Canada ban foreign real estate investors

[Gospel]

Pffft. Its the Fed. I bet if "ThE DeMoCrAtEs!!" didn't cause inflation, the Feds didn't raise interest rates & there wasn't a pandemic they wouldn't be taking losses. Guess what though, after all is said and done, Florida housing will still be unaffordable even after the FED induced losses these companies take. It will be business as usual. Them buying and flipping at profit & driving up prices. IMO many American's are running here to get away from high costs of living and as a result is making Florida even more attractive to real-estate companies run by Trust funds causing the issues they're escaping.

Maybe, just maybe a few legit home buyers might get a house while the Fed is fisting these biotches. Not enough will though.

 

[Gospel]

It seems like a short sighted policy. The major cost of buying a house is not the sale price, but the interest on the mortgage. If the Canadian government was truly concerned about Canadians being able to buy a house, a program of low interest guaranteed loans with low down payments, targeted at specific segments of the economy, such as first time home buyers would be much more effective.

There is nothing that prevents Canada from doing this as well. In fact, it's an excellent idea and one that some communities in the US utilize.

I wish that the US would enact similar laws limiting or outright forbidding the ownership of real estate by foreign corporations and severely limit ownership by foreign investors.

Of course the major cost of a home is the mortgage but too many people in the US are locked out of home ownership by the initial price/need to come up with a percentage of that large price as a down payment. This includes people who have been paying rent higher than a mortgage payment for years. It's really hard to come up with a down payment when rents are so high. Rents are so high because of real estate speculation and the desire for profits by corporations.

Government policy always has a goal. In this case, someone is worried about foreigners buying houses. Their solution is ban foreigners from buying houses, which easy to circumvent. There's a lot of handwringing over house prices, but no one seems to understand the problem. Of course low cost loans will increase demand and raise prices. What's the alternative?
It's just past Christmas and everybody acts like they've never seen "It's a Wonderful Life", where George Bailey defends home mortgages, by saying,
" Don't it make them better citizens? Doesn't it make them better customers? You, you said that they -- What'd you say just a minute ago? They had to wait and save their money before they even thought of a decent home".
What's the point of bbn keeping home prices low if no one one can afford them?

Not sure why I loved that movie so much. Thanks for reminding me about it. Gonna re-watch it tonight. You made a good point btw.

 

[Toni]

It seems like a short sighted policy. The major cost of buying a house is not the sale price, but the interest on the mortgage. If the Canadian government was truly concerned about Canadians being able to buy a house, a program of low interest guaranteed loans with low down payments, targeted at specific segments of the economy, such as first time home buyers would be much more effective.

There is nothing that prevents Canada from doing this as well. In fact, it's an excellent idea and one that some communities in the US utilize.

I wish that the US would enact similar laws limiting or outright forbidding the ownership of real estate by foreign corporations and severely limit ownership by foreign investors.

Of course the major cost of a home is the mortgage but too many people in the US are locked out of home ownership by the initial price/need to come up with a percentage of that large price as a down payment. This includes people who have been paying rent higher than a mortgage payment for years. It's really hard to come up with a down payment when rents are so high. Rents are so high because of real estate speculation and the desire for profits by corporations.

Government policy always has a goal. In this case, someone is worried about foreigners buying houses. Their solution is ban foreigners from buying houses, which easy to circumvent. There's a lot of handwringing over house prices, but no one seems to understand the problem. Of course low cost loans will increase demand and raise prices. What's the alternative?
It's just past Christmas and everybody acts like they've never seen "It's a Wonderful Life", where George Bailey defends home mortgages, by saying,
" Don't it make them better citizens? Doesn't it make them better customers? You, you said that they -- What'd you say just a minute ago? They had to wait and save their money before they even thought of a decent home".
What's the point of bbn keeping home prices low if no one one can afford them?

Not sure why I loved that movie so much. Thanks for reminding me about it. Gonna re-watch it tonight. You made a good point btw.

My favorite Christmas movie for lots of reasons. One of the things it makes me think about is the courage it takes to stay in your home town, to help out the family there instead of what, as a young person, I always assumed was the braver path: to strike out on your own, making your own way.

In reality, it’s two different kinds of courage. It takes a lot of courage to be your own person when you are surrounded by the family abd friends that all place certain expectations and make certain assumptions about you. It takes perhaps a more obvious sort of courage to go out on your own—which isn’t really true, either. For one thing, you carry your family with you, inside of you. For another, we all lean on the kindness of strangers sometimes.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

It seems like a short sighted policy. The major cost of buying a house is not the sale price, but the interest on the mortgage. If the Canadian government was truly concerned about Canadians being able to buy a house, a program of low interest guaranteed loans with low down payments, targeted at specific segments of the economy, such as first time home buyers would be much more effective.

There is nothing that prevents Canada from doing this as well. In fact, it's an excellent idea and one that some communities in the US utilize.

I wish that the US would enact similar laws limiting or outright forbidding the ownership of real estate by foreign corporations and severely limit ownership by foreign investors.

Of course the major cost of a home is the mortgage but too many people in the US are locked out of home ownership by the initial price/need to come up with a percentage of that large price as a down payment. This includes people who have been paying rent higher than a mortgage payment for years. It's really hard to come up with a down payment when rents are so high. Rents are so high because of real estate speculation and the desire for profits by corporations.

Government policy always has a goal. In this case, someone is worried about foreigners buying houses. Their solution is ban foreigners from buying houses, which easy to circumvent. There's a lot of handwringing over house prices, but no one seems to understand the problem. Of course low cost loans will increase demand and raise prices. What's the alternative?

Graduated higher property tax, on all owners/buyers, foreign and domestic. (But "graduated" means lower-income owners don't pay any higher.)

Scapegoating foreigners will do nothing to solve the housing shortage or any other problem.

 

[Toni]

It seems like a short sighted policy. The major cost of buying a house is not the sale price, but the interest on the mortgage. If the Canadian government was truly concerned about Canadians being able to buy a house, a program of low interest guaranteed loans with low down payments, targeted at specific segments of the economy, such as first time home buyers would be much more effective.

There is nothing that prevents Canada from doing this as well. In fact, it's an excellent idea and one that some communities in the US utilize.

I wish that the US would enact similar laws limiting or outright forbidding the ownership of real estate by foreign corporations and severely limit ownership by foreign investors.

Of course the major cost of a home is the mortgage but too many people in the US are locked out of home ownership by the initial price/need to come up with a percentage of that large price as a down payment. This includes people who have been paying rent higher than a mortgage payment for years. It's really hard to come up with a down payment when rents are so high. Rents are so high because of real estate speculation and the desire for profits by corporations.

Government policy always has a goal. In this case, someone is worried about foreigners buying houses. Their solution is ban foreigners from buying houses, which easy to circumvent. There's a lot of handwringing over house prices, but no one seems to understand the problem. Of course low cost loans will increase demand and raise prices. What's the alternative?

Graduated higher property tax, on all owners/buyers, foreign and domestic. (But "graduated" means lower-income owners don't pay any higher.)

Scapegoating foreigners will do nothing to solve the housing shortage or any other problem.

It's not 'scapegoating.' Plenty of investors buy properties and then rent them out, easily pricing out locals, and generally driving up property values. Which is grand if you're cashing out--selling grannie's old house or moving state but it's bad for any youong person looking to get a starter home. Which means it's harder for businesses to recruit young work staff who want to rent or buy (higher real estate prices drive up rents as well) and it's harder for young people wanting to start families to buy a home which drives down the school population and a lot of other affects. But foreign investors care only about their pocketbook, not about how their investment affects the community. I've observed this to be true of any one who owns property as an out of towner: the further away they are located from the property they own, the less the care about how it affects the location.

A lot of countries restrict purchasing real estate by foreigners or foreign nationals. I can understand why.

 

[TV and credit cards]

It's really a small issue, what they are capable of buying up in relation to the entire market. But more than that, if it's not foreigners doing it, it will be someone else. As if one's own countrymen would not screw his neighbor up one side and down the other. Hell, in most instances, one's own family would do so, look their brother in the eye, smile and say it's just business.
But singling out foreigners is easy, low hanging political fruit to appeal to the nativist in all of us.
There's eight billion people on the planet and nearly each and every one of them a greedy fuck. There's a problem in need of attention.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

You guys should all move to the rust belt. You can get a house for a song. Problem is nobody wants these houses so they sit unoccupied until they need to be demolished. Either that or they're owned by some group living in bumfuck USA that doesn't give a shit about anything local.