2y ago

Why it might be several years before homes are more affordable in Canada

www.bnnbloomberg.ca Why it might be several years before homes are more affordable in Canada - BNN Bloomberg

It may be several years yet before home prices fall back into an affordable range for the average Canadian, according to Oxford Economics.

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Homes will never again be affordable because the system is completely broken (and not broken in the Millhouse expression, but rather in a normal definition). We made housing a commodity rather than a necessity of life and it ended with predictable results.
Now we have the unpleasant decision of diluting the investment of millions of Canadians or continuing to allow millions of Canadians to never own a home.
- man that sounds like a win win, fuck investors
  
  Sorry, you misunderstand slightly.
  I don't mean investors in the sense of speculative parasitic humans who are devaluing life by overvaluing housing.
  I mean, people like me who have worked from the age of 15-49 and now own a very modest sized apartment that is grotesquely overpriced and has quite literally enslaved me to mortgage payments for years to come.
  If we devalue my apartment, why did I spend decades of sweat and toil to purchase it? Then it feels like I was playing the stock market.
  And this isn't the same argument as the "why should people get free school when I had to pay student loans" since one doesn't affect the other. In this situation, if the value of homes come down too significantly, it's literally devaluing my work.
  I didn't create the horrible dystopian system we live in but I do unfortunately have to abide by its rules. And now that I have a tiny piece (on paper but owned by the bank) I am hoping (like most Canadians) to take that piece and cash out to retire on in 10-15 years time.
  What I'd really like to see is some kind of national housing strategy that guaranteed people basic housing regardless of their income (even if it's "zero"). That housing wouldn't impact the market but it could slow down the unhealthy growth of the valuation of housing.
  If we could totally slow housing valuation growth to the normal 2% inflation, while also creating affordable housing for lower income/no income earners, then the system could adjust and that could be a true win win.
  
  When you say "fuck investors" do you also mean everyone who has any savings or pension? Because these people are investors.
  Like, fuck me for opening a HISA and contributing to my RRSP?
- The math is very simple:
  There are more people wanting to buy a house than the number of houses available
  
  Are you talking about Canada explicitly? Cause according to this article there’s about 28 vacant homes per every by homeless person (but this is for the US):
  https://unitedwaynca.org/blog/vacant-homes-vs-homelessness-by-city/
- We made housing a commodity
  We didn't, though. A commodity is interchangeable. Housing is not interchangeable. A house in Iqaluit cannot meaningfully replace a house in Toronto. If housing were made a commodity it is likely we wouldn't have the problems we have, but since we have never done such a thing...

The referendum on Berlin expropriating 240,000 residential properties from corporate ownership. Something to consider.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/29/berlin-vote-landlords-referendum-corporate
- Canada needs a more socialist government. Both the CPC and LPC are neoliberal fucktards.
  
  That's the price we pay for being neighbors to the US
- Way to Socialist for the US im afraid..
  
  The main article is about Canada though. Not the US. They are different countries

I know the YIMBY movement has been growing tremendously across North America lately, but we still have a long way to go to actually eliminate the core problems manufacturing this housing crisis, e.g., mandatory parking minimums, exclusionary zoning, and rampant NIMBYism.
Housing ought to be a consumer good like any other -- you buy it, use it, and it depreciates with use. Nobody expects a car to increase in value once you drive it off the lot. But somehow with housing, we've all bought into the delusion that housing is an investment. But to be a good investment, it has to appreciate faster than inflation, which means it cannot be affordable!
But this delusion is exactly why we have so much NIMBYism. If you manufacture an artificial scarcity to block out competition, suddenly the class of people who own homes or property can milk it for lots of money, at the expense of the rest of us. And almost all our politicians are homeowners.
- Dammit this makes too much sense!
  What a succinct way to put it

Any solution, no matter how perfect, will take years to implement and have a real effect on housing prices.
That said, it's either a half decade form now with a great policy, or several generations from now with bad policies, so don't give up the fight to have good housing within our lifetimes, as it will transcend elections.
- Never give up

It's never coming back down, corporations figured out it was a choice between a finite sum of money through selling, or indefinite income through renting. So they've been buying up property like crazy and outbidding anyone actually trying to live somewhere, of course corporation is gonna have more money and the RoI is virtually infinite no matter the price.
- This is only a small part of the problem. The issue is that corporations are bidding on an extremely limited number of lots. Like a hundred firms on five lots kinda insane. By bidding on each other over and over, the prices inflate, and the end result ends up having to rake in more money just to recoup the costs.
  It's just plain illegal to build multiplexes on single lot residential. That's why you can get several square km in the middle of downtown of only single family houses with front and back yards, with 50 story sky scrapers a few blocks down.
  
  and the end result ends up having to rake in more money just to recoup the costs.
  that's not how prices work

Ban corporate ownership. Tax domestic speculators significantly who own 3+ properties, watch the market correct and supply come back.
- And ban Single Family only zoning, and upzone
  https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/commentary/upzoning-and-housing-affordability
- Why not 2+?

So, the big plan is to free up housing supply by making a few million working-class people homeless and doing absolutely nothing to claw back all the homes those “investors” bought up. Fantastic.

I encourage everyone to check the source cited, it's a PDF with some great extra info that isn't in the BNN article.

It’s been rough out there. My wife and I recently moved and purchased a home in Edmonton as it is one of the few “affordable” cities left in Canada.
- There's always Winnipeg, but then you have to live in Winnipeg.
  
  It won't last. Various "armpit" towns throughout Ontario are now unaffordable. North Bay, Timming, Peterborough, Thunder Bay: all of them were cheap, and fell to investor speculation-based increases.
  I'd encourage other provinces to preemptively smack down speculation hard, now, before the problem metastasizes. Don't wait until GTA or GVA property investors have played Monopoly in your small town; do it now, even if it offends a few established property owners.
  
  I moved to Winnipeg 5 years ago. You're right.
  The place would be a lot better if the provincial government would stop putting barriers up for anything that would benefit the city. As it is, we might as well not even have a mayor and council as the province regularly overrules decisions they make.
  
  I'm from Winnipeg and moved away for school. I'm nearing my final term of college and it's downright depressing to think I may have to move back out of financial necessity
- Same here. Edmonton is all right, real estate prices at least on our area are not insane yet. But I do wish it was less addicted to cars.
- My wife and I are considering Nanaimo. It feels affordable in comparison to Vancouver or anywhere remotely near Victoria.
  Will any other city in BC meet even that level of affordability in the next few years?

Toronto and Vancouver will remain very expensive not matter what. Inherit your parents mcmansion or place your bets on some other region that might become prosperous in 3 or 4 decades.
- Doesn't even have to be a mansion. Some broke-ass bungalow is still worth keeping a death grip on unless if policies change significantly. Even if it burns down, the land alone will be worth a good million now, and will keep on rising.
  Hold on to any property, even if you have to live in a tent on some barren soil until you can save up enough to have something half decent built.
  Only real policy change can fix this, as no amount of money will be enough to fix this housing crisis. Even if the federal government puts in a trillion into new housing in Toronto alone, it won't fix this crisis until the laws themselves change.
  
  What will policy change? Policy so nobody wants to live or do business there anymore?

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