You tell us, Pierre…
The correct answer: because people with real estate investments are into politics.
We need to enforce conflict of interest rules on politicians, and keep people with CoIs from running, holding cabinet positions or otherwise making decisions.
How about if you want more than 1 house it comes with a huge tax bill every year to deter people from gobbling up all the real estate
Yes, but also no conflicts of interests.
Such a bill would never pass if it means people writing and voting on the bill have a versed interest in neutering the bill or voting against it.
Tax brackets also need to be fixed, loop holes need to be closed, but it won’t happen either because we have millionaires holding cabinet positions, or politicians who have millionaire friends they’d like to help out in exchange for funding.
I for one would love to have a vacation home. The market out there doesn’t allow for it though, but those that have no home come first.
The correct, correct answer is that we’ve become poorly educated and, as such, are no longer innovative enough to see money go anywhere other than housing. After all, housing is the place of last resort – where money goes to die. We’ve left it to die.
Yes, Canada is the “most educated nation in the world” according to the OECD, but when you look closer that is a result of us having an unusually high rate of vocational training. We are well behind the rest of the world when it comes to research-focused academia. Only the latter of the two will pull money away from housing.
Remember years ago when they told us that if you went to university you could expect a higher income? Yet, now that we have decades of outcome data from watching more and more attend post-secondary schools, we can see that incomes actually remained stagnant the whole time? That’s why. The original hope was that people would become innovative again, using university research labs to get there, which would see money fall into the hands of the innovators. But instead we chose to go to school to train to flip burgers, so where else is there for the money to go other than into housing?
Yes, the people in control of the decision are the ones with the conflict of interests… I can see this going nowhere :)…:(
People with conflicts should recuse themselves to keep their spot and their integrity.
I’d accept a politician who had property and recused around housing votes, same as I’d respect a conservative who recused around oil, housing, religion, abortion, sovereignty and welfare. And vaccinations too, I guess, after the Karen convoy.
This seems perfectly acceptable to me, so long as they don’t try to influence others.
Typical conservative behaviour. Blame your counterpart as loudly as possible, and then do nothing to help the situation.
CPC: “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas!”
Liberals did that too. Nobody knows what to do apparently.
They know what to do, but they’re all protecting their personal investments.
It’s not about fixing anything, it’s about appearing like they will fix something. Promises to the conservatives are even more empty that promises by the liberals, which is saying something (looking at Trudeau’s election overhaul…)
Because, quite simply, where else is the money going to go? Housing is the place of last resort.
Historically, we invested in innovation. The long list of inventions Canada once brought to the world was a sense of pride for Canadians. Today, what are you working on that is going to change the world? Seriously – let it be known because money is struggling to find you.
Capitalism supports making the most money, not progress
Someone who invents a way to make money off pacific garbage patch tours will do a lot better than the person who figures out how to get rid of it
Someone who invents a way to make money off pacific garbage patch tours
Exactly. If someone did that, investors would take notice and want to get in on the spoils, taking money out out of the housing market in the process.
But it’s telling that not one person was able to come up with something they are working on.
I can’t comment on my own investment pitches because that would be biased. Obviously everyone thinks that their idea is good, however I will say that I was told to come back after having a commercial success and I’ve never heard of an angel investing in a pitch that guarantees to lose them money for the benefit of others
Nobody is talking about investment pitches. It was asked what people are working on.
Clearly the answer is nothing.
That’s the thing. Money isn’t “striving” to find inventors with revolutionary, world-changing ideas-- if that was the case, then the market would reflect it. Support for innovation requires vision and patience on the part of those holding the cash, but in every industry, the big holders of capital are always striving to find sure bets. It’s not just wealthy individuals, but large investment firms that buy up property, largely for that reason. There is no shortage of amazing ideas out there, few of which will ever get anywhere as things are now.
Does Canada have any rule\law against private sales, say directly from homeoower to homeowner? Or is it so bad that that there’s virtually nothing to buy?
Another question. What is making properties so locked up within investors; are they exploiting a benefit or loophole; are they the only game in town?
(btw i live in the US)No, Canada has no restrictions on purely private transactions. In fact, if you accept that the standard method of using realtors is still fundamentally a private transaction, then the majority of transactions are private.
There is a lot of reasonable analysis on the cause of unaffordable housing, despite some of it being contradictory. That tells me that we have no more than a general understanding of the problems.
My own personal opinion is that there are 3 major factors that have combined to create a perfect storm.
- Corporatization of high-density, multifamily housing, especially rentals. When the accountants and MBAs are in charge, especially when a single corporation owns large blocks in an area, it’s almost a given that you get predatory pricing.
- The financialization of housing, both in the sense of institutional investors and the normalization of the home as a major element of retirement planning. The retirement planning component is particularly insidious, because it shifts the mass perception of housing from being about safe, utilitarian shelter to a being a store of value that can be liquidated at some point in the future.
- The neoliberal demand that governments get out of the business of providing a safe environment for citizens to thrive in favour of each person bearing the full responsibility for their own well being regardless of accidents of birth or circumstance has gutted, among other things, social housing.
Taken together, we are forced to operate within a financial market (ie one in which money itself is the product) instead of the goods and services market. In other words, housing is now merely another way to participate in the stock market.
Based on what I can see around me, there are houses and apartments for sale or rent, but not at prices anyone other than an investor or high earner can afford.
You are from the US, so it’s also important to note that we have no such thing as a mortgage that stays at a fixed rate over the full term. The mortgage is either variable rate or must be remortgaged at current rates every few years. Nor do we get to claim any part of our mortgage as a deduction on our income taxes.
I am hazarding a guess that it is 99.99% of people of whom are buying and selling are doing so are attempting to make a profit and must participate in the housing stock market?
And others outside the scope of profit - just those seeking the tangible asset of getting housing - are difficult to keep statistics on.
A media headline can only speak\quote about what numbers statistics it readily knows.
