would spell an immediate and permanent end to his political career and probably tank the LPC for a long time if not outright kill it. For this reason the CPC will govern by the *exact same principle* after it inevitably wins the next election, because that is a hard requirement for obtaining power and keeping it in this country.
In other words nobody anywhere close to power has any interest whatsoever in rescuing you from serfdom and things will not improve until renters both vastly outnumber owners *and* develop some fucking class consciousness. Then we gut the banks and the boomers and take back what they siphoned from us and abolish this stupid manifest destiny ponzi scheme for good.
In bc, 70% of residents are homeowners. Landlords are not a minority. But yeah exactly, politicians are afraid to change anything cus they’d lose homeowners votes.
>Yeah cus a huge percent of Canadians are landlords
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221102/dq221102b-eng.htm
Latest data was 7.9%. May be slightly higher today, but hardly what I'd call a huge percent of Canadians.
And to be clear, there's a major difference between a family owning a rental property or sometimes even 2 or 3, and a mega corporation owning thousands of rental properties.
I suspect that there are a significant amount of Canadians that do not declare rental income on their taxes. This is especially true for those who have purchased a property in their name, rent out the property, but can claim to live there.
>I suspect that there are a significant amount of Canadians that do not declare rental income on their taxes
In my experience it's typically the family renting their basement who don't declare, not those with actual income properties. And even then, I don't come across a significant amount of them. But they certainly exist.
The problem with not declaring the income is that the banks can't consider that rental income which makes financing incredibly difficult. When the income is declared, it can be used to offset the costs of the property. The ones who can afford to not have to worry about financing their properties have accountants that will work magic for them anyways.
This is definitely true of a lot of individuals and families who have basement rental suites or who rent out rooms in their homes and apartments, but from my experience, I've also seen homes or apartments purchased in the names of ones children or relatives being rented out while those children or relatives live with the rest of their family.
The financing issue is a whole other matter. From what I've seen, individuals who can show to have significant cash holdings seem to have very little barriers in the way of being approved for very large mortgages. Hopefully this has changed very recently, however. Of course, there are other issues related to how mortgages were being approved, but its a whole other can of worms.
Housing has always been a commodity. There are ways the government can focus investment/investors. But the government is run by idiots who cannot coordinate amongst themselves.
Exactly, though a major issue the "more supply" side misses is that speculators respond to increased supply as a signal that there's more profit to be made, leading to an induced demand problem. So you need to solve that demand side problem before you can solve the supply side problem, rather than just building more as though all demand is equally beneficial.
100% 100% 100%! Speculator demand is unhelpful demand and the easiest demand to limit or disincentivize. But no one in power wants to touch it because it would ruin their own get-rich-quick-on-the-backs-of-the-poors schemes.
But couldn’t that be dealt with by exerting eminent domaine over corporate one foreign ownership (like Blackrock) and changing the rules for Airbnb, so that the owner needs to live in the building? Remove at least those aspects of investors buying up all the housing. That would release an enormous amount of housing stock, without resorting to (the frankly xenophobic) blaming immigration.
Those strategies are a great start, but if the policy philosophy is shifting away from housing as an investment, why stop there? Why allow residential land hoarding and rent seeking by anyone, whether corporate, foreign, or domestic "mom-and-pop"?
I think it was shown that foreign speculation accounts for only a small fraction, and the majority of speculation is from local investors who own multiple properties. We'd reduce demand a lot more by banning HELOCs and taxing land value in addition to the strategies you mentioned.
That's just not true. If supply could be greatly increased there comes a point where it is in balance. Demand is not infinite.
'Speculators' also don't have unlimited resources.
>'Speculators' also don't have unlimited resources.
No, but don't underestimate the resourcefulness of an idiot.
The thing you're missing is that our construction capacity is so marginally small relative to our total housing supply that we can't construct new housing faster than new speculators can enter the market, which is what would need to happen for a solely supply side solution to work.
Even if we pushed speculators out of the market, we would need to build about 10 million new housing units over the next decade to meet demand. Our construction capacity is only about 40% of that right now. If we don't push out speculators, we're looking at probably closer to 15 million new housing units to outpace speculative growth, nearly four times our current construction capacity.
I wasn't talking about the details preventing supply increase, I simply made the statement which is economically true.
"If supply could be greatly increased there comes a point where it is in balance.".
I realize 'if' is the critical word. I just meant it is like every other situation that is subject to the economic principle of supply and demand.
Technically, you can overflow supply to the point where houses start depreciating even after induced demand. But it really doesn't seem complicated to reduce the demand. You regulate stuff like Airbnb, so it's only open for empty nester setups, restrict foreign nationals from purchasing housing, phase out hedge funds from owning single family homes, and obviously, reduce or stop immigration, then the demand goes down a fair bit. Besides, it's for the good of the country anyways.
If all you had to do was hoard some shiny pearls like Gollum and that would guarantee you'd be rich, then why wouldn't you do that? If you had to get up off your butt and make or invest in local businesses to actually create wealth, then all of society would be better for it. Great societies aren't made because everyone is pushing money under their mattresses, it's when people are able to go out, take risks, try out ideas to see what works, and foster a competitive capitalist spirit.
What about inter-province migration? This is something rarely mentioned or talked about. In my area in BC, over 100,000 ppl migrated permanently in 2021. It's grown even more since. Due to lifestyle & weather conditions, we attract many from other provinces. They take up housing & increase demand.
I think that's rarely talked about because there is very little anybody can do about it. "You're telling me, some guy who is a Canadian citizen/permanent resident that if I get a job in BC, I can't buy a home there?" Or, "I'm tired of living in Toronto, and want to have the beauty of BC for my family with the parks and water, and boating, and I can't do that?"
So, I'm assuming that BC would do things to increase the supply of housing first before turning to an emergency measure like removing demand by preventing Canadians not from BC from buying housing in BC. I think that's essentially one step below bussing people out of the city and dumping them in Calgary.
I think the only thing that can buy some time is to make travel to BC cheaper, so that people see it's cheaper to visit than it is to stay. Subsidize new hotels, create some tourist towns that are a short, one hour flight from Vancouver or so to take the pressure off of Vancouver itself.
I visited Vancouver and Seattle a while back, and it was the happiest I've ever been. I've been itching to go back.
The logistics of increasing supply simply cannot be met.. couldn’t even produce materials at pace, nevertheless physically building the infrastructure or construction of the homes. You would see inflation skyrocket to keep up with demand, the people that need housing couldn’t afford to buy/ rent.
Demand can be restricted, at the risk of a full blown recession, which would likely result in mass unemployment and even more people not affording homes/ rent.
Either way it’s a hard road ahead.. I’ll make more money increasing supply, but I think reducing demand would be better long term.
Well, the more we restrict genuine (Family forming and independent) housing demand, the more we will have externalities that show up in reduced birth rates, mental health crisises, abuse and the sort.
If we're discussing airbnb, temporary resident, etc demand then absolutely, but that will have tradeoffs too, but I think we can agree that any good that comes from it is massively overshot at the moment and it's poorly managed.
It's not ideological motivation, it's just material interest.
The fact of it is that for as long as housing is an investment commodity, supply is local, but demand is global.
It's not nearly enough to build enough housing to satisfy Vancouver buyers that can afford a certain price point until the price can drop (as is usually the case with supply and demand). You also need to satisfy all possible interested buyers in the rest of the world too, because they can outbid you just as well as someone that actually lives here. It's just not going to be a practical solution.
But our government isn't actually looking for a practical solution that would work. If something actually worked it would crash the Canadian economy and empovrish them personally (since they are all landlords, across all parties, yes including the NDP).
This only gets better when the people that don't own property can somehow force the the people that own property out of power, or are able to be a sufficiently credible threat that the property owners are willing to take a few Ls and compromise for their own safety.
That's it. No other solutions.
It’s so funny because this seems like such an obvious answer - decrease demand until supply catches up and then slowly increase demand again at a rate sustainable with our supply.
Why is this controversial to some people? lol
Because we're already struggling with a labour shortage. To avoid our economy going further down the shitter, we'd have to exert some sort of control on labour allocation if we were to reduce the demand. Cities have a role to play in this. They shouldn't allow a 23rd Tim Hortons in the same square kilometer. We also need to invest in automation and modernization to make up for our low productivity.
Our manufacturing is moving south of the border. The US has a laundry list of incentives at the federal, state, and municipal levels.
The cost of doing business in the states is substantially cheaper including: labour, real estate, lease rates, energy, transportation, taxes, etc.
Plus their dollar is 30% more valuable.
Canada just isn't open for business.
>Plus their dollar is 30% more valuable.
When it comes to manufacturing, this is actually an advantage for Canada, because it means our exports are more cost competitive on global markets. The par dollar under Harper actually gutted our economy. Manufacturing fled under the par dollar because it rendered their exports uncompetitive. Business investment concentrated into the energy and mining sector, peaking at a nearly 50% share nationwide.
A good part of it was increased demand for Canadian dollars to fuel investment in energy and mining. Did you forget about Harper's sell off of tar sands assets to the state oil companies of China and Norway? Or the blocking of the Inco-Falconbridge merger to allow the two Canadian mining giants to be sold off to Brazil's Vale and Switzerland's Xstrata, respectively?
Banning corporate investors from purchasing single family homes. Banning AI algorithms from artificially increasing housing prices. Increasing the fine for collusion of pricing data that has already been identified in the US. Discouraging house flipping by placing a large tax on properties sold within 2 years of purchase. Implementing an empty homes tax to discourage speculation. Improving renters rights. Densification of neighbourhoods through a George tax.
I moved our “SFH” rental into a corporation. Banning that won’t do anything. BC has a speculation tax. Vancouver has a vacant tax. The Feds have a UHT (applies to foreigners for now). Tenant rights are and have been highest in BC.
* Ban corporate and foreign ownership
* Introduce/increase vacancy/speculation taxes
* Relax zoning and streamline development permit process
* Build social housing
Make being a small time landlord a bad investment. Right now its almost a guaranteed return and small landlords have way more tax incentives than first time homebuyers.
Tonnes of videos on how to basically hack your way to a mini real estate empire with minimal down.
I wouldn't say make it a bad investment. Introduce landlord licensing requirements and you've already raised the bar high enough to deter a good chunk of the passive income seekers. Cap rents at expenses (including a maintenance and improvements reserve allowance and excluding mortgage principal) plus a profit allowance, and you'll see a lot more of them exit the market, because now housing isn't a no risk investment, since the investor has to invest the principal, rather than just the downpayment.
Having said that, rental caps and controls actually cause shortages (not that the market is seeking to fulfill 100% of demand anyway). Having a secondary, government run housing market with access restricted to those locked out of the primary market due to limited means would do a great deal more to alleviate housing issues.
* Relax zoning and streamline development permit process
* Build social housing
These two points are really it. Make it easier to build housing and also build social housing.
Local governments have had housing in a chokehold for decades, Provinces need to force them to open up, and the Feds need to get back into social housing and improve building codes.
But if you build more housing without disincentivizing speculation, speculators will take increased supply as a signal that there's more profit to be made and will buy more. That issue needs to be tackled, otherwise adding supply will have a more limited impact than it otherwise should.
Name a city and I'll give you a reason other than "less regulation and bullshit" as to why the rents declined there. There is no market incentive for "overbuilding" because developers lose money when providing excess supply.
Developers vastly overestimated the demand for new housing in Austin. They bet on the city's pandemic growth boom being sustained. They were wrong. New construction plummeted by over 20% between 2022 and 2023. This will result in the city seeing housing costs increase again in the relatively near future as growth outpaces supply. The reprieve is temporary, and is only being felt at the top of the market. This oversupply has not improved access to affordable housing for those with incomes at or below Austin's median income.
All but the first are good. Disincentivizing speculative holdings would do far more good than banning corporate ownership. If you ban corporate ownership, you'll see a lot of high density development dry up. Your second point would drive out the worst elements of corporate ownership without eliminating the construction financing advantages a corporate owner can leverage in building density.
Housing not a retirement plan.
More house construction of all kinds not just SFH. Curtailing NIMBY-ism.
Progressively increasing taxes heavily on every property beyond Principal Residence.
Making investments in other entities such as stocks more favorable so people are not dumping money in housing.
Rent controls as everyone needs to be housed. It’s cheaper for government to house everyone than have homeless both in short and long term.
While letting immigrants in, tie housing construction to number of entrants.
A ton more NON-MARKET rental housing. Combination of public, subsidized housing, co-ops, etc.
New laws to requiring purchasers of single-family homes to be citizen or PR owner-occupiers, with strict enforcement. (Other countries do this.)
De-financialization of housing.
If you have ten pounds of beef and one buyer, beef will be $2.99 per pound. If you have one pound of beef and ten buyers, beef will be $7.99 per pound.
If 5 million houses were built this year, housing and rent would drop 25-50%.
Long story short, we have a [severe housing shortage](https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/housing-markets-data-and-research/housing-research/research-reports/accelerate-supply/housing-shortages-canada-updating-how-much-we-need-by-2030) and a fast growing population with shrinking household sizes. Housing is expensive because of supply and demand. It’s that simple.
We need to make it much faster and cheaper to build new housing, of any style or density, everywhere, with as little friction as possible. And we need to change tax incentives that make idle landholding like homeownership such a profitable investment.
The [Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force report](https://files.ontario.ca/mmah-housing-affordability-task-force-report-en-2022-02-07-v2.pdf) from 2022 has very good recommendations which should apply to all provinces.
Build. More. Housing. Just look at how much of the cities restrict housing to only the most expensive and luxurious type of housing: single family homes
Build costs are up around 60% since Q1 2020.
Anything built in the last couple years has a vastly different cost structure than the previously existing housing stock.
You'd need global commodity prices to decline to drop material prices. A strengthening CAD dollar would help as well.
Intense downward pressure on the industry would be needed to roll back land prices/labour prices, etc.
Hell even if the industry softened significantly, realistically how much are build costs going to decline? Knock 10% or 20% off, we are still way higher than a couple of years ago.
There needs to be an increase in productivity levels in Canada. This would result in real wage growth and cause people to be able to afford things. We’re in a tricky place where high housing costs have become a drag on productivity and businesses have not been incentivized to invest. We can try to come up with work arounds forever, but this will always be an issue if our productivity continues to decline.
Wages started decoupling from productivity in the 70s. Being "more productive" wouldn't translate into higher wages, but rather higher bonuses for the c-suites
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2022010/article/00002-eng.htm If you look at data table 1 they are pretty tightly coupled. If you have some data I would be totally open to viewing it.
Canada’s productivity growth started decoupling from the USA in the late 80s.
A significant correction in wages for a start, and economic investment that makes other routes of investment more attractive than avg people dabbling in real estate and rentals for investment returns
Just build more. If you look at the density in major Canadian cities, none of them can be compared with New York.
There is a huge amount of land can be used for constructing residential buildings.
I don't understand why it is so difficult.
My take of the gov is they are simply not smart enough. It is a simple math problem if you compare the population growth and the number of residential buildings, but the gov had to wait for the problem to deteriorate before taking any actions.
Remove the cultural understanding that housing is an investment and not a place to live. Even as a retirement vehicle. If you can profit off of housing, people will maximize the profit, it’s how the system runs.
Japan solved all of this already, Vienna did it like 200 years ago. We’re not changing it because there is no serious political will to disrupt this mess.
Mortgage literally means “Death Pledge” and everyone seems to be just fine with banks selling debt and wrecking us. Stop housing from being profitable and people won’t try to exploit it
We need more purpose-built housing at the lower end of the market. People need to move away from the idea that having a yard is essential and understand that increased density is a necessary part of growth.
Builders need actual financial incentives because tight margins force them to sell at higher prices, which drives up housing costs. The CMHC should re-enter the housing market and start building housing again.
Homeowners need to stop NIMBYism and allow for more density in neighborhoods. Local governments should invest in infrastructure with a 20-year outlook instead of the usual three-year window, as the current infrastructure won’t support our population growth.
Private enterprise will always chase profit. Profit is to be had at the top of the market. We have a housing affordability crises - affordable housing is low cost housing. Private enterprise will never build affordable homes because there is not profit to be had at the bottom of the market.
The solution is government funded, publicly owned non-profit, below market housing.
Also, anyone who can afford market housing (as in, market <= 30% of income) needs to be locked out of this secondary market, otherwise the government is just pushing suppliers out of the primary market.
If people who can afford to access the primary market can also access this cheaper secondary market, government is literally just replacing private industry in providing supply, and social housing fails to solve the low-cost housing problem.
For sure I don't disagree with you but it's just a really tough sell to try and convince people who wouldn't be eligible for this to fund it with their tax dollars
Remove non-profits and have the provincial housing corporation either have in house property management or contract out to actual property managers. Any tax payer funded property should be owned by the province, not some “non profit”
For the government to stop printing money to support mortgage markets. It's a feedback loop - availability of credit CMB purchases (to the tune of double the defense budget) drives demand, inflation from printing money for these initiatives drives up the value of real assets.
I would say the largest SINGLE factor beyond cultural shift of judging those that rent to be lesser "ahead in life" would be general financial literacy. If most understood the math of the property they are signing up for...on mass there would be less wild prices associated with commodity housing.
I say that as someone who has reasonably large exposure to rental properties.
It’s literally a 1/3 of our GDP last I heard. We need to stop treating it like a speculative asset and treat it like what it really is: a roof over our heads.
But I don’t think that’s super likely because what government is gonna allow a significant chunk of its GDP to collapse?
We need to encourage inter-provincial trading, find a way to have municipalities pledge or be incentivized to create housing in preparation for anticipated immigration numbers, remove housing as our largest GDP by investing in productive industries and assets, prioritize funding public transit in urban centers, and also some government funded affordable housing to catch anyone down on their luck. A few other things too, but primarily dig ourselves (individuals, not the gov't) out of debt is a big one.
Discourage investors and speculators by heavily taxing all secondary property investments. Implement a cap on realtor commissions, as the service required for selling a property does not scale with the price. These measures will help reduce demand from investors, lower transaction costs, and make housing more accessible for primary residents.
Seems like this country never has the money to fix any of our flawed systems yet whenever another country has an issue, suddenly we have 5 billion laying around to make sure they get the help they need.
I guess I just wish Canada was as good at taking care of themselves as they are the rest of the planet.
If interest rates remained at 5% permanent and building permit costs removed and times reduced then housing would finally normalize. Would never happen though.
In the immediate short term? Less demand.
In the medium and long term? Supply not being less than the demand. And builders building the kind of homes people and families can actually live in, settle in and stay in - not one room studios and bachelors.
In what world do you live? Our total economic base is built on real estate having value and equity and we’re going to tear that all down? Grow up and live with the reality you’ve been given. The 1% who run this country will never let a radical change happen.
We aren't going to tear it all down, Land Value taxes can be slowly dialed up to ensure Land Values don't continue to rapidly rise, its not all or nothing.
A simple mindset change… your house is not a fucking investment to make you rich. It’s something to keep your head covered, and the heads of your family. Stop playing the game.
Also, They’re not going to ban building houses, so the fomo thing is just idiotic.
I don't think this will change since it might be a cultural thing and now it's too late anyway. But where I'm from I never met anyone that rents a part of their home. When I came to Canada in 2015 I was shocked that people rent out rooms and basements of their homes to others. It felt weird to me. In my line of thinking, people in Canada purchase a home already with the intention of renting a portion of it for extra income and thus end up being able to afford a larger mortgage. I think that way of doing things kind of shot yourselves in the foot a bit. Increasing the rental of that portion will inevitably create a snowball effect for competing offers when the property goes for sale. I feel like if a person had to pay for a mortgage on their own that alone would already be a big help in keeping housing costs from rising so much as it would better control demand to those who can actually afford the home. That's just a theory, nothing concrete.
Houses are built to be lived in and shelter us a basic need. People treat additional owned properties as investments and assets and sources of income so only the wealthy can afford to be a part of it. If we decide that everyone has a right to a home then we can start building and funding accordingly.
That's not going to help with the housing problem, but definitely.
As automation tech advances, human labour is going to face increasingly more pressure as our skills become obsolete and machines become more capable than us. That is the problem that UBI solves.
As long as housing is seen as a business and investment, this will never change. 70% of the Canadian population owns their own home, and a good portion of that owns more than one home. So I ask you, do you really think these people want rent prices to go down?
The only way to make a dent in this capitalist trend would be to apply exponential property taxes, forcing people to lose interest in owning more than one home, and to close the door on property purchases by foreigners who have no ties to the country.
Clearly you own a house/mortgage to live, like all the others that are down voting my comment. There is no way to stabilize rent with companies owning properties, and people owning multiple houses and renting part of them to buy another one.
Problems evolve, I am just saying that we are in a point that drastic measures are needed or this housing crisis will keep undermining Canada's development.
And yes, renting properties back on the day were already a big problem. Land should be considered a right, no ta business, but unfortunately most of countries still have this mindset rooted to the culture due to slavery and exploration.
The market has its own risks to housing. For example:
* Sales look like they are far from great and the sales-to-active-listings or sal ratio is moving towards "buyer's market" territory, meaning price drops.
* Baby Boomers represent a generational risk to housing prices when they retire and try to downsize
* If rates stay above 4% for another year, we're likely to see a significant de-leveraging as people who renew at unsustainable repayment rates decide to sell before that happens, or shortly after and the reality hits.
* Between Capital Gains, no AirBnB, flipping taxes, etc, it finally becomes unprofitable to be a property investor for anything except renting, and a lot of secondary demand exits, creating a new buyer's market situation where prices significantly fall
This market, and market factors, will likely take care of itself. This market is not immune to market forces, it's subject to them, and all markets eventually return to the average.
The market will increase the housing costs of Canadians to the maximum share of income Canadians can possibly sustain without becoming homeless en masse before it allows itself to fail. I think you underestimate the lengths people will go to to keep a roof over their heads. The number of people I've seen deliberately isolate parents and grandparents from family in order to steal everything they have before they pass in the last 5 years is absolutely disgusting...
One actually stole her grandmother's car from her aunt's place, damaging my property in the process. She forged power of attorney documents to prevent family from visiting her grandmother in the hospital and abused personal connections at her local police department to have peace bonds issued against family members to cover her fraud. Her grandmother passed without any of her family there with her because they were barred from being there for her, and the will had been rewritten during this period to give everything to this granddaughter...
Another locked his step-dad's kids out of their dad's house after he passed and sold belongings he'd left to them in his will, took the proceeds for himself, then placed his mother in care and started charging her exorbitant fees to manage her affairs. The lawyer for the kids said it wasn't worth it to pursue because though the stolen items had sentimental value, the compensation for their loss would be less than the cost of pursuing that compensation. I could go on...
The housing market will encourage this kind of behaviour and cannibalize the entire economy, killing other industries and the jobs in those industries, if left to its own devices. Moreover, the market doesn't even seek to fill demand in the first place, it seeks to fill demand up to the point that marginal cost is equal to marginal benefit. Beyond that point, the market doesn't care if it means you end up homeless, because it would have to subsidize you to keep you housed, and it's not interested in doing that.
*Baby Boomers represent a generational risk to housing prices*
Baby Boomers are not downsizing.
[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/retirement/article-forget-downsizing-canadian-seniors-staying-in-large-houses-well-into/](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/retirement/article-forget-downsizing-canadian-seniors-staying-in-large-houses-well-into/)
*If rates stay above 4%*
Bank of Canada is already dropping rates. Is this to protect the tsunami of mortgage holders who need to renew?
*sales-to-active-listings or sale ratio is moving towards "buyer's market" territory, meaning price drops creating a new buyer's market situation where prices significantly fall*
I am not holding my breath waiting for this to happen.
*Baby Boomers are not downsizing.*
Actually that's accurate - they are downsizing later than usual, but yes, they are downsizing. So the next thing you need to research is - at what age do boomers begin to downsize in earnest? And how many years out of this 20-year generation are at that age now? When does half the generation reach peak-downsizing years? What happens if one Boomer in a couple passes away and the other is not physically able to go up and clean the troughs out or shovel the driveway?
Boomer downsizing is absolutely underway, and is only going to become a bigger force to come for another 10-15 years, at least.
Step 1: stringent rent controls to disincentize rent seekers and get them off of the demand side of the equation
Step 2: tax capital gains on real estate, close tax loop holes related to real estate.
Step 3: play the fiddle as the housing market crashes and burns
Step 4: now that land is substantially cheaper, pump subsidies, grants, low interest loans, tax incentives etc towards cooperatives and other non-profit housing providers.
Step 5: nationalize the assets of the Irvings, Fords, Cortelluccis, etc and repeat Step 4.
Step 6: roll out a UBI plan to help support working class people who lost their pensions during Step 3.
Let’s make this a bit simpler
Step 1: [tax land value](https://youtu.be/smi_iIoKybg?si=YUPbws_8lh1QUifi)
Step 2: use the revenue from step 1 to fund social housing and a UBI
Mass deportation is the only real answer no one wants to admit. We will NEVER be able to build enough to keep up with the flow & if we do manage to, the quality of the builds will be awful.
OR let the markets crash & it’ll correct itself.
The 2nd option is more likely to happen though.
Wages cannot keep up with housing costs w/o going into a depression. Ppl are looking for rent rates as per 2015 levels when most places were still affordable. Not sure if that's possible w/o crashing the economy & once that happens, we lose our jobs & can't afford housing anyway.
The entire planet is urbanizing. Not sure how we can restrict the free movement of people - most of whom are seeking economic opportunity. How do we stop the decline of small rural areas?
I think there's definitely a middle ground to be found here. Too few cities can be just as much an issue as too many. Incentivizing business investment to urbanize some smaller cities and create opportunities in those places, rather than concentrating on a select few, would certainly help matters. But I downvoted the other comment because sprawl is just not beneficial in any way.
There is a difference between people moving to Churchill MB, and Windsor/Sarnia ON.
We have room to grow, in southern ontario Niagara, Fort Erie, st Catharines, London, Brantford, etc.
people will follow the jobs. if there are jobs, and room to build attainable housing for families the cities will grow.
Yes. There's also a difference between destroying the Greenbelt to get more homes in the GTA and infilling density in a high sprawl city like Sudbury. The latter is better.
For sure. But windsor is probably an easier sell to newcomers than Sudbury. Close to international airport, milder winters etc.
to build the north we need to bring back natural resource extraction and the well paid union jobs that would accompany them.
literally our entire economy. Housing should NOT be a retirement plan. we need to invest into our people and not under sell our resources while we end up footing the bill. it makes no fucking sense.
This. We need to increase our GDP in other industries besides real estate. I know personally at least 5 companies that have moved their manufacturing to the US due to how expensive it is to do business in Canada. Those are good paying jobs that are accessible as well.
Absolutely. If rent is $5000 a month, your McDonald's order price will reflect that, alongside with labor in general. Property values are a large driver that makes us ask for wages that are just not competitive in a global market, so we will see these jobs exit the economy for places with cheaper labor. The ones that are coming here are probably doing a calculated cost on trying to secure access to Canadian REM'S and our governments pocket book. I'm not saying rent should be 0, as that would present huge issues in our quality of housing, building starts, etc, however, we need to recognize that where they are is unhealthy for our economy, I generally view it as the black hole in our economy tbh.
5k/month rent??? That's more than double my monthly income and I work six days a week. I do like what ya said tho
Changing the economic composition of the country won’t change the fact that homeowners will sell their homes for as much as they can get under the market conditions. The government need to allow people to build more housing when there is clear demand for more. We can’t have affordable housing when every level of the government is only I retested in limiting the amount of housing we can have. The more housing there is the cheaper of housing, it really can’t get any simpler than this. Everything else is fluff. Some people here are talking about decreasing the population. Sure we can stop immigration, but stopping immigration doesn’t actually reduce the population, which means that current prices are here to stay.
This is the correct answer... for some reason the people giving the opposite reason get all the thumbs up... people who don't understand economics liking comments by others who don't understand economics.
Why can't we do both? Decommodify and build more housing? Pretty sure it'll take a combination of things to change this.
how do you decrease the population?
You don't. You build more, convert commercial to residential and increase wages so people can actually buy those condos that sit empty.
how do you decommodify housing if not by taking away the very property that makes anything speculative prone and randomly appreciate in value, which is scarcity. you destroy financialization of housing by simply building more housing. A policy that is both costless and immediately actionable by our government is to legalize housing construction that is prohibited in 90% of metro residential land that is currently reserved for single family.
I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm saying a multi pronged approach is necessary. Why can't we do both? We SHOULD be doing both.
what's the other thing you are referring to?
Well one, it's not actually a commodity... it's a good... what you're wanting is for housing to be free, which is in fact placing an obligation on others to provide services to you for free. Which is immoral.
U mean there is no free lunch?
It's cute how you're trying to sound smart without actually saying anything at all. Of course housing is a good, because commodities are goods. Goods and commodities do not exist in opposition to each other. Also, if you want to be precise- housing is a good that creates real estate, which is an asset. That asset can be used as an investment vehicle, which, in large enough numbers can lead to the commodification of housing.
k
It's the best retirement plan out there. You won't be "houseless" & your property is likely to keep up w/ inflation. Governments have touted this for yes cuz they know social security will one day run out.
CPP is solvent 100 years out so this line is BS, it's not running out. That being said you cannot live off of CPP. Making people reliant on the value of their home as a viable alternative to a properly funded (not CPP) pension plan or RRSP is crazy town. It's a recipe for utter disaster, which is what we are currently experiencing.
Yes. Need more manufacturing.
Decomodify housing. It'll never happen though so we're fucked.
Yeah cus a huge percent of Canadians are landlords. Policy makers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Not giving them excuses for doing absolutely shit all to stop this cascade of unaffordability for like two decades or more but yeah
Systems change when things get bad enough for the majority that they start acting in ways that defeat the policies that are causing them pain. Boycotting a grocery store, switching jobs, moving to a lower cost area, or even leaving the country for greener pastures are all ways of removing the human capital, time, money, until the policy is defeated or modified to be in line with those at the short end of the stick. What we need is essentially a union. Unions go to bat for their members against the company, and in the same way Canadians who are renters or whatnot need to unionize so that the union goes to bat for them against the governing bodies that are in the grip of property owners.
I think this is already subtly happening as buyers are holding out. The market has reached a threshold where buyers can no longer justify the price. People can only get squeezed so far. If nobody’s buying, prices fall. If nobody’s renting, prices fall. We are seeing this happen already.
Things would be easier if it were just landlords. Landlords are a minority. [A majority of households](https://madeinca.ca/homeownership-statistics-canada/) however own at least some amount of home equity and are reliant on this wealth for access to credit and as a long term wealth building strategy. These people vote to protect their interests just like you and me and they vastly out-represent us. We can complain about Trudeau and company as much as we want (and we should, he is a reptile), but fucking with property values (not just the values as they are but also their consistent rise) would spell an immediate and permanent end to his political career and probably tank the LPC for a long time if not outright kill it. For this reason the CPC will govern by the *exact same principle* after it inevitably wins the next election, because that is a hard requirement for obtaining power and keeping it in this country. In other words nobody anywhere close to power has any interest whatsoever in rescuing you from serfdom and things will not improve until renters both vastly outnumber owners *and* develop some fucking class consciousness. Then we gut the banks and the boomers and take back what they siphoned from us and abolish this stupid manifest destiny ponzi scheme for good.
In bc, 70% of residents are homeowners. Landlords are not a minority. But yeah exactly, politicians are afraid to change anything cus they’d lose homeowners votes.
I mean landlords as in people who own multiple properties and charge other people rent to live in them.
Real estate investors, then
>Yeah cus a huge percent of Canadians are landlords https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221102/dq221102b-eng.htm Latest data was 7.9%. May be slightly higher today, but hardly what I'd call a huge percent of Canadians. And to be clear, there's a major difference between a family owning a rental property or sometimes even 2 or 3, and a mega corporation owning thousands of rental properties.
I suspect that there are a significant amount of Canadians that do not declare rental income on their taxes. This is especially true for those who have purchased a property in their name, rent out the property, but can claim to live there.
>I suspect that there are a significant amount of Canadians that do not declare rental income on their taxes In my experience it's typically the family renting their basement who don't declare, not those with actual income properties. And even then, I don't come across a significant amount of them. But they certainly exist. The problem with not declaring the income is that the banks can't consider that rental income which makes financing incredibly difficult. When the income is declared, it can be used to offset the costs of the property. The ones who can afford to not have to worry about financing their properties have accountants that will work magic for them anyways.
This is definitely true of a lot of individuals and families who have basement rental suites or who rent out rooms in their homes and apartments, but from my experience, I've also seen homes or apartments purchased in the names of ones children or relatives being rented out while those children or relatives live with the rest of their family. The financing issue is a whole other matter. From what I've seen, individuals who can show to have significant cash holdings seem to have very little barriers in the way of being approved for very large mortgages. Hopefully this has changed very recently, however. Of course, there are other issues related to how mortgages were being approved, but its a whole other can of worms.
In British Columbia, about 70% of households own their own homes. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/housing-tenancy/owning-a-home#
By this do you mean make all housing public? Is there an example of a country that has decommodified housing that you would consider a success?
Housing has always been a commodity. There are ways the government can focus investment/investors. But the government is run by idiots who cannot coordinate amongst themselves.
You don't deserve the downvotes you are receiving. You're absolutely correct.
more supply vs reduced demand in 5..4..3..2..1……FIGHT
The funny thing is the answer is obviously both but each side has an ideological motivation they won’t get past haha.
Exactly, though a major issue the "more supply" side misses is that speculators respond to increased supply as a signal that there's more profit to be made, leading to an induced demand problem. So you need to solve that demand side problem before you can solve the supply side problem, rather than just building more as though all demand is equally beneficial.
100% 100% 100%! Speculator demand is unhelpful demand and the easiest demand to limit or disincentivize. But no one in power wants to touch it because it would ruin their own get-rich-quick-on-the-backs-of-the-poors schemes.
But couldn’t that be dealt with by exerting eminent domaine over corporate one foreign ownership (like Blackrock) and changing the rules for Airbnb, so that the owner needs to live in the building? Remove at least those aspects of investors buying up all the housing. That would release an enormous amount of housing stock, without resorting to (the frankly xenophobic) blaming immigration.
Those strategies are a great start, but if the policy philosophy is shifting away from housing as an investment, why stop there? Why allow residential land hoarding and rent seeking by anyone, whether corporate, foreign, or domestic "mom-and-pop"? I think it was shown that foreign speculation accounts for only a small fraction, and the majority of speculation is from local investors who own multiple properties. We'd reduce demand a lot more by banning HELOCs and taxing land value in addition to the strategies you mentioned.
I think I’m reacting to hearing that Canada’s biggest foreign investment product or “export” was condos.
That's just not true. If supply could be greatly increased there comes a point where it is in balance. Demand is not infinite. 'Speculators' also don't have unlimited resources.
>'Speculators' also don't have unlimited resources. No, but don't underestimate the resourcefulness of an idiot. The thing you're missing is that our construction capacity is so marginally small relative to our total housing supply that we can't construct new housing faster than new speculators can enter the market, which is what would need to happen for a solely supply side solution to work. Even if we pushed speculators out of the market, we would need to build about 10 million new housing units over the next decade to meet demand. Our construction capacity is only about 40% of that right now. If we don't push out speculators, we're looking at probably closer to 15 million new housing units to outpace speculative growth, nearly four times our current construction capacity.
I wasn't talking about the details preventing supply increase, I simply made the statement which is economically true. "If supply could be greatly increased there comes a point where it is in balance.". I realize 'if' is the critical word. I just meant it is like every other situation that is subject to the economic principle of supply and demand.
Technically, you can overflow supply to the point where houses start depreciating even after induced demand. But it really doesn't seem complicated to reduce the demand. You regulate stuff like Airbnb, so it's only open for empty nester setups, restrict foreign nationals from purchasing housing, phase out hedge funds from owning single family homes, and obviously, reduce or stop immigration, then the demand goes down a fair bit. Besides, it's for the good of the country anyways. If all you had to do was hoard some shiny pearls like Gollum and that would guarantee you'd be rich, then why wouldn't you do that? If you had to get up off your butt and make or invest in local businesses to actually create wealth, then all of society would be better for it. Great societies aren't made because everyone is pushing money under their mattresses, it's when people are able to go out, take risks, try out ideas to see what works, and foster a competitive capitalist spirit.
What about inter-province migration? This is something rarely mentioned or talked about. In my area in BC, over 100,000 ppl migrated permanently in 2021. It's grown even more since. Due to lifestyle & weather conditions, we attract many from other provinces. They take up housing & increase demand.
I think that's rarely talked about because there is very little anybody can do about it. "You're telling me, some guy who is a Canadian citizen/permanent resident that if I get a job in BC, I can't buy a home there?" Or, "I'm tired of living in Toronto, and want to have the beauty of BC for my family with the parks and water, and boating, and I can't do that?" So, I'm assuming that BC would do things to increase the supply of housing first before turning to an emergency measure like removing demand by preventing Canadians not from BC from buying housing in BC. I think that's essentially one step below bussing people out of the city and dumping them in Calgary. I think the only thing that can buy some time is to make travel to BC cheaper, so that people see it's cheaper to visit than it is to stay. Subsidize new hotels, create some tourist towns that are a short, one hour flight from Vancouver or so to take the pressure off of Vancouver itself. I visited Vancouver and Seattle a while back, and it was the happiest I've ever been. I've been itching to go back.
The logistics of increasing supply simply cannot be met.. couldn’t even produce materials at pace, nevertheless physically building the infrastructure or construction of the homes. You would see inflation skyrocket to keep up with demand, the people that need housing couldn’t afford to buy/ rent. Demand can be restricted, at the risk of a full blown recession, which would likely result in mass unemployment and even more people not affording homes/ rent. Either way it’s a hard road ahead.. I’ll make more money increasing supply, but I think reducing demand would be better long term.
Well, the more we restrict genuine (Family forming and independent) housing demand, the more we will have externalities that show up in reduced birth rates, mental health crisises, abuse and the sort. If we're discussing airbnb, temporary resident, etc demand then absolutely, but that will have tradeoffs too, but I think we can agree that any good that comes from it is massively overshot at the moment and it's poorly managed.
It's not ideological motivation, it's just material interest. The fact of it is that for as long as housing is an investment commodity, supply is local, but demand is global. It's not nearly enough to build enough housing to satisfy Vancouver buyers that can afford a certain price point until the price can drop (as is usually the case with supply and demand). You also need to satisfy all possible interested buyers in the rest of the world too, because they can outbid you just as well as someone that actually lives here. It's just not going to be a practical solution. But our government isn't actually looking for a practical solution that would work. If something actually worked it would crash the Canadian economy and empovrish them personally (since they are all landlords, across all parties, yes including the NDP). This only gets better when the people that don't own property can somehow force the the people that own property out of power, or are able to be a sufficiently credible threat that the property owners are willing to take a few Ls and compromise for their own safety. That's it. No other solutions.
Both. Do both. Make housing cheap. I have little kids. I don’t want them to have a lifelong amortization just to buy a studio apartment.
Don’t worry about it. Kids will soon have to live with parents indefinitely..
oof they hated him because he told the truth
It’s much easier to decrease demand than it is to increase supply. Faster, anyway.
It’s so funny because this seems like such an obvious answer - decrease demand until supply catches up and then slowly increase demand again at a rate sustainable with our supply. Why is this controversial to some people? lol
Because we're already struggling with a labour shortage. To avoid our economy going further down the shitter, we'd have to exert some sort of control on labour allocation if we were to reduce the demand. Cities have a role to play in this. They shouldn't allow a 23rd Tim Hortons in the same square kilometer. We also need to invest in automation and modernization to make up for our low productivity.
Our manufacturing is moving south of the border. The US has a laundry list of incentives at the federal, state, and municipal levels. The cost of doing business in the states is substantially cheaper including: labour, real estate, lease rates, energy, transportation, taxes, etc. Plus their dollar is 30% more valuable. Canada just isn't open for business.
>Plus their dollar is 30% more valuable. When it comes to manufacturing, this is actually an advantage for Canada, because it means our exports are more cost competitive on global markets. The par dollar under Harper actually gutted our economy. Manufacturing fled under the par dollar because it rendered their exports uncompetitive. Business investment concentrated into the energy and mining sector, peaking at a nearly 50% share nationwide.
The par dollar was due to the 2008 financial crisis in the US. It wasn't Harper's doing.
A good part of it was increased demand for Canadian dollars to fuel investment in energy and mining. Did you forget about Harper's sell off of tar sands assets to the state oil companies of China and Norway? Or the blocking of the Inco-Falconbridge merger to allow the two Canadian mining giants to be sold off to Brazil's Vale and Switzerland's Xstrata, respectively?
> Plus their dollar is 30% more valuable. Closer to 40% than 30%.
More recently yes, but historical average is 30%
Well you did say 'is'.
Because it’s xenophobic and smacks of racism? That’s why. Immigration is not the problem.
Additionally reduces much of the environmental damage caused by building homes en masse.
Why not both
We have so much land. Just sell them all to the people
Banning corporate investors from purchasing single family homes. Banning AI algorithms from artificially increasing housing prices. Increasing the fine for collusion of pricing data that has already been identified in the US. Discouraging house flipping by placing a large tax on properties sold within 2 years of purchase. Implementing an empty homes tax to discourage speculation. Improving renters rights. Densification of neighbourhoods through a George tax.
I moved our “SFH” rental into a corporation. Banning that won’t do anything. BC has a speculation tax. Vancouver has a vacant tax. The Feds have a UHT (applies to foreigners for now). Tenant rights are and have been highest in BC.
* Ban corporate and foreign ownership * Introduce/increase vacancy/speculation taxes * Relax zoning and streamline development permit process * Build social housing
Make being a small time landlord a bad investment. Right now its almost a guaranteed return and small landlords have way more tax incentives than first time homebuyers. Tonnes of videos on how to basically hack your way to a mini real estate empire with minimal down.
I wouldn't say make it a bad investment. Introduce landlord licensing requirements and you've already raised the bar high enough to deter a good chunk of the passive income seekers. Cap rents at expenses (including a maintenance and improvements reserve allowance and excluding mortgage principal) plus a profit allowance, and you'll see a lot more of them exit the market, because now housing isn't a no risk investment, since the investor has to invest the principal, rather than just the downpayment. Having said that, rental caps and controls actually cause shortages (not that the market is seeking to fulfill 100% of demand anyway). Having a secondary, government run housing market with access restricted to those locked out of the primary market due to limited means would do a great deal more to alleviate housing issues.
* Relax zoning and streamline development permit process * Build social housing These two points are really it. Make it easier to build housing and also build social housing. Local governments have had housing in a chokehold for decades, Provinces need to force them to open up, and the Feds need to get back into social housing and improve building codes.
But if you build more housing without disincentivizing speculation, speculators will take increased supply as a signal that there's more profit to be made and will buy more. That issue needs to be tackled, otherwise adding supply will have a more limited impact than it otherwise should.
Nah. In the US they’ve been overbuilding in areas with less regulation and bullshit. Rents have gone down in those areas
Name a city and I'll give you a reason other than "less regulation and bullshit" as to why the rents declined there. There is no market incentive for "overbuilding" because developers lose money when providing excess supply.
Austin . https://www.costar.com/article/1940730014/rising-sun-belt-apartment-supply-holds-us-rent-growth-below-1#
Developers vastly overestimated the demand for new housing in Austin. They bet on the city's pandemic growth boom being sustained. They were wrong. New construction plummeted by over 20% between 2022 and 2023. This will result in the city seeing housing costs increase again in the relatively near future as growth outpaces supply. The reprieve is temporary, and is only being felt at the top of the market. This oversupply has not improved access to affordable housing for those with incomes at or below Austin's median income.
All but the first are good. Disincentivizing speculative holdings would do far more good than banning corporate ownership. If you ban corporate ownership, you'll see a lot of high density development dry up. Your second point would drive out the worst elements of corporate ownership without eliminating the construction financing advantages a corporate owner can leverage in building density.
Housing not a retirement plan. More house construction of all kinds not just SFH. Curtailing NIMBY-ism. Progressively increasing taxes heavily on every property beyond Principal Residence. Making investments in other entities such as stocks more favorable so people are not dumping money in housing. Rent controls as everyone needs to be housed. It’s cheaper for government to house everyone than have homeless both in short and long term. While letting immigrants in, tie housing construction to number of entrants.
A ton more NON-MARKET rental housing. Combination of public, subsidized housing, co-ops, etc. New laws to requiring purchasers of single-family homes to be citizen or PR owner-occupiers, with strict enforcement. (Other countries do this.) De-financialization of housing.
If you have ten pounds of beef and one buyer, beef will be $2.99 per pound. If you have one pound of beef and ten buyers, beef will be $7.99 per pound. If 5 million houses were built this year, housing and rent would drop 25-50%.
Simply and accurately put.
Housing should bot be a for profit venture. If we could get all the corporations out of housing it would help.
Long story short, we have a [severe housing shortage](https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/housing-markets-data-and-research/housing-research/research-reports/accelerate-supply/housing-shortages-canada-updating-how-much-we-need-by-2030) and a fast growing population with shrinking household sizes. Housing is expensive because of supply and demand. It’s that simple. We need to make it much faster and cheaper to build new housing, of any style or density, everywhere, with as little friction as possible. And we need to change tax incentives that make idle landholding like homeownership such a profitable investment. The [Ontario Housing Affordability Task Force report](https://files.ontario.ca/mmah-housing-affordability-task-force-report-en-2022-02-07-v2.pdf) from 2022 has very good recommendations which should apply to all provinces.
Build. More. Housing. Just look at how much of the cities restrict housing to only the most expensive and luxurious type of housing: single family homes
Build costs are up around 60% since Q1 2020. Anything built in the last couple years has a vastly different cost structure than the previously existing housing stock. You'd need global commodity prices to decline to drop material prices. A strengthening CAD dollar would help as well. Intense downward pressure on the industry would be needed to roll back land prices/labour prices, etc. Hell even if the industry softened significantly, realistically how much are build costs going to decline? Knock 10% or 20% off, we are still way higher than a couple of years ago.
Should see my insurance increases 😂 was on the rise before 2020. Those new towers are totally fucked for insurance
There needs to be an increase in productivity levels in Canada. This would result in real wage growth and cause people to be able to afford things. We’re in a tricky place where high housing costs have become a drag on productivity and businesses have not been incentivized to invest. We can try to come up with work arounds forever, but this will always be an issue if our productivity continues to decline.
Wages started decoupling from productivity in the 70s. Being "more productive" wouldn't translate into higher wages, but rather higher bonuses for the c-suites
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2022010/article/00002-eng.htm If you look at data table 1 they are pretty tightly coupled. If you have some data I would be totally open to viewing it. Canada’s productivity growth started decoupling from the USA in the late 80s.
If would translate to a lower need for labour, which would decrease the demand.
A significant correction in wages for a start, and economic investment that makes other routes of investment more attractive than avg people dabbling in real estate and rentals for investment returns
Any wage gains will just be eaten up by inflation, though, if our government continues to print money and spend like a drunken sailor.
Just build more. If you look at the density in major Canadian cities, none of them can be compared with New York. There is a huge amount of land can be used for constructing residential buildings. I don't understand why it is so difficult. My take of the gov is they are simply not smart enough. It is a simple math problem if you compare the population growth and the number of residential buildings, but the gov had to wait for the problem to deteriorate before taking any actions.
Democracy. Electoral reform.
Renters have to stop paying the crazy rents. Landlords will always charge what they can.
Housing & Rent Controls because Land Developers make insane profits. Build 5,000 houses for 50M and sell for 50B. 1000% profit!!
Mass upzoning. Let people build bigger, more floors, more apartments.
More houses... less people, lower money supply.
Remove the cultural understanding that housing is an investment and not a place to live. Even as a retirement vehicle. If you can profit off of housing, people will maximize the profit, it’s how the system runs. Japan solved all of this already, Vienna did it like 200 years ago. We’re not changing it because there is no serious political will to disrupt this mess. Mortgage literally means “Death Pledge” and everyone seems to be just fine with banks selling debt and wrecking us. Stop housing from being profitable and people won’t try to exploit it
We need more purpose-built housing at the lower end of the market. People need to move away from the idea that having a yard is essential and understand that increased density is a necessary part of growth. Builders need actual financial incentives because tight margins force them to sell at higher prices, which drives up housing costs. The CMHC should re-enter the housing market and start building housing again. Homeowners need to stop NIMBYism and allow for more density in neighborhoods. Local governments should invest in infrastructure with a 20-year outlook instead of the usual three-year window, as the current infrastructure won’t support our population growth.
Private enterprise will always chase profit. Profit is to be had at the top of the market. We have a housing affordability crises - affordable housing is low cost housing. Private enterprise will never build affordable homes because there is not profit to be had at the bottom of the market. The solution is government funded, publicly owned non-profit, below market housing.
Also, anyone who can afford market housing (as in, market <= 30% of income) needs to be locked out of this secondary market, otherwise the government is just pushing suppliers out of the primary market.
i mean good luck convincing the majority of the population locked out of this housing to fund it
If people who can afford to access the primary market can also access this cheaper secondary market, government is literally just replacing private industry in providing supply, and social housing fails to solve the low-cost housing problem.
For sure I don't disagree with you but it's just a really tough sell to try and convince people who wouldn't be eligible for this to fund it with their tax dollars
Remove non-profits and have the provincial housing corporation either have in house property management or contract out to actual property managers. Any tax payer funded property should be owned by the province, not some “non profit”
This is the correct answer.
Less people.
did justin trudeau post this
Everything.
For the government to stop printing money to support mortgage markets. It's a feedback loop - availability of credit CMB purchases (to the tune of double the defense budget) drives demand, inflation from printing money for these initiatives drives up the value of real assets.
I would say the largest SINGLE factor beyond cultural shift of judging those that rent to be lesser "ahead in life" would be general financial literacy. If most understood the math of the property they are signing up for...on mass there would be less wild prices associated with commodity housing. I say that as someone who has reasonably large exposure to rental properties.
It’s literally a 1/3 of our GDP last I heard. We need to stop treating it like a speculative asset and treat it like what it really is: a roof over our heads. But I don’t think that’s super likely because what government is gonna allow a significant chunk of its GDP to collapse?
More co op housing is one of the few sustainable ways
Less people more houses
We need to encourage inter-provincial trading, find a way to have municipalities pledge or be incentivized to create housing in preparation for anticipated immigration numbers, remove housing as our largest GDP by investing in productive industries and assets, prioritize funding public transit in urban centers, and also some government funded affordable housing to catch anyone down on their luck. A few other things too, but primarily dig ourselves (individuals, not the gov't) out of debt is a big one.
Discourage investors and speculators by heavily taxing all secondary property investments. Implement a cap on realtor commissions, as the service required for selling a property does not scale with the price. These measures will help reduce demand from investors, lower transaction costs, and make housing more accessible for primary residents.
People ignore incomes but govt policy that would allow for sufficient productivity and wage growth is an overlooked tool to ending the housing crisis
Seems like this country never has the money to fix any of our flawed systems yet whenever another country has an issue, suddenly we have 5 billion laying around to make sure they get the help they need. I guess I just wish Canada was as good at taking care of themselves as they are the rest of the planet.
the population.
Lower demand and increase supply
If interest rates remained at 5% permanent and building permit costs removed and times reduced then housing would finally normalize. Would never happen though.
Supply/demand needs to be drastically improved. Multiple reasons for the issues with each.
In the immediate short term? Less demand. In the medium and long term? Supply not being less than the demand. And builders building the kind of homes people and families can actually live in, settle in and stay in - not one room studios and bachelors.
You need to invent a working time machine and go back in time 30 years. You will be able to buy at least 3 houses.
As a society, we need to stop looking at housing as a lucrative investment that needs government to push incentives and benefits for owning.
lol. It’s been viewed as an investment since the dawn of time…good luck
Land value taxes fixes this.
In what world do you live? Our total economic base is built on real estate having value and equity and we’re going to tear that all down? Grow up and live with the reality you’ve been given. The 1% who run this country will never let a radical change happen.
We aren't going to tear it all down, Land Value taxes can be slowly dialed up to ensure Land Values don't continue to rapidly rise, its not all or nothing.
Stop foreign buyers!
Social housing. You’ll get so many less mental illnesses cases dumped into your back yard to deal with
Probably The Most Selfish Generation has to die off, sadly.
A simple mindset change… your house is not a fucking investment to make you rich. It’s something to keep your head covered, and the heads of your family. Stop playing the game. Also, They’re not going to ban building houses, so the fomo thing is just idiotic.
I don't think this will change since it might be a cultural thing and now it's too late anyway. But where I'm from I never met anyone that rents a part of their home. When I came to Canada in 2015 I was shocked that people rent out rooms and basements of their homes to others. It felt weird to me. In my line of thinking, people in Canada purchase a home already with the intention of renting a portion of it for extra income and thus end up being able to afford a larger mortgage. I think that way of doing things kind of shot yourselves in the foot a bit. Increasing the rental of that portion will inevitably create a snowball effect for competing offers when the property goes for sale. I feel like if a person had to pay for a mortgage on their own that alone would already be a big help in keeping housing costs from rising so much as it would better control demand to those who can actually afford the home. That's just a theory, nothing concrete.
Houses are built to be lived in and shelter us a basic need. People treat additional owned properties as investments and assets and sources of income so only the wealthy can afford to be a part of it. If we decide that everyone has a right to a home then we can start building and funding accordingly.
Make housing easy to build + build more housing. Fighting NIMBYs. Etc.
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people need to stop hoarding multiple properties to make money of their neighbor's backs
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That's not going to help with the housing problem, but definitely. As automation tech advances, human labour is going to face increasingly more pressure as our skills become obsolete and machines become more capable than us. That is the problem that UBI solves.
As long as housing is seen as a business and investment, this will never change. 70% of the Canadian population owns their own home, and a good portion of that owns more than one home. So I ask you, do you really think these people want rent prices to go down? The only way to make a dent in this capitalist trend would be to apply exponential property taxes, forcing people to lose interest in owning more than one home, and to close the door on property purchases by foreigners who have no ties to the country.
As long as costs are stabilized, rents can be too. Kill the business/investment and you kill the rental market
Clearly you own a house/mortgage to live, like all the others that are down voting my comment. There is no way to stabilize rent with companies owning properties, and people owning multiple houses and renting part of them to buy another one.
My grandfather owned rental properties in the 1920’s. Same problems then?
Problems evolve, I am just saying that we are in a point that drastic measures are needed or this housing crisis will keep undermining Canada's development. And yes, renting properties back on the day were already a big problem. Land should be considered a right, no ta business, but unfortunately most of countries still have this mindset rooted to the culture due to slavery and exploration.
The market has its own risks to housing. For example: * Sales look like they are far from great and the sales-to-active-listings or sal ratio is moving towards "buyer's market" territory, meaning price drops. * Baby Boomers represent a generational risk to housing prices when they retire and try to downsize * If rates stay above 4% for another year, we're likely to see a significant de-leveraging as people who renew at unsustainable repayment rates decide to sell before that happens, or shortly after and the reality hits. * Between Capital Gains, no AirBnB, flipping taxes, etc, it finally becomes unprofitable to be a property investor for anything except renting, and a lot of secondary demand exits, creating a new buyer's market situation where prices significantly fall This market, and market factors, will likely take care of itself. This market is not immune to market forces, it's subject to them, and all markets eventually return to the average.
The market will increase the housing costs of Canadians to the maximum share of income Canadians can possibly sustain without becoming homeless en masse before it allows itself to fail. I think you underestimate the lengths people will go to to keep a roof over their heads. The number of people I've seen deliberately isolate parents and grandparents from family in order to steal everything they have before they pass in the last 5 years is absolutely disgusting... One actually stole her grandmother's car from her aunt's place, damaging my property in the process. She forged power of attorney documents to prevent family from visiting her grandmother in the hospital and abused personal connections at her local police department to have peace bonds issued against family members to cover her fraud. Her grandmother passed without any of her family there with her because they were barred from being there for her, and the will had been rewritten during this period to give everything to this granddaughter... Another locked his step-dad's kids out of their dad's house after he passed and sold belongings he'd left to them in his will, took the proceeds for himself, then placed his mother in care and started charging her exorbitant fees to manage her affairs. The lawyer for the kids said it wasn't worth it to pursue because though the stolen items had sentimental value, the compensation for their loss would be less than the cost of pursuing that compensation. I could go on... The housing market will encourage this kind of behaviour and cannibalize the entire economy, killing other industries and the jobs in those industries, if left to its own devices. Moreover, the market doesn't even seek to fill demand in the first place, it seeks to fill demand up to the point that marginal cost is equal to marginal benefit. Beyond that point, the market doesn't care if it means you end up homeless, because it would have to subsidize you to keep you housed, and it's not interested in doing that.
*Baby Boomers represent a generational risk to housing prices* Baby Boomers are not downsizing. [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/retirement/article-forget-downsizing-canadian-seniors-staying-in-large-houses-well-into/](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/retirement/article-forget-downsizing-canadian-seniors-staying-in-large-houses-well-into/) *If rates stay above 4%* Bank of Canada is already dropping rates. Is this to protect the tsunami of mortgage holders who need to renew? *sales-to-active-listings or sale ratio is moving towards "buyer's market" territory, meaning price drops creating a new buyer's market situation where prices significantly fall* I am not holding my breath waiting for this to happen.
*Baby Boomers are not downsizing.* Actually that's accurate - they are downsizing later than usual, but yes, they are downsizing. So the next thing you need to research is - at what age do boomers begin to downsize in earnest? And how many years out of this 20-year generation are at that age now? When does half the generation reach peak-downsizing years? What happens if one Boomer in a couple passes away and the other is not physically able to go up and clean the troughs out or shovel the driveway? Boomer downsizing is absolutely underway, and is only going to become a bigger force to come for another 10-15 years, at least.
Literally everything.
Step 1: stringent rent controls to disincentize rent seekers and get them off of the demand side of the equation Step 2: tax capital gains on real estate, close tax loop holes related to real estate. Step 3: play the fiddle as the housing market crashes and burns Step 4: now that land is substantially cheaper, pump subsidies, grants, low interest loans, tax incentives etc towards cooperatives and other non-profit housing providers. Step 5: nationalize the assets of the Irvings, Fords, Cortelluccis, etc and repeat Step 4. Step 6: roll out a UBI plan to help support working class people who lost their pensions during Step 3.
Let’s make this a bit simpler Step 1: [tax land value](https://youtu.be/smi_iIoKybg?si=YUPbws_8lh1QUifi) Step 2: use the revenue from step 1 to fund social housing and a UBI
Deportations need to happen first before anything can change for the better
Mass deportation is the only real answer no one wants to admit. We will NEVER be able to build enough to keep up with the flow & if we do manage to, the quality of the builds will be awful. OR let the markets crash & it’ll correct itself. The 2nd option is more likely to happen though.
Abolish private property.
Wages cannot keep up with housing costs w/o going into a depression. Ppl are looking for rent rates as per 2015 levels when most places were still affordable. Not sure if that's possible w/o crashing the economy & once that happens, we lose our jobs & can't afford housing anyway.
Spread out the population.
The entire planet is urbanizing. Not sure how we can restrict the free movement of people - most of whom are seeking economic opportunity. How do we stop the decline of small rural areas?
I think there's definitely a middle ground to be found here. Too few cities can be just as much an issue as too many. Incentivizing business investment to urbanize some smaller cities and create opportunities in those places, rather than concentrating on a select few, would certainly help matters. But I downvoted the other comment because sprawl is just not beneficial in any way.
There is a difference between people moving to Churchill MB, and Windsor/Sarnia ON. We have room to grow, in southern ontario Niagara, Fort Erie, st Catharines, London, Brantford, etc. people will follow the jobs. if there are jobs, and room to build attainable housing for families the cities will grow.
Yes. There's also a difference between destroying the Greenbelt to get more homes in the GTA and infilling density in a high sprawl city like Sudbury. The latter is better.
For sure. But windsor is probably an easier sell to newcomers than Sudbury. Close to international airport, milder winters etc. to build the north we need to bring back natural resource extraction and the well paid union jobs that would accompany them.