Halifax was doing the absolute bare minimum but it seems the federal funding dangled over their heads last year got their asses in gear and they’re making more widespread zoning changes. Bunch of tall towers being built in areas of the city that were traditionally a bit lower density.
Time will tell if it will be enough.
The laser focus and laser red hot judgement on the Liberals/Trudeau got some damn good policy: GST removal, Loans, encouraging municipalities to build the right type of housing.
Hopefully more and more we see that laser focus and laser red hot judgement shift to city and provincial parties/"leaders" because they have the most power in this area for addressing the Housing Crisis and in particular Affordable Housing Initiatives.
It's been inspiring to see David Eby out of BC take things serious.
It's been very disheartening seeing Ford lie about what a fourplex is and or pretend that there are no apartment buildings next to residential already in order to get NIMBY assholes to clutch their pearls.
Or Smith trying to play ideological games at the expense of Affordability of something as foundational as housing in Alberta.
The ones playing the games of trying to further hurt Trudeau and the Liberals over housing may find that shit backfires as more and more Canadians are becoming informed on the subject by the day and realize what is going on with petty politics.
I say this not even as a Liberal/Trudeau supporter.
He's done pretty good on this particular issue. It almost certainly won't save his job, but I think in 20 years we'll look back at this past year or two as pretty transformative for the entire country.
> it's a complicated issue, from zoning laws, foreign investors or investment firms buying property, bureaucracy that takes too long to implement change, increase of pricing for housing development, lack of developer incentives to build affordable housing, etc.
Yes and no. It is uncomplicated from the perspective of what needs to be done. Where laws, regulations and actions needed are concerned, we have a very clear path forward.
It's the latter part of your statement that is complicated. How do we incentivize developers to build a type of housing stock a lot of them would hesitate to build? That is the eternal question.
As for what my city (Mississauga) is doing, they are currently in the midst of building the Hurontario LRT. The municipal government has sold off a lot of land along that corridor for development. A lot of what they are proposing along the line is mixed use developments.
A step in the right direction, but I don't think it'll be enough. In Canada, we do too much "tall or small" development. We really need missing middle housing. Mid-density development is a great way to tackle housing. Cheaper to build than high rises, quicker to build than high rises, makes many times more units available than low-density single family homes and, when coupled with amenities available in walking distance, better for quality of life.
My worry with the the Hurontario corridor is that it'll be high-density along its frontage, but lower density as you get further away from the street. Too many cities in Canada do this with their "transit-oriented" development. High order transit's catchment area is roughly a kilometer in either direction of its alignment. You need to build mid to high density residences within that catchment so you bulk up the housing stock as well as boardings on the LRT. The way it is going, it doesn't look like that'll be the case.
I'm in Mississauga too. I hope Bonnie is the next PM so we can finally get the loop put in for the LRT. Doug dangling it like a carrot is pissing me off. He approved it then took it out, then approved it again.
Interesting, where did you get your housing news from?
Because 30% of all housing in Canada is owned by investors and around 5-8% of that 30% are foreign investors.
60-80% of all new condos built since 2020 have been owned by investors.
NIMBYISM is very strong on the municipal level where any type of density is fought to protect housing prices.
something like 75% of Canadians own their home.
For Example: My city rejected around 10k housing units because the building "Casts shadows" and "not enough parking" despite these buildings being built along a new LRT line.
The 75% own housing is also misleading/wrong.
The stat is actually 66.5% live in an *owner occupied home*. So, if I understand correctly, your kids living at home with you count towards that number, if you have a grandmother living downstairs, that counts, if you are renting/living in the same home as the owner, you count towards that number.
Where did you get the 30% owned by investors stat from? Are you just basing that on the 75% stat? Because that hasn’t been true since the 2008 crash.
Today 62% of Canadian households own their own home. The % has plummeted over the past decade.
> Where did you get the 30% owned by investors stat from?
you asked me where I got it from. I showed you the link.
Why are you downvoting facts? You tried to discredit me and then now when presented with facts, you're now saying it's off topic? please.
>where do you get your ownership data from
>proceeds to share data about purchases, and acts confused when called out for not being on topic regarding ownership.
Lol.
I’m downvoting you because you’re not sharing facts. You’re bending unrelated data to come to a false conclusion.
If investors *never* sold, and continued to buy 30% of homes every year, they would own 63% of homes in just 3 years. You see the problem with your purchasing statistic? If youre going to use purchasing stats, you also need to use selling stats. Investors and individuals don’t buy at the same rate, it also makes sense that they don’t sell at the same rate. Medium duration of home ownership in the US is 13 years. Investors hold for an average of 20-25 years depending on what source you use. Obviously some sell after 10 years when ROI drops off, but then you have companies like Blackrock that buy for a 50 year horizon.
Your link says that 30% of purchases are made by investors. We already established that and nobody is disputing you. But you’re claiming that because of that, then 30% of homes are owned by investors, and that’s incorrect.
Purchases do not relate to ownership, they are two separate stats. You cannot use one, to prove your point about the other.
The statistic that *matters* is homes that are owner occupied. And that number is down from 70% 10 years ago, to the 62% today. (And was never as high as your claimed 75%) proving that investors are buying (and holding) more homes than individuals.. which is exactly what you tried to argue against.
So no, 30% of housing is not owned by investors. It’s 40% and that number is trending up steeply over the past 10 years…
Might explain all the unoccupied homes in Vancouver. This is why BC has implemented a vacant home tax to force overseas owners to stop using housing like a bank where you park your money in an empty house and instead treat homes like homes where people live in them, either as owners or renters.
Overseas ownership is a huge part of the problem.
I agree with all of this. I will say, I don't oppose densification in theory, but I oppose the way it's being done in my area. I live in an older neighborhood (late 1960's) with large lots. Developers are buying houses, knocking them down, splitting the lots and building 2 new houses. Which is fine, I don't really oppose that. What isn't fine is that they are then selling these homes for $1M+ each. To me this is densification to line developers' pockets and does nothing to solve the housing crisis. People still need to go to the outer edges of the city to find an affordable home. I really believe that municipal campaigns should not be allowed to be funded by housing developers.
Well, they have to pay for the existing house/lot plus the demolition, lot splitting, utilities, in many areas huge taxes to the city (often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit), plus new construction.
The profit level might not be nearly as high as your 'gut' says it is.
I didn't say it doesn't cost money. But it's done in the name of densification but isn't actually contributing to the housing problem since you exclude all but the highest income earners.
It means one less household competing for the existing housing stock. That’s not nothing. It reduces downward pressure (pushing lower value housing stock upwards) and it causes a fishbowl effect (the households that go into the new housing aren’t spilling out into the wider community).
While I would prefer triplexes or quads when zoning in the recent past hasn’t allowed that, they’re better than two one for one replacements or rehabs at a higher price point for the community at large, and that is the alternative.
You might want to look into how much building costs are, that’s before purchasing the land, paying DCC’s, upgrading any services, sometimes having to do frontage improvements… The only affordable new housing option needs to be government subsidized because otherwise the numbers do not work out.
Sorry to interrupt but winter light is a legitimate reason to turn you down.
Certain places need to be zoned as such, due to local microclimate reasons like wind tunnel effects, winter sun for public places like mass transit stations.
Oh fuck off, I live in a small, maybe 40-unit 3 storey apartment building and it doesn't cast a shadow much bigger than a single family home next door.
Yeah, skyscrapers do not need to be the only solution to density. Look at places like Paris where they are able to provide the density without blocking all the sun out, causing wind tunnels, etc.
There's a 3000 unit development going in on the west side of Lindsay, and another going in on the east side. Lindsay's population is ~30k, with another 45k in the rest of the City of Kawartha Lakes. There's also smaller developments, and individual houses in the rest of the City.
I don't think any are intentionally 'affordable' but adding a lot of housing should at least stabilize costs.
Pre 2017, a developer would be approved for a 100 unit plan of subdivision. They would build the houses and add $30k profit per house. So $30,000 x 100 would be companies profit. Nice sum of profit.
Then the housing frenzy occurred. Developers would get approved for a 100 unit subdivision, but make $200,000 profit per house sold.
Pre 2017, the companies were perfectly ok with $30k profit per unit, where there was mutual respect between developers and buyers. All that respect has gone out the window
You would think if profits were guaranteed and so high per door there would be a record start in housing, instead the opposite is happening. Lowest amount of housing starts since sometime in the 70s. Almost like that’s not what is happening…
This isn't a complicated issue at all, it's just meant to be framed that way so governments responsible can easily pass the buck.
Real estate is attractive in Canada because one can highly leverage themselves into it and receive 100% of the gains - and often times TAX FREE. Real estate is the only asset class that enables you to leverage 95% of, take a out a loan on the appraised value, and invest that loan money tax deductible. When you sell you are also exempt from capital gains (primary residency).
The FEDERAL government can solve this overnight if they abolished capital gains exemptions, started properly taxing HELOC interest, and forced banks to issue HELOCs on equity built as opposed to appraised value.
The won't do that because they largely depend on a vibrant mortgage market for various reasons - mostly owing to the banking industry's reliance on those securities.
Municipalities cannot magically reverse business cycles to entice developers to build less than profitable shit boxes. The reason this is a common misunderstanding is because the Liberal government knows that they need to deflect as much as possible in order to be remotely electable next year.
Spoiler - it won't work. They will get absolutely decimated, and they are arrogant enough to not learn from that experience. I guarantee it.
100%. This, and the fact that homelessness is at the core of the issue - the government (federal, provincial, *and* local) gives exactly zero fucks about homelessness. They only do what they think they have to in order to maintain the appearance of effort - ie. funding builders and courting financial institutions instead of the people in actual need. It is the neo-liberal way.
Doesnt this solution (to abolish cap gain exception) assume that a significant change of homes are owned under an investment.
Is this true? I know there is some of this activity. But aren't the majority of homes owned by the people living there. We would still have a supply issue, wouldn't we?
Do these exceptions apply on a rental property? Or on a second home? I thought these kind of rules only applied to primary residence.
Would this rule make landlords want to sell their properties? Is that the idea?
So right now it pays handsomely to front a premium to purchase. That premium's value is determined largely by the fact that a home's equity is basically tantamount to a highly leveraged, very safe, limitless TFSA. The willingness to pay that premium would greatly diminish if this asset class was basically taxed like any other asset class.
An easy fix for the investment properties is to limit leveraging ability. Right now you need a minimum of 20% down to qualify for a mortgage on an investment property. I guarantee if that was upped to 50% (which is about the same you can leverage in a margin account for stocks) that would put downward pressure on prices.
The supply argument is kind of a recent, kind of bullshit argument. We didn't really have much of a supply problem until the government went absolutely bonkers with immigration rates amidst a credit tightening phase of the business cycle. Lowering immigration rates back to first world levels would immediately alleviate extremely low vacancy rates and restore some balance there.
I've been keeping tabs on the two week long meeting on rezoning. It's ridiculous. I live in a decent sized single family home in a nice neighborhood, and my backyard faces out onto duplexes and an apartment building. The world has somehow failed to end and the value of my home is more than adequate. NIMBYs are so much frigging work.
I'm happy we can easily do secondary suites (planning to build one in the basement when my kid goes to college) but I'd have no issues if one of the many neighbors with two elderly people in a 4 bdrm house decided to tear down and build a duplex or a fourplex.
Not really, luxury apartments are preferred over cheaper ones despite the demand for them (laneway houses and coach homes have been slowly popping up as well)
Municipality and province are accepting what the federal govt is doing for the housing crisis. Where I am is conservative run. This is no surprise for them to pass the buck on to the feds or anyone else they can. Now they can say they are working with the feds to get this done while contributing absolutely nothing. It's what conservatives are known for. Doing below the bare minimum and taking credit for it. It's too bad federal conservatives pushed the housing responsibility on to the provinces in the 90s, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess if it didn't go that way. Hindsight is 20/20, or the opposition of the time was correct and the federal conservatives were just attempting to line their pockets as per usual. Smh
Of course not. Too much gatekeeping at city hall. Of course they also want to keep housing as high as possible because they are all heavily invested. The province really needs to step in and force municipalities to change
I am in Alberta and the UCP is actively pushing against measures for that to happen.
we are how ever getting closer to having a monorail. because we need that before anything else.
Calgary is in the process of passing blanket rezoning. It's a small step in the right direction.
During a marathon multiweek public comment period, council has had to sit through hundreds of ferocious, hate filled, unhinged rants from realtors, slum lords, the mentally deranged, and cranky old NIMBYs. Which are all powerful evidence it's the right thing to do.
Affordable housing projects currently in progress have seen a 30% construction costs increase in 2 years. For instance, average is now $727k per unit on a single project. Public financing only covers a fixed part of the cost. Developers holds the burden of additional costs. This is unsustainable.
The only thing government can do is to ensure these units get delivered.
https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/2024-04-24/des-logements-abordables-de-plus-en-plus-chers-a-construire.php
Like investors, private owners should be able to claim mortgage interest as a tax exemption like the United States to stabilize market housing prices with competition on an equal footing. Equitable Competition!
I’m in Langley, BC and I feel like the city is doing a decent job of building higher density housing. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily “affordable” but it’s adding supply to the market which at least helps keep prices stable. There are tons of new developments including the first high rises being built in the city (currently 2 are being built and there are development proposals in the works), and there are lots of townhouse complexes constantly being built.
Of course this is massively pissing off everyone who lived here prior to 5-10 years ago, and the neighbourhood Facebook groups are all filled with angry “people need to stop moving to our quaint little town and ruining it” posts.
> prior to 5-10 years ago, and the neighbourhood Facebook groups are all filled with angry “people need to stop moving to our quaint little town and ruining it” posts.
There's a bunch of those people in my hometown (Port Perry, ON) too. My dad likes to troll them since our family was in the area since before the town was founded.
I live in Yukon, and yes they are actively building high quality housing which is then being rented to people at subsidised rates be the private rental market. It's called rent geared to income and generally people are being charged 25% of monthly income for rent which is well below market rates
My city is doing good things overall, developing active transit, trying to slowly improve our crappy public transit (yay for Sunday Bus Service starting soon!) and plans to densify core areas.
Unfortunately when our population grows at 5 times the rate of our housing supply, nothing will ever be enough.
If they don’t heavily reduce the numbers coming in, anything they do wont be enough. There’s zero chance any city is going to meet the demand for a decade.
Whole lot of densification policies being discussed and a whole lot of the local cranks emerging claiming its going to cause Communism or some shit. Also one guy was frothing that young people didn't want a second storey because they needed strollers. Or something.
Every infill thus far appears to be strongly opposed by a stereotypically geriatric cohort.
So, dunno.
No. All new builds are the giant 2500-3000sqft homes with 4 bedrooms crammed on the tiniest lots possible where multiple adults are meant to live but somehow only room for two cars.
All new apartment buildings will have the cost of rent be as high as a mortgage payment on a 700k home.
All homes under that price point are snatched up to turn into income properties by numbered corporations.
Small town of 40k, 2.5 hours from Toronto with high unemployment rate. But hey, there's a new Amazon plant paying 15 cents above min wage looking for 2000 seasonal workers here built on the ground that once housed one of THREE former assembly plants where one parent could work, take home six figures and raise a family.
Not a thing. Less than nothing, actually. I hear the housing list is years longer now than it was for years before. Don't move to Bertastan, it's a trap.
They're pushing it but not a whole lot is happening as far as I can tell. I'm told there are many vacant lots owned by developers but why would they take on debt and buy overpriced materials in this high interest rate environment only to build affordable housing, rather than housing that would make them a profit? They're for-profit.
My town put in a subdivision and sells lots. We have a field with fire hydrants and the paved streets just slowly progresses in that direction every 5 years.
Western Canadian towns used to buy land and do this from the 1960s on and was common.
It's cheaper for the Town to do it, since they don't care about property tax and if they sell in 10 years or 25 it makes no difference. They win on the long term tax increase.
The town does not have to worry about red tape from the town. Developers have tighter tinelines, debt and more problems.
Toronto is doing okay but theres just no money which boggles the mind why Chow raised the affordable housing targets. One of her few bad decisions.
Not to mention the awful IZ policy that was implemented (pending Calandra sign off). Zero corresponding density bonus made no sense and was punitive to developers, aka passing the cost onto home buyers.
They pay it lip service, and then provide grants and rezoning, but ultimately rely on private investment, and then feign surprise when they get 2 affordable units from a thousand luxury ones. Public housing is the only solution, increasing supply is the dream of the coked out investors, and will do nothing but cause pricing to continuously rise at the minimum rate set by regulations, assuming those regulations exist at all.
I would like to see this problem targeted through a focus on remote work. Look at high speed internet connections and reasonable commuter options (like regular commercial flights to towns that are more than 3 hrs from a major centre) to facilitate remote workers who only need to be in the office 4x or less per month. You could fly from northern BC to Vancouver a few times a month as needed and improve your standard of living in the north.
No because the increased priced brings in more taxable revenue. In a place like Libya gadifi himself said it's a human right to have a home and would often give people homes so long as you were working. In this fucking country owning a home is basically being a slave to the monopoly of banks like wtf how is a 40 year old home a million dollars
Nothing that I can see. They keep building more infrastructure with no parking and causing congestion, they probably think building all these new condos and apartments will help that issue but I don’t see it happening..
most people think you can build "affordable" housing any where, most people who really need it don't drive so it has to be close to grocery stores, doctor offices, government services and many other services
In any kind of fair economy, most Millennials and Gen Z would be entitled to the same kind of property and prosperity that were available to Gen X (with a bit of effort), Boomers, and their parents in the War generation.
Weirdly they’ve given up on that and have even doubled down so hard on their own inequality that they’re now acting like no one deserves that kind of prosperity, and they’re destroying good neighbourhoods for any usual-suspect greedy property redeveloper.
I never imagined so many people gaslit into believing it’s normal not to be able to afford a house. “Density” is just a way for developers to literally sell you less for more, and it’s the most obvious rip-off. It’s not “helping affordability”. It’s fully caving in to inaffordability and literally accepting much less from a developer than the previous three generations, in exchange for being gouged harder with payments you can afford. Except now even that’s not affordable. It’s the wrong solution to the wrong problem.
Should millennial and gen Z be entitled to comfortable, affordable housing? Absolutely.
But the notion that it we'll all get detached homes in major urban centres -- and therefore resist much-needed densification -- is the main reason that we aren't getting it.
Your understanding of the problem is completely backwards.
yes they are. The issue is it’s not sufficient as demand in all aspect of the housing market outstrips supply by a wide margin.
Things my city / province are doing (not all I agree with but not the point )
-mandatory minimum density around skytrain and rapid bus service
- community benefit payments that mandate affordable housing
- renter protections for buildings that demolished for larger buildings
There definitely building and plans for more high density building occurring, but not affordable. We have developments with empty units as they are priced too high.
No
The "affordable housing" for "young Canadians" that Freeland was harping on about in Vancouver was proven to be higher cost than the current market for studio and 1 bedroom units.
They don't want you to be able to afford a comfortable life because when you're comfortable, you have time to think clearly and question.
They want you to be on edge and to be paycheck to paycheck.
I am. Once our government is done siphoning all the capital into Canada before things get worse geopolitically were going to be BOOMING. "It's always darkest before the dawn" , "Ask not", and reminding everyone at the bank that you're all out of bubble gum is what the cliche character usually spouts on about until the next action or montage scene. Right? This is a protraction that's going to lead to a boom. Roaring boom.
We have low income housing in Regina, not sure exactly the process but I know of people that don't work that have had a decent place to live for years. That doesn't make it more affordable for us middle income families and does nothing for me
In our society here in Canada this topic is Rock and Hard Place government can do what they can so to speak to allow permits and so forth but these are private contractors that are doing the work and Company you can't force them to build homes unless they're your unless they're your sub or your your employing them so the government has to get out of the way and then get in the way
Halifax was doing the absolute bare minimum but it seems the federal funding dangled over their heads last year got their asses in gear and they’re making more widespread zoning changes. Bunch of tall towers being built in areas of the city that were traditionally a bit lower density. Time will tell if it will be enough.
The laser focus and laser red hot judgement on the Liberals/Trudeau got some damn good policy: GST removal, Loans, encouraging municipalities to build the right type of housing. Hopefully more and more we see that laser focus and laser red hot judgement shift to city and provincial parties/"leaders" because they have the most power in this area for addressing the Housing Crisis and in particular Affordable Housing Initiatives. It's been inspiring to see David Eby out of BC take things serious. It's been very disheartening seeing Ford lie about what a fourplex is and or pretend that there are no apartment buildings next to residential already in order to get NIMBY assholes to clutch their pearls. Or Smith trying to play ideological games at the expense of Affordability of something as foundational as housing in Alberta. The ones playing the games of trying to further hurt Trudeau and the Liberals over housing may find that shit backfires as more and more Canadians are becoming informed on the subject by the day and realize what is going on with petty politics. I say this not even as a Liberal/Trudeau supporter.
He's done pretty good on this particular issue. It almost certainly won't save his job, but I think in 20 years we'll look back at this past year or two as pretty transformative for the entire country.
Narrator: It, in fact, was nowhere near enough.
> it's a complicated issue, from zoning laws, foreign investors or investment firms buying property, bureaucracy that takes too long to implement change, increase of pricing for housing development, lack of developer incentives to build affordable housing, etc. Yes and no. It is uncomplicated from the perspective of what needs to be done. Where laws, regulations and actions needed are concerned, we have a very clear path forward. It's the latter part of your statement that is complicated. How do we incentivize developers to build a type of housing stock a lot of them would hesitate to build? That is the eternal question. As for what my city (Mississauga) is doing, they are currently in the midst of building the Hurontario LRT. The municipal government has sold off a lot of land along that corridor for development. A lot of what they are proposing along the line is mixed use developments. A step in the right direction, but I don't think it'll be enough. In Canada, we do too much "tall or small" development. We really need missing middle housing. Mid-density development is a great way to tackle housing. Cheaper to build than high rises, quicker to build than high rises, makes many times more units available than low-density single family homes and, when coupled with amenities available in walking distance, better for quality of life. My worry with the the Hurontario corridor is that it'll be high-density along its frontage, but lower density as you get further away from the street. Too many cities in Canada do this with their "transit-oriented" development. High order transit's catchment area is roughly a kilometer in either direction of its alignment. You need to build mid to high density residences within that catchment so you bulk up the housing stock as well as boardings on the LRT. The way it is going, it doesn't look like that'll be the case.
I'm in Mississauga too. I hope Bonnie is the next PM so we can finally get the loop put in for the LRT. Doug dangling it like a carrot is pissing me off. He approved it then took it out, then approved it again.
Interesting, where did you get your housing news from? Because 30% of all housing in Canada is owned by investors and around 5-8% of that 30% are foreign investors. 60-80% of all new condos built since 2020 have been owned by investors. NIMBYISM is very strong on the municipal level where any type of density is fought to protect housing prices. something like 75% of Canadians own their home. For Example: My city rejected around 10k housing units because the building "Casts shadows" and "not enough parking" despite these buildings being built along a new LRT line.
"new LRT line" sounds like Hamilton and the NIMBYS on the mountain wanting to keep their precious views.
The 75% own housing is also misleading/wrong. The stat is actually 66.5% live in an *owner occupied home*. So, if I understand correctly, your kids living at home with you count towards that number, if you have a grandmother living downstairs, that counts, if you are renting/living in the same home as the owner, you count towards that number.
It’s anyone who isn’t renting. Which is good overall. It’s one of the highest in the rich world.
Which is not necessarily important. In Germany for instance there are many laws in place protecting tenants, so it is ok to not own.
Where did you get the 30% owned by investors stat from? Are you just basing that on the 75% stat? Because that hasn’t been true since the 2008 crash. Today 62% of Canadian households own their own home. The % has plummeted over the past decade.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-investors-account-for-30-per-cent-of-home-buying-in-canada-data-show/
So? Purchases mean literally nothing in regards to ownership.
> Where did you get the 30% owned by investors stat from? you asked me where I got it from. I showed you the link. Why are you downvoting facts? You tried to discredit me and then now when presented with facts, you're now saying it's off topic? please.
>where do you get your ownership data from >proceeds to share data about purchases, and acts confused when called out for not being on topic regarding ownership. Lol. I’m downvoting you because you’re not sharing facts. You’re bending unrelated data to come to a false conclusion. If investors *never* sold, and continued to buy 30% of homes every year, they would own 63% of homes in just 3 years. You see the problem with your purchasing statistic? If youre going to use purchasing stats, you also need to use selling stats. Investors and individuals don’t buy at the same rate, it also makes sense that they don’t sell at the same rate. Medium duration of home ownership in the US is 13 years. Investors hold for an average of 20-25 years depending on what source you use. Obviously some sell after 10 years when ROI drops off, but then you have companies like Blackrock that buy for a 50 year horizon. Your link says that 30% of purchases are made by investors. We already established that and nobody is disputing you. But you’re claiming that because of that, then 30% of homes are owned by investors, and that’s incorrect. Purchases do not relate to ownership, they are two separate stats. You cannot use one, to prove your point about the other. The statistic that *matters* is homes that are owner occupied. And that number is down from 70% 10 years ago, to the 62% today. (And was never as high as your claimed 75%) proving that investors are buying (and holding) more homes than individuals.. which is exactly what you tried to argue against. So no, 30% of housing is not owned by investors. It’s 40% and that number is trending up steeply over the past 10 years…
Might explain all the unoccupied homes in Vancouver. This is why BC has implemented a vacant home tax to force overseas owners to stop using housing like a bank where you park your money in an empty house and instead treat homes like homes where people live in them, either as owners or renters. Overseas ownership is a huge part of the problem.
Absolutely And a unoccupied home is by definition an investment, because whoever owns it has to have another home that they live in.
"new LRT line" sounds like Hamilton and the NIMBYS on the mountain wanting to keep their precious views.
I agree with all of this. I will say, I don't oppose densification in theory, but I oppose the way it's being done in my area. I live in an older neighborhood (late 1960's) with large lots. Developers are buying houses, knocking them down, splitting the lots and building 2 new houses. Which is fine, I don't really oppose that. What isn't fine is that they are then selling these homes for $1M+ each. To me this is densification to line developers' pockets and does nothing to solve the housing crisis. People still need to go to the outer edges of the city to find an affordable home. I really believe that municipal campaigns should not be allowed to be funded by housing developers.
Well, they have to pay for the existing house/lot plus the demolition, lot splitting, utilities, in many areas huge taxes to the city (often in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit), plus new construction. The profit level might not be nearly as high as your 'gut' says it is.
I didn't say it doesn't cost money. But it's done in the name of densification but isn't actually contributing to the housing problem since you exclude all but the highest income earners.
It means one less household competing for the existing housing stock. That’s not nothing. It reduces downward pressure (pushing lower value housing stock upwards) and it causes a fishbowl effect (the households that go into the new housing aren’t spilling out into the wider community). While I would prefer triplexes or quads when zoning in the recent past hasn’t allowed that, they’re better than two one for one replacements or rehabs at a higher price point for the community at large, and that is the alternative.
You might want to look into how much building costs are, that’s before purchasing the land, paying DCC’s, upgrading any services, sometimes having to do frontage improvements… The only affordable new housing option needs to be government subsidized because otherwise the numbers do not work out.
making 1 into 2 isn't densification, it's just greed. If it was knock down 1 and made a 4 plex, then I'd agree with that.
Sorry to interrupt but winter light is a legitimate reason to turn you down. Certain places need to be zoned as such, due to local microclimate reasons like wind tunnel effects, winter sun for public places like mass transit stations.
Oh fuck off, I live in a small, maybe 40-unit 3 storey apartment building and it doesn't cast a shadow much bigger than a single family home next door.
Yeah, skyscrapers do not need to be the only solution to density. Look at places like Paris where they are able to provide the density without blocking all the sun out, causing wind tunnels, etc.
There's a 3000 unit development going in on the west side of Lindsay, and another going in on the east side. Lindsay's population is ~30k, with another 45k in the rest of the City of Kawartha Lakes. There's also smaller developments, and individual houses in the rest of the City. I don't think any are intentionally 'affordable' but adding a lot of housing should at least stabilize costs.
Pre 2017, a developer would be approved for a 100 unit plan of subdivision. They would build the houses and add $30k profit per house. So $30,000 x 100 would be companies profit. Nice sum of profit. Then the housing frenzy occurred. Developers would get approved for a 100 unit subdivision, but make $200,000 profit per house sold. Pre 2017, the companies were perfectly ok with $30k profit per unit, where there was mutual respect between developers and buyers. All that respect has gone out the window
What’s your source for this numbers because it seems like you just pulled them out of your 🍑
I have a friend who works for a large residential developer in the GTA. Let’s leave it at that
You would think if profits were guaranteed and so high per door there would be a record start in housing, instead the opposite is happening. Lowest amount of housing starts since sometime in the 70s. Almost like that’s not what is happening…
They would rather hold onto the land than return to those previous profit margins….
Developers want to make money. They aren’t just sitting on expensive land that they could turn a profit on today but you are entitled to your opinion
This isn't a complicated issue at all, it's just meant to be framed that way so governments responsible can easily pass the buck. Real estate is attractive in Canada because one can highly leverage themselves into it and receive 100% of the gains - and often times TAX FREE. Real estate is the only asset class that enables you to leverage 95% of, take a out a loan on the appraised value, and invest that loan money tax deductible. When you sell you are also exempt from capital gains (primary residency). The FEDERAL government can solve this overnight if they abolished capital gains exemptions, started properly taxing HELOC interest, and forced banks to issue HELOCs on equity built as opposed to appraised value. The won't do that because they largely depend on a vibrant mortgage market for various reasons - mostly owing to the banking industry's reliance on those securities. Municipalities cannot magically reverse business cycles to entice developers to build less than profitable shit boxes. The reason this is a common misunderstanding is because the Liberal government knows that they need to deflect as much as possible in order to be remotely electable next year. Spoiler - it won't work. They will get absolutely decimated, and they are arrogant enough to not learn from that experience. I guarantee it.
100%. This, and the fact that homelessness is at the core of the issue - the government (federal, provincial, *and* local) gives exactly zero fucks about homelessness. They only do what they think they have to in order to maintain the appearance of effort - ie. funding builders and courting financial institutions instead of the people in actual need. It is the neo-liberal way.
Doesnt this solution (to abolish cap gain exception) assume that a significant change of homes are owned under an investment. Is this true? I know there is some of this activity. But aren't the majority of homes owned by the people living there. We would still have a supply issue, wouldn't we? Do these exceptions apply on a rental property? Or on a second home? I thought these kind of rules only applied to primary residence. Would this rule make landlords want to sell their properties? Is that the idea?
So right now it pays handsomely to front a premium to purchase. That premium's value is determined largely by the fact that a home's equity is basically tantamount to a highly leveraged, very safe, limitless TFSA. The willingness to pay that premium would greatly diminish if this asset class was basically taxed like any other asset class. An easy fix for the investment properties is to limit leveraging ability. Right now you need a minimum of 20% down to qualify for a mortgage on an investment property. I guarantee if that was upped to 50% (which is about the same you can leverage in a margin account for stocks) that would put downward pressure on prices. The supply argument is kind of a recent, kind of bullshit argument. We didn't really have much of a supply problem until the government went absolutely bonkers with immigration rates amidst a credit tightening phase of the business cycle. Lowering immigration rates back to first world levels would immediately alleviate extremely low vacancy rates and restore some balance there.
Calgary - we're trying but the province keeps getting in the way which is pretty ironic for a party that runs on "cutting the red tape"
UCP are breaking anything they can.
Ironic because in BC it's the other way around. Province is taking the lead on housing while municipalities do what they can to throw up obstacles.
I've been keeping tabs on the two week long meeting on rezoning. It's ridiculous. I live in a decent sized single family home in a nice neighborhood, and my backyard faces out onto duplexes and an apartment building. The world has somehow failed to end and the value of my home is more than adequate. NIMBYs are so much frigging work. I'm happy we can easily do secondary suites (planning to build one in the basement when my kid goes to college) but I'd have no issues if one of the many neighbors with two elderly people in a 4 bdrm house decided to tear down and build a duplex or a fourplex.
Not really, luxury apartments are preferred over cheaper ones despite the demand for them (laneway houses and coach homes have been slowly popping up as well)
Municipality and province are accepting what the federal govt is doing for the housing crisis. Where I am is conservative run. This is no surprise for them to pass the buck on to the feds or anyone else they can. Now they can say they are working with the feds to get this done while contributing absolutely nothing. It's what conservatives are known for. Doing below the bare minimum and taking credit for it. It's too bad federal conservatives pushed the housing responsibility on to the provinces in the 90s, maybe we wouldn't be in this mess if it didn't go that way. Hindsight is 20/20, or the opposition of the time was correct and the federal conservatives were just attempting to line their pockets as per usual. Smh
Of course not. Too much gatekeeping at city hall. Of course they also want to keep housing as high as possible because they are all heavily invested. The province really needs to step in and force municipalities to change
I am in Alberta and the UCP is actively pushing against measures for that to happen. we are how ever getting closer to having a monorail. because we need that before anything else.
Calgary is in the process of passing blanket rezoning. It's a small step in the right direction. During a marathon multiweek public comment period, council has had to sit through hundreds of ferocious, hate filled, unhinged rants from realtors, slum lords, the mentally deranged, and cranky old NIMBYs. Which are all powerful evidence it's the right thing to do.
>Which are all powerful evidence it's the right thing to do. This guy gets it.
Affordable housing projects currently in progress have seen a 30% construction costs increase in 2 years. For instance, average is now $727k per unit on a single project. Public financing only covers a fixed part of the cost. Developers holds the burden of additional costs. This is unsustainable. The only thing government can do is to ensure these units get delivered. https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/2024-04-24/des-logements-abordables-de-plus-en-plus-chers-a-construire.php
Like investors, private owners should be able to claim mortgage interest as a tax exemption like the United States to stabilize market housing prices with competition on an equal footing. Equitable Competition!
I’m in Langley, BC and I feel like the city is doing a decent job of building higher density housing. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily “affordable” but it’s adding supply to the market which at least helps keep prices stable. There are tons of new developments including the first high rises being built in the city (currently 2 are being built and there are development proposals in the works), and there are lots of townhouse complexes constantly being built. Of course this is massively pissing off everyone who lived here prior to 5-10 years ago, and the neighbourhood Facebook groups are all filled with angry “people need to stop moving to our quaint little town and ruining it” posts.
> prior to 5-10 years ago, and the neighbourhood Facebook groups are all filled with angry “people need to stop moving to our quaint little town and ruining it” posts. There's a bunch of those people in my hometown (Port Perry, ON) too. My dad likes to troll them since our family was in the area since before the town was founded.
>“people need to stop moving to our quaint little town and ruining it” It seems to be an almost universal attitude across the entire country.
I live in Yukon, and yes they are actively building high quality housing which is then being rented to people at subsidised rates be the private rental market. It's called rent geared to income and generally people are being charged 25% of monthly income for rent which is well below market rates
My city is doing good things overall, developing active transit, trying to slowly improve our crappy public transit (yay for Sunday Bus Service starting soon!) and plans to densify core areas. Unfortunately when our population grows at 5 times the rate of our housing supply, nothing will ever be enough.
This sounds familiar, are you perchance in Fredericton NB?
Yep!
I live in the boonies. Half of the lots on my street made multiple pads to rent out to people in trailers.
If they don’t heavily reduce the numbers coming in, anything they do wont be enough. There’s zero chance any city is going to meet the demand for a decade.
Whole lot of densification policies being discussed and a whole lot of the local cranks emerging claiming its going to cause Communism or some shit. Also one guy was frothing that young people didn't want a second storey because they needed strollers. Or something. Every infill thus far appears to be strongly opposed by a stereotypically geriatric cohort. So, dunno.
No. All new builds are the giant 2500-3000sqft homes with 4 bedrooms crammed on the tiniest lots possible where multiple adults are meant to live but somehow only room for two cars. All new apartment buildings will have the cost of rent be as high as a mortgage payment on a 700k home. All homes under that price point are snatched up to turn into income properties by numbered corporations. Small town of 40k, 2.5 hours from Toronto with high unemployment rate. But hey, there's a new Amazon plant paying 15 cents above min wage looking for 2000 seasonal workers here built on the ground that once housed one of THREE former assembly plants where one parent could work, take home six figures and raise a family.
No
My town is building * ***checks notes*** * temporary housing? What?
Not a thing. Less than nothing, actually. I hear the housing list is years longer now than it was for years before. Don't move to Bertastan, it's a trap.
To answer your question, no.. I am not hopeful about any change in that either
No
They're pushing it but not a whole lot is happening as far as I can tell. I'm told there are many vacant lots owned by developers but why would they take on debt and buy overpriced materials in this high interest rate environment only to build affordable housing, rather than housing that would make them a profit? They're for-profit.
My town put in a subdivision and sells lots. We have a field with fire hydrants and the paved streets just slowly progresses in that direction every 5 years. Western Canadian towns used to buy land and do this from the 1960s on and was common. It's cheaper for the Town to do it, since they don't care about property tax and if they sell in 10 years or 25 it makes no difference. They win on the long term tax increase. The town does not have to worry about red tape from the town. Developers have tighter tinelines, debt and more problems.
Lol
Toronto is doing okay but theres just no money which boggles the mind why Chow raised the affordable housing targets. One of her few bad decisions. Not to mention the awful IZ policy that was implemented (pending Calandra sign off). Zero corresponding density bonus made no sense and was punitive to developers, aka passing the cost onto home buyers.
They pay it lip service, and then provide grants and rezoning, but ultimately rely on private investment, and then feign surprise when they get 2 affordable units from a thousand luxury ones. Public housing is the only solution, increasing supply is the dream of the coked out investors, and will do nothing but cause pricing to continuously rise at the minimum rate set by regulations, assuming those regulations exist at all.
All I see is more money for corrupted promoters and 2000$ month rent appartements. No access to housing and solution to building your own house.
We will never get enough affordable housing until the demand goes down.
I would like to see this problem targeted through a focus on remote work. Look at high speed internet connections and reasonable commuter options (like regular commercial flights to towns that are more than 3 hrs from a major centre) to facilitate remote workers who only need to be in the office 4x or less per month. You could fly from northern BC to Vancouver a few times a month as needed and improve your standard of living in the north.
No because the increased priced brings in more taxable revenue. In a place like Libya gadifi himself said it's a human right to have a home and would often give people homes so long as you were working. In this fucking country owning a home is basically being a slave to the monopoly of banks like wtf how is a 40 year old home a million dollars
Nothing that I can see. They keep building more infrastructure with no parking and causing congestion, they probably think building all these new condos and apartments will help that issue but I don’t see it happening..
most people think you can build "affordable" housing any where, most people who really need it don't drive so it has to be close to grocery stores, doctor offices, government services and many other services
In any kind of fair economy, most Millennials and Gen Z would be entitled to the same kind of property and prosperity that were available to Gen X (with a bit of effort), Boomers, and their parents in the War generation. Weirdly they’ve given up on that and have even doubled down so hard on their own inequality that they’re now acting like no one deserves that kind of prosperity, and they’re destroying good neighbourhoods for any usual-suspect greedy property redeveloper. I never imagined so many people gaslit into believing it’s normal not to be able to afford a house. “Density” is just a way for developers to literally sell you less for more, and it’s the most obvious rip-off. It’s not “helping affordability”. It’s fully caving in to inaffordability and literally accepting much less from a developer than the previous three generations, in exchange for being gouged harder with payments you can afford. Except now even that’s not affordable. It’s the wrong solution to the wrong problem.
Should millennial and gen Z be entitled to comfortable, affordable housing? Absolutely. But the notion that it we'll all get detached homes in major urban centres -- and therefore resist much-needed densification -- is the main reason that we aren't getting it. Your understanding of the problem is completely backwards.
NIMBY take
yes they are. The issue is it’s not sufficient as demand in all aspect of the housing market outstrips supply by a wide margin. Things my city / province are doing (not all I agree with but not the point ) -mandatory minimum density around skytrain and rapid bus service - community benefit payments that mandate affordable housing - renter protections for buildings that demolished for larger buildings
community benefit payments are just a tax on new housing, and are profoundly inequitable.
They claim they are but they aren’t actually affordable.
No city gives a shit about poor people c'mon now
A lot of political hot air is as far as it goes. No results will be seen for years if ever
It doesn't matter what the cities do when we are adding over a million people per year to our population...
Nice give up attitude. We would not have won WW2 with that thinking.
There definitely building and plans for more high density building occurring, but not affordable. We have developments with empty units as they are priced too high.
My city is actively importing thousands of people to make housing less affordable.
No The "affordable housing" for "young Canadians" that Freeland was harping on about in Vancouver was proven to be higher cost than the current market for studio and 1 bedroom units. They don't want you to be able to afford a comfortable life because when you're comfortable, you have time to think clearly and question. They want you to be on edge and to be paycheck to paycheck.
My city is putting up new condos hand over fist. That should take care of the homeless situation.
Lol, if only.
No and I’m not very hopeful for the future
I am. Once our government is done siphoning all the capital into Canada before things get worse geopolitically were going to be BOOMING. "It's always darkest before the dawn" , "Ask not", and reminding everyone at the bank that you're all out of bubble gum is what the cliche character usually spouts on about until the next action or montage scene. Right? This is a protraction that's going to lead to a boom. Roaring boom.
Well I hope it happens soon
Can't keep up with all the work now.
We have low income housing in Regina, not sure exactly the process but I know of people that don't work that have had a decent place to live for years. That doesn't make it more affordable for us middle income families and does nothing for me
In our society here in Canada this topic is Rock and Hard Place government can do what they can so to speak to allow permits and so forth but these are private contractors that are doing the work and Company you can't force them to build homes unless they're your unless they're your sub or your your employing them so the government has to get out of the way and then get in the way