this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
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Don't need to build as many houses if you remove the speculators buying them out and renting them out for a premium, Building more home right now will disproportionately help realtors, and speculators more than anyone.
Vacancy is pretty much zero across the major Canadian cities. We have the lowest housing per capita in the G7. There is objectively not enough housing in Canada and it’s absolutely delusional to say otherwise. Is this wishful thinking just a form of NIMBYism? Do you own a SFH and you want to “preserve the character” of your neighbourhood or something?
Where are you getting that building more homes will disproportionately help realtors and speculators? Even non-market housing, like co-ops and social housing? How in the world does that even work?? Why would speculators like that? I hate speculators, but your theory makes no sense whatsoever!
There is not a single urban economist, right or left, who agrees with you. With beliefs like this so widespread, it’s no wonder we don’t enact any policies to actually help with the housing crisis.
The point is that landlords and speculators drive up costs - period. If you want to ease the housing crisis you could in theory build you're way out of it. You could also bale water out of a boat while it's sinking. Now what if you plug the hole while bailing out the water?
Speculators are the fucking hole. Want a second home? Cool. Make them pay 20%+ tax on it a la Singapore:
There are already tax discounts on primary residence, there's a capital gains exemption. Doesn't matter because housing prices still go up too much. And why do they keep going up? Hmm... maybe something about a shortage of housing?
Speculators can't single handedly increase the price because they still need someone to buy or rent the property for a worthwhile price.
There are areas where housing prices stagnate and it's not like some speculators can just go in there and force prices to go up.
Not sure what point you are trying to make? What does capital gains exemption have to do with anything? If anything we should follow the US and only exempt a base amount.
I'm saying use taxes to disincentivize speculation.
There's a reason the market became detached from fundamentals when rates were lowered. I'm not saying we don't need to build more. Of course we do. But I'd rather not build homes that go to more investors than FTHB like is currently happening. Otherwise the situation only gets better if you over build.
Also yes, it only takes a small number of speculators to create unaffordable housing. Real estate is a market based on benchmarks. You should look into the history of the BC market and how a small number of speculators drove that market bananas.