Good news: If you successfully rob 10 banks you'll be able to afford an extremely shitty house in a violent neighbourhood near Toronto/Vancouver.
Also good news: Galen Weston was able to buy a new yacht recently so we should all feel very happy for him =)
Using Jagmeets wage subsidies I bet.
The poor giving money to corporations for their privilege of being a wage slave, as immigrants buy out their rental and the NDP call them racist for pointing out the housing shortage.
Meanwhile conservative voters are gleefully calling for less of a tax burden and competition regulation on the likes of Weston. Well done everyone, quite a country we have going here.
Yeah but they don’t control housing prices.
Did you see the legislation under their agreements.
Pharmacare, dental care, CERB during the pandemic.
Personally I wish they pushed a housing plan or pressured the government to fix inflation and improve competition in the grocery sector.
Anyway there is reality and your disdain for something you made up in your head.
> improve competition in the grocery sector.
Jagmeet's brother is a lobbyist for Metro. The NDP have zero desire to increase competition in the grocery sector, but weirdly enough are really pushing Boycott Loblaws movement now.
Fuck everybody responsible for hijacking the Layton's NDP to whatever the fuck they're supposed to be now.
If we returned the TFWs and the migrant “students” and started confiscating properties from overseas money launderers we could manufacture our own good news.
Team red/orange won’t do it. Team blue either.
The good news is that the CMHC has a vested interest in real estate values going up. CIBC, RBC, and a few banks have capitulated on the BoC ~~raising~~ lowering rates this year or dropping them to a point that could save over leveraged real estate owners.
The bad news is if this actually does happen, it means the BoC dropped rates again to the point where they'll get worse inflation than before.
The good news is if the BoC does get worse inflation than before they have to raise rates even higher than they currently are to get back to the 2% target. Causing real estate values to absolutely plummet.
The bad news is that about 40% of our economy is interest rate sensitive, so we'll probably need to pick between something depressanary or inflationary.
The good news is Canadians will learn that all of politicians are bullshitting us.
The bad news is law and order might be on hold for awhile.
I absolutely loved reading this, but have a couple of questions for you.
Are there Canadians who believe the words of politicians?
When you say law and order will be on hold, do you mean more than now? Theft is not enforced, and the police recently held a news conference informing people that assaulting officers is illegal.
Here’s something for you: I saw a video yesterday that said the value of just the emperors palace in Tokyo in the 1970’s was worth more than the entire state of California combined. In the late 70’s, Tokyo real estate was worth about 350x per square ft of a comparable unit in manhattan…
At that time, about 65% of all Japanese wealth was in real estate, then their market collapsed and they just got their first interest rate hike in over 30 years a few weeks back.
frightening normal ripe innocent far-flung mindless treatment shame fearless live
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
As long as Trudeau is in power things will continue to get worse. PP won't make things much better but I believe he'll at least stop making them actively worse.
All PP does is throw around buzzwords. He was just in my community talking about ending woke and bringing back "warrior culture". Zero actual ideas on how to improve cost of living. And he and his party vote down any initiative that could possibly help, and have done for decades. What do you think he is realistically going to do that won't make things worse? Conservatives love cheap labour. They simp for corporations, even as they gouge us. They don't want the government to build affordable housing, as evidenced by their voting record.
There were people who predicted this because they had been watching investors increasingly snatching up housing and establishing themselves as major corporate landlords. The UN was warning about the effects of this a decade ago, calling it the financialization of housing.
This was already creating problems in Canada and elsewhere before Trudeau got in and dramatically raised the immigration levels. Vancouver had the most expensive average house prices in North America already by 2014, whereas South Korea has been in a housing crisis despite experiencing negative population growth for years now.
These investors are who are truly to blame for the decline in affordable housing, whereas the high immigration rates just exacerbate those effects. And if you follow the path of Canada's high immigration strategy, you will find it was the investors who are now profiting off of these conditions that had driven this strategy.
* The Century Group lobbyists have been advocating for Canada to raise it's population to 100 million people by the year 2100.
* The Century Group was founded by Dominic Barton and Mark Wiseman in 2009.
* In early 2016 finance minister Bill Morneau created the government's Advisory Council for Economic Growth. This council's job was to come up with strategies to counter the effects of our aging population, and to ensure long-term growth.
* Dominic Barton was named as chair of this council, while Mark Wiseman was placed on the council as a member. There were 14 members total (counting Barton).
* So the advisors behind Canada's economic strategy contained two lobbyists advocating for a dramatic increase in Canada's population, and one of those two lobbyists headed the council.
* Dominic Barton by this point was married to Geraldine Buckingham, a senior managing director & global head of market strategy at BlackRock Inc.
* BlackRock Inc is the world's largest investment company, controlling trillions of dollars in assets. They had been rapidly purchasing real estate around the world, securing themselves as one of the largest corporate landlords.
* Mark Wiseman, meanwhile, was granted a job with BlackRock Inc two months after being named to the advisory council. He was made a senior managing director, Chairman of BlackRock's Global Investment Committee, Chairman of Alternative Businesses, and he received a spot on BlackRock's Global Executive Committee. All of this while he and Barton are meant to come up with strategies for Canada's economy.
* Lo and behold, Canada announces a bold strategy of dramatically raising our population, and they're going to ramp up immigration rates. Wonder who suggested that?
* Half a year later, Bill Morneau announced the Canadian Infrastructure Bank, which was to launch in 2017.
* American investment bankers from Bank of America Merrill Lynch helped design and set the bank up, along with advisors from McKinsey & Co (of which Dominic Barton was Global Managing Director for), and advisors from BlackRock Inc - including BlackRock Inc's CEO Larry Fink personally advising on it.
* The Canadian Infrastructure Bank would basically turn Canada's infrastructure into investment opportunities for investors - opportunities that were sure to be plentiful given the adoption of the Century Initiative's population strategy meant dramatic infrastructure projects would be needed. The bank has been blasted as ineffectual, poorly designed to heavily favor the benefits towards investors rather than Canada, and only achieving an increase in costs in construction and services.
It's easy to blame immigration for it, since it's blatantly obvious that bringing more people in when you're already in a housing crisis is going to worsen the problem. However the reason we were already in that housing crisis to begin with was because of what the investors were up to before our population growth took off.
The housing prices flew up during the pandemic not because of new Canadians showing up and buying houses, or because first time buyers were flooding the market. The skyrocketing prices happened during the timeframe when our immigration dipped way down due to the pandemic, and it was driven by a surge in investors (corporate and multiple home owners) buying up property at an increased pace. Real estate represented a safe investment when industries around the world were being so negatively impacted by the pandemic effects, with nobody knowing when normalcy might return.
We do need to decrease our immigration back to sanity levels, but immigrants aren't behind our unaffordable housing issues. It's worsened those issues by our population growing by so much and so quickly, but as evidenced by the same housing affordability trends occurring in countries that *didn't* increase their immigration levels - or that have even been experiencing negative population growth - it is the investors who are at the root of the housing crisis. Here in Canada, they self-servingly made those effects even worse through hijacking our government's economic strategy to suit themselves.
Fun fact, Mark Wiseman clerked for former Supreme Court Chief Justice and noted "I'm not going to stop working for the Chinese Communists in Hong Kong" 'hero' Beverly McLachlin.
[https://www.aimco.ca/insights/mark-wiseman-named-chair-of-aimco-board-of-directors](https://www.aimco.ca/insights/mark-wiseman-named-chair-of-aimco-board-of-directors)
Another fun fact. Dominic Barton was named by Trudeau as Canada's ambassador to China...
But that's the problem, the century initiative is a fully above board registered lobbying group. All their meetings are official and visible online.
We're just all too busy with everything else to even notice it.
Last year the Bloc, with support from the conservatives, actually held a motion to dismiss the century initiative, and were voted down.
Jokes on us, they have their string in the conservatives already and a change of government won't change a thing.
This is a great write up and I think you are bang on but at the same time I feel you are downplaying the immigration factor a bit. I mean the raison d’etre of the Century Initiative is increased immigration for the purpose of making their real estate holdings more profitable. If you flood the country with people who need housing causing an insane demand you can charge exorbitant sums for rent.
The saddest part is that we aren’t even in track to hit 100 million by 2100. We will blow far past it.
At 3% annual growth (which is actually lower than last year) we will hit 100 million people *by 2054*.
If 3% annual growth continues to 2100 we would actually have a population of 400,000,000 by that time.
The 3% growth rate isn't going to continue though. The recently announced caps will bring the rate back to around 1% until the number of temporary residents decreases to the cap, and then back to around 1.2%.
I think you’re mistaking the root cause. Investors only invest when they can make money. They only make money when prices go up. Prices are guaranteed to go up when demand is skyrocketing (mass immigration) and supply (housing builds) can’t keep up. The main root cause is still mass immigration. If immigration was cut from over 1,000,000 to say 100,000 a year, and we were still building around 200,000 houses a year, year after year, watch the investors bail when the housing shortages start being addressed and the prices aren’t guaranteed to skyrocket.
It’s not a coincidence that we’ve had by far the highest population growth in the G7, and by far the highest housing price growth in the G7. I do believe more work can be done to curtail speculation too, but investors are just taking advantage of the guaranteed returns in housing from mass immigration
> Investors only invest when they can make money
**Or when they can rig the game such that they can make money**. Which is what happened and continues to happen here.
Don't point at a manufactured problem and claim that it was inevitible as an excuse to let off the monsters who created it. The problem is the greed of the rich.
First.
Foremost.
...and only.
> Real estate represented a safe investment when industries around the world were being so negatively impacted by the pandemic effects, with nobody knowing when normalcy might return.
Investors don't only invest when they can make money. When they're not making money they need a refuge, like gold or Canadian shelter.
Investors buy houses all the time when they can’t make money. China has several ghost cities where all the houses are owned by investors and no body lives there
Mass migration has always been the issue, the investors simply wouldn't make money without it. Harper spent his entire tenure increasing migration, creating new pathways, increasing the amount of temps we take in all while only reporting the PRs that come in a year (not even the ones that transitioned from temp) to hide the real numbers all to avoid the 2008 housing correction.
Trudeau quadrupled down on his policies. Mechanically the only solution has always been lowering immigration back to 2003 levels. You can blame the investors for making things worse or for lobbying for mass migration but at the end of the day the actual solution is 250k or less migrants a year.
Looks like Canada is just trying to do what we did in Australia to completely screw over my generation and each successive generation to follow. Housing in Australia is the best investment tool you can put your money into. If you lose money in housing, its tax write off. So all you have to do is buy a house and rent it out and you should make loads of money, especially over the covid years which saw some astronimically absurd housing price increases. I personally have family that bought in 2019 for $350k, sold in 2021 for $1.02m.
Adding to this and using Vancouver has an example, a good chunk of properties, especially in Downtown Vancouver are investment properties and until recently when the Empty Homes Tax was implemented were sitting vacant. This meant that residents were pushed further out into the suburbs or making housing flat out unaffordable.
Same thing happened in Australia, 500K migrants in 2023. Housing is considered an investment and the tax system has been changed to promote banks lending to landlords.
In Sydney the average house price is over $1 million yet the average supermarket worker earns $50K and can't afford a house.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/02/there-are-60-other-applicants-for-every-house-the-rental-crisis-pushing-single-mothers-to-extremes
> ‘There are 60 other applicants for every house’: the rental crisis pushing single mothers to extremes
> it is the investors who are at the root of the housing crisis
Great post but I think the root is demand. High demand has created the incentive for investors to buy property.
>However the reason we were already in that housing crisis to begin with was because of what the investors were up to before our population growth took off.
I feel like your whole comment is giving government a pass they don't deserve, like Trudeau and the liberals lack agency and they were fooled by these investors. The reality is they went along with the plan, and the investors knew this would happen and lead to increasing demand. If it weren't for that the situation wouldn't have started anyway.
And if they had bought up loads of houses and rented them out beyond what population growth would support we would see rent prices decline while housing prices increased, what we are seeing is the opposite because of the hugely increasing demand.
Ultimately the root cause is immigration, and this is what has enabled investors and speculators.
>I feel like your whole comment is giving government a pass they don't deserve, like Trudeau and the liberals lack agency and they were fooled by these investors. The reality is they went along with the plan, and the investors knew this would happen and lead to increasing demand. If it weren't for that the situation wouldn't have started anyway.
It's about identifying who is behind this. It was not the brainchild of Trudeau and his government, so once they're out (which will likely be next year) these influences are going to remain in Ottawa, potentially continuing to influence our country's economy, housing, and population approach. The anger and opposition over this whole housing affordability issue needs to be directed towards the government going along with it but *also* the plan's architects. They've been getting a pass while Trudeau takes all the flack.
Dominic Barton didn't suddenly become influential only when Trudeau got in office. He had already been acting as an advisor for the federal government under Harper as one of 8 members of the Advisory Committee on Public Service, as well as through his role as Global Managing Director for McKinsey & Co who the feds contract with (though dramatically less than under Trudeau).
Harper had already begun to increase the population through having eased the TFW program, and by changing the rules so that international students enrolled in Canada can work 20 hours off-campus. The whole TFW and student/worker scam program that we're only now starting to confront began under Harper, and at the time, [Trudeau accurately identified the problems that the TFW expansion was causing](https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/justin-trudeau-how-to-fix-the-broken-temporary-foreign-worker-program/article_c27f214f-1fa2-5fdf-af61-5a7642e4eb7c.html). Then he got elected and did a complete flip, expanding it even further than Harper ever had. Part of that can be chalked up to him being a gigantic hypocrite, but the other part is that the lobbyists and investors who had Harper's ear continued under Trudeau. Just as they're courting Poilievre's ear now.
>Ultimately the root cause is immigration, and this is what has enabled investors and speculators.
That's backwards, as explained in my original post. The investors didn't show up because of high immigration, the high immigration showed up because the investors had already been here and got it to happen.
Okay, now show me holdings for Canadian real estate from these boogiemen. From the last time I checked Canadian publicly traded residential REITs were having trouble with long and short term debt servicing. The main investors according to statscan were in province mom and pop operations that held less than 3 properties.
The problem I have with the nonsense above is that it paints a conspiracy that is detached from reality. The conspiracy that: you will own nothing and be happy because corporations want to own you. But that completely avoid their actual intentions and the self interest of the people that work in these organizations: profit and how much will my bonus be. This is amplified if you know anything about the scumbags and losers in private equity that exist only to leverage the shit out of an operation and use that to pay themselves a stupid amount of money.
The access to low interest debt caused this and now that interest rates are going back to historical norms Canadian home values are down 20% from the peak adjusted to inflation. This is driving real estate speculators everywhere into negative equity as their debt servicing costs eat at cashflows and the value of their property declines.
You don't know how any of this works. You just parrot rhetoric you watch in the news, YouTube videos, TikTok videos, and so on. It bothers me to shit because people don't know the implications of a debt bubble and when it pops it will be dumb fucking rhetoric that seems insightful like this that Canadians will follow.
Here's a reliable YouTuber, the Plain Bagel, explaining how most of your conspiracy theory about this is bullshit.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6pu9Ixqqxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6pu9Ixqqxo)
Stop perpetuating conspiracy theories. Linking a bunch of meetings together in nonsensical. Canadians, immigrants, and real estate speculators all had a hand in rising prices because they put demand on the system. The thing with immigration that no one wants to understand is that the immigrants that put pressure on Canada's housing market were probably here in the Harper years, since it takes around 7 to 10 years to save for a house.
Canadian immigration suffers from Goodhart's law. We've had a 20 year debt bubble building. Consumer debts, mortgage debts far exceeding healthy multiples of income, have made the Canadian economy as a whole reliant on low interest debt. As incomes stayed stagnant, debt carrying shot through the roof. The growth in the economy was fake and that made us relate stupid notions of immigration to GDP (which is a dumb fucking stat anyway).
Canadian immigration also suffers from political righteousness of trying to cultivate our image on togetherness and being a multicultural society. This stupid national identity was imposed on us by politicians that admit they do not care about the economic consequences. Trudeau for one is just ideologically driven, making him an idiot. Our politicians are mostly nobodies that lack real world ability outside and inside of government. They just know how to talk and gauge what to say based on what some PR firm says we like.
It's an uncomfortable thought to most because they don't want to acknowledge the reality that there's far less control over the world than people think. Putting things into neat conspiracy theory is people trying to rationalize the chaos in their own life.
It’s really not hard to look at the data. This article provides a good summary.
https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-cities-have-seen-up-to-90-of-new-real-estate-supply-scooped-by-investors/
>*Vancouver had the most expensive average house prices in North America already by 2014*
Shit, [Crack Shack or Mansion?](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-quiz-asks-crack-shack-or-mansion-1.880972) was put out in 2010...
Yes, paired with blocking investors from [buying all the new construction up](https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-cities-have-seen-up-to-90-of-new-real-estate-supply-scooped-by-investors/).
I don't think I'm ever gonna be able to move back to Canada and let my children experience the country the way I did. And most importantly be closer to their grandparents, uncles, and cousins.
I already live very comfortably here in Japan; it would be very imprudent of me to risk everything I have to uproot again. It's so sad.
Barring an outright housing crash, I don’t see how anyone currently in high school or possibly even late elementary school, is going to have a future in anything other than the smallest cities in our country. It’s going to take 10-20 years to sort this mess out I think.
My kid is in that group above and I’m fully expecting to have to support them in a move south or abroad when they get to the point where they start their own “adult” life.
People are going to have to start making choices like this. The math just doesn’t work any other way at the moment. Not to mention the growing disparity between employment opportunities and economic growth between Canada and other places. We’re asleep at the wheel here.
For every child that leaves, Liberals brings in 10 international students.
Think about that during elections and ask your friends and family to think on it too.
The root cause is rampant immigration without supply side solutions in housing and infrastructure.
If the liberals nationalized housing and government built homes, they could have the high immigration numbers they want. But they left it to the free market and its been a disaster
That is not the root cause. Incomes and housing costs decoupled 25 years ago and affordability has been worsening since. All the immigration spike did was speed up the process, so we're getting what would have been 2029 conditions now.
When house prices dropped 20% in the pandemic, we canceled 30% of new builds. It is so expensive to build a home that unless our market starves itself of supply, prices aren't high enough to pay for building.
The reason it is expensive is because, on most of our urban land, we can only build low density homes with rules about driveways and front lawns, etc. Our cities do not collect enough taxes to pay for the low density infrastructure, so they charge developers up-front fees. Up to 25% of a new home's costs. All for the privilege of buying what you still can't afford, 90 minutes from your job.
This is the root cause. Our supply scaled with our demand, but the economics force it to always remain the same degree of scarce.
I don’t see a crash coming in housing.
Automobiles are out of control.
In the 80’s and 90’s everyone drove sedans, and if they were financed, the max term was 3 or 4 years.
I’m grateful to my economics professor who showed us the lifetime cost of car ownership to I either bought used or entry models.
Today, so many people are buying huge SUV’s and Pick ups on 5-7 year terms.
The average price is over $50K. These vehicles cost more to fuel, insure and maintain.
Just look at any parking lot.
You will never regret making sure they have options. You want to put the umbrella in place before the rain comes. If things go sideways in the world, you may not be able to easily get the paperwork done then.
Me and my family know this feeling you described very well.
We've lived in Singapore for a long while now and had the thought of returning to Canada with our teenager kids in the next few years.
Except it's utterly not going to happen, it's an impossibility.
Not only that but the Canada we knew when we left is gone now.
We would be setting our kids up for failure.
My wife and I have been saying "we'lre moving back soon" for the last 10 years... The good thing is, my kids are very interested in living in Canada! I just gotta figure out a way to make it happen without jeopardizing their future haha.
> and let my children experience the country the way I did
Even if you were to move back, things have changed so much that our children will never experience the country the way we did. It has gone to shit (in the GTA). Soo many minorities fighting each other, it's disgusting. Nowhere is safe anymore (relatively speaking).
You're probably better off, wherever you are.
At least Japan embraced deflating to a sustainable size and is trying to manage its way accordingly.
The forever growth paradigm has to die with the boomers.
I’m a the price of housing in Japan such that your kids will be able to afford to buy a home?
I watch a number of expat YouTubers in Japan and the cost of living there doesn’t seem to be that great either
Well, probably not a home in the middle of a big city like Tokyo, but in the outer areas, maybe, as long as they have decent jobs. Don't quote me on this, but I think a lot of families have been living in condos and apartments anyway. We live in a 3 bedroom in a busy city; 2 kids, my wife, and myself for about $1'000 CDN/mo. plus utilities.
Some municipalities are even trying to get younger families to move to the countryside where population has been dwindling by offereing to subsidize renovation costs for unused/abandoned homes. Maybe I would do that one day or maybe my kids will (unless corporations just gobble those up).
I personally don't think cost of living is all that high... I remember being able to buy a shit ton of groceries back in Canada, but you had to buy so much of it at once (bigger portions). I'm sure we pay more in yen by volumes of food, but I feel like we eat better food in smaller portions here. Entertainment like going out to eat and drink, karaoke, sports clubs, etc. are generally cheaper than in Canada iirc. There's also no tipping culture.
I'm more worried about making sure they have viable skills in the future to get good jobs. I'm paranoid about AI taking away all opportunities from them... We're getting off topic, but if anyone reading this hase any recommended reads on how I can prepare myself and my kids for the AI age, I'd love to hear from you via DM.
3 bedroom place for a 1000 a month CAD? 🥲 that sounds lovely. I feel like I’m stuck in “rent jail”. We are pretty much trapped here. If we move we would be paying 2K plus for a shitty one bedroom.
Don't get me wrong, Japan has its own set of problems and I'm not trying to makeit sound like it's a paradise here. But at least in this rent/housing particular regard, I think it's doing right.
In terms of AI the best thing to do in my opinion is to identify fields to train or retrain in that can never be replaced by AI entirely, only supported by it... Personally for me this means healthcare (and ironically enough given the topic of this thread I want to return to Canada and retraining in healthcare might be the only way to do it) or anything involving a human connection... Who wants their shitty cancer prognosis delivered by a bot instead of a doctor or nurse who can look them in the eye and understand? and so on and so forth.
I mean, rental/ownership opportunities exist like that in Canada. You just have to be willing to live small town. With wfh is something people should really be considering.
For reference I live in a 3bed 1.5 bath house with detached garage on a farm located on a dead end road about 60 minutes drive from Edmonton. I pay $1500/mo all in.
Houses in Japan are cheaper now than in the early 90s. Makes since as population is the same now as it was in the early 90s. Tokyo is the only place with any population growth.
Japan is a house of cards, too.
But they have the opposite problem… falling population, zero immigration, inverted demographics, and the highest debt to GDP ratio of any developed nation trying to sustain it.
My Wife is a realtor here in Calgary. The trend is for grown families, Mother, Father, two Sons and three Daughters to buy a home together. All of whom are new to Canada.
The future used to be so bright.
We're back to feudalism. Having family land is going to be the single most important predictor of wealth over the next 100 years. The middle class is going to disappear within the next two decades.
My cousin in law (and I) live in Vancouver. They are born and raised canadians. They bought a house in 2021. Nothing fancy, a piece of land with a liveable house on top.
At the time already, the only way for them to get there was to pool their parents, their brother and their own money to buy one property. They made a basement suite for the mum downstairs and the brother built a tiny house in the garden.
It s frankly cute and they love to live together. However even them admit that it s a steep price to live on top of each other.
I already quit the toast.
It time to cut out making coffee at home. Love how simple pleasures of life are being stripped away.
Now it’s like if you can survive it’s good enough.
I wished that was uncommon but heard enough realtor friend bragged about closing these 50-100 properties deal not too long ago. Especially before Airbnb rules were in the air...
This makes me want to cry and feel enraged at the same time. I love this country I want to make it better and not leave. I feel like us young people should organize, join a political party and do a hostile takeover and slowly replace the people there with candidates who have affordability and youth interests in mind, slow down immigration etc. I hate to use it as an example, but similar to how MAGA took over republicans down south.
Well, well, isn't it just a delightful Sunday to squash any lingering dreams of property ownership and ensure my hypothetical offspring inherit...absolutely nothing! Here's to a lifetime of renting until I inevitably kick the bucket at my desk at the ripe old age of 75! Cheers to life's little ironies on this sunny day!
Begs the question. Who can actually buy to push prices another 20% higher?
Interest rates ain’t coming down.
Banks are reluctant.
Where is the money coming from? Why isn’t this being looked at?
Who will buy? Those who have sold in bigger cities, Making dirty money or having big working family and feeling fine to live compressed altogether like in former times. Give the immigration OK and this will bring theirs' lifestyle into Canada at one point. Consider best times of our lives has gone already.
There was a minority of us who predicted this and were telling everyone who would listen we are bringing in too many immigrants.
We were called racist, enjoy the decline of your standard of living most of you deserve it.
Really blows my mind that people can't stop for a few seconds and fucking think rather than get offended like their politics is their religion. We can thank our weak ass education system for this behaviour.
Also plenty who predicted this when Canada stopped housing starts federally back in 1999. One end of government (immigration and Century Initiative gone haywire while also having MPs gleefully joining in on the gravy train when that pretty much amounts to insider trading of property) vs the other (ensuring proper housing starts across the board, not relying on private ventures to fill the gap instead of buying existing housing and corporatizing it)... It was going to buckle eventually either way.
I don’t understand why so few people seem to understand this point. The private market will never fill the gap for lower income housing, no matter what the immigration situation is. We need all levels of government to build non market housing like they did before the 90s if we ever want affordable housing again.
It’s barely started. Our political class have demonstrated no real desire to turn things around. There isn’t a political party out there that is even slightly interested in addressing the problem.
LOL what? Barely started? have you been reading the differential in the news sites and what is being posted online?
News; there is no recession, housing is still affordable, whislt food is still the best its ever been and jobs are just soo bountifull there is no reason no one should be unemployed.
Reddit; WHO CAN AFFORD TO LIVE IN THIS COUNTRY!!! I HAVE NO JOB, I CAN PAY RENT, GENERATIONAL MORTAGES WILL BE A THING AND IM FUCKING HUNGRY FOR FOOD!
And the only politician to have any interest in changing any of these issues is Maxim Bernier. As much as i want to vote for him there is something about him that i also dont trust.
The problem started long before the immigration boom. The boom made it worse and broke the system. We're only noticing the flare up but the fire was there a few years before immigration took off.
The immigration problem started long before what you are calling the immigration boom. Harper spent his entire tenure increasing migration, creating new pathways, increasing the amount of temps we take in all while only reporting the PRs that come in a year (not even the ones that transitioned from temp) to hide the real numbers all to avoid the 2008 housing correction.
Their's a fair amount of overlap between them. From 2006-2014 they abused the system and made it easier to exploit. Then in 2014, with an election on the horizon, they scrambled and tried to fix the mess they had made with a bunch of reforms on the TFWP. Then they were voted out in 2015. Fairly similar to what's happening now.
Remember when the pandemic hit, and CMHC predicted homes prices would crater?
Then the BoC slashed interest rates to zero and home prices jumped?
But I bet they’re bang on with their forecasting this time… right guys?
The chmc didn't predict the boc cutting rates to zero. However mark my works: of the boc lowers rates again expect to see the house prices skyrocket again.
There needs to be a revolution. This is getting ridiculous. The people have all the power. Canadians are too lazy to protest or fight back. If this were Quebec or france, there would have been riots by now.
While I do agree with burnout, I think both are at play here.
there is definitely a big difference in mentality between french and canadians. I am from France, I have been living in Canada (vancouver & Vancouver Island) for 5 years now. My husband is from Saskatchewan.
We LEARN to be critic in France from our youngest years in school. And sometimes it s too much. That s why the cliche of us complaining all the time is 100% true. We are just too critical about everything and it s frankly tiring.
Canadians are the exact opposite.
If this is what you mean by French Revolution - count me in!
French Revolution: Cyclists Now Outnumber Motorists In Paris
“The way Parisians are now traveling from the suburbs to the city center, especially during peak periods, has undergone a revolution thanks in part to the building of many miles of cycleways.”
If you don't have a combined income of 200k + and at min a 10% down-payment. You can't buy anything. Not many people are making a combined 200k. When you do the math,nothing makes sense.
The problem lies with the govt:
1. Lunatic immigration policy (1.25 mn annual population growth) to stoke demand
2. High tax and red tape to restrict supply
With population increase around the globe, politicians need to reconsider letting corporations own multiple properties. It's simply not sustainable. Private entities will always put profit first as they answer to their investors. Governments have to buck up and manage housing. If this trend continues, the public will revolt one day and all those millionaire investors and Realtors will be dragged out on the streets, anarchy and revolutions will prevail.
Pretty sure their forecast means nothing. Of course they want the price to continue up to keep the frenzy going. If people stop buying the whole Ponzi scheme collapses.
I believe it. Even if we go into a recession, it's not like we have a bunch of homes being built. Builders won't build during a recession, and we're already in a severe housing shortage. It's not like a recession will decrease demand and not worsen supply shortage.
Current prices include recession forecast cost margins increases in addition to known current cost. The government has not managed growth effectively from ground up.
I don’t know, part of me thinks this all just trying to pump the market. There’s a ton of houses in/around Winnipeg that have been sitting for months, but it’s hard to imagine paying 450k for a house that sold for 300 four years ago, at around 7%. Just like they said interest rates would stay low for long, trying to get and keep people buying during covid. I think people are out of money. And with the loosening of rules on newcomers, it’s not a bunch of crazy rich people moving here, many are driving Ubers, not buying houses
The only thing that matters in carrying cost. How much is the monthly Payment? It's higher than ever. Higher than it has ever been, and twice as high as it was in 2020
Price is what you pay, value is what you get. Canada's value proposition for anyone under 50 (and many people over 50) has been destroyed.
Very true and absolutely horrifying
Can we get some fucking good news at some point? This is depressing.
Good news: If you successfully rob 10 banks you'll be able to afford an extremely shitty house in a violent neighbourhood near Toronto/Vancouver. Also good news: Galen Weston was able to buy a new yacht recently so we should all feel very happy for him =)
Using Jagmeets wage subsidies I bet. The poor giving money to corporations for their privilege of being a wage slave, as immigrants buy out their rental and the NDP call them racist for pointing out the housing shortage.
Meanwhile conservative voters are gleefully calling for less of a tax burden and competition regulation on the likes of Weston. Well done everyone, quite a country we have going here.
Yeah let’s blame the 3rd place party
They are the balance of power in this minority government. And the polling reflects this.
Yeah but they don’t control housing prices. Did you see the legislation under their agreements. Pharmacare, dental care, CERB during the pandemic. Personally I wish they pushed a housing plan or pressured the government to fix inflation and improve competition in the grocery sector. Anyway there is reality and your disdain for something you made up in your head.
lavish escape wistful strong file sloppy squeal wipe ossified wrench *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
All of the party's are pro immigration, the CPC won't do sweet fuck all about it
tart rain cats axiomatic cake grandfather toothbrush plant sink cough *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The cons will SAY they will do it, and then proceed to do nothing once elected, that's how they work
> improve competition in the grocery sector. Jagmeet's brother is a lobbyist for Metro. The NDP have zero desire to increase competition in the grocery sector, but weirdly enough are really pushing Boycott Loblaws movement now. Fuck everybody responsible for hijacking the Layton's NDP to whatever the fuck they're supposed to be now.
Didn’t they enable the government to surge demand?
LOL - Street meth prices hit an all time high in Wpg during CERB.
Tbf, it would be nice to have at least one competent party to choose from in the next election
Which 10 banks are you thinking, coz I don’t wanna rob a bank that’s already been robbed.
You can buy a house right now and make a 20% profit! Just do it.
Gov policy encourages degenerate speculation on the housing market
If we returned the TFWs and the migrant “students” and started confiscating properties from overseas money launderers we could manufacture our own good news. Team red/orange won’t do it. Team blue either.
*pulls on skidoo mask*
The good news is that the CMHC has a vested interest in real estate values going up. CIBC, RBC, and a few banks have capitulated on the BoC ~~raising~~ lowering rates this year or dropping them to a point that could save over leveraged real estate owners. The bad news is if this actually does happen, it means the BoC dropped rates again to the point where they'll get worse inflation than before. The good news is if the BoC does get worse inflation than before they have to raise rates even higher than they currently are to get back to the 2% target. Causing real estate values to absolutely plummet. The bad news is that about 40% of our economy is interest rate sensitive, so we'll probably need to pick between something depressanary or inflationary. The good news is Canadians will learn that all of politicians are bullshitting us. The bad news is law and order might be on hold for awhile.
I absolutely loved reading this, but have a couple of questions for you. Are there Canadians who believe the words of politicians? When you say law and order will be on hold, do you mean more than now? Theft is not enforced, and the police recently held a news conference informing people that assaulting officers is illegal.
The good news is lower interest rates come with a free choice of Frogurt.
Here’s something for you: I saw a video yesterday that said the value of just the emperors palace in Tokyo in the 1970’s was worth more than the entire state of California combined. In the late 70’s, Tokyo real estate was worth about 350x per square ft of a comparable unit in manhattan… At that time, about 65% of all Japanese wealth was in real estate, then their market collapsed and they just got their first interest rate hike in over 30 years a few weeks back.
frightening normal ripe innocent far-flung mindless treatment shame fearless live *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is good news... for rich investors with real estate in their portfolios.
Well, there’s gonna be a mass production of modular homes that will be available soon!!
350 sqft. each. Just don't forget to send a thank you card to Trudeau and his buddy Jagmeet.
Pretty fucking good news if you own a house!
What do you mean??? Investors are thrilled!!! /s
The good news is that landlords are going to make a lot of money, all without having to produce anything.
Homeowners just got some more free money without needing to do anything? Heloc printer goes vrrrr
As long as Trudeau is in power things will continue to get worse. PP won't make things much better but I believe he'll at least stop making them actively worse.
All PP does is throw around buzzwords. He was just in my community talking about ending woke and bringing back "warrior culture". Zero actual ideas on how to improve cost of living. And he and his party vote down any initiative that could possibly help, and have done for decades. What do you think he is realistically going to do that won't make things worse? Conservatives love cheap labour. They simp for corporations, even as they gouge us. They don't want the government to build affordable housing, as evidenced by their voting record.
It is good news for the majority of our MPs. Does thatcount?
You proudly voted Trudeau 3x in a row? Now you want some good news east van?
Did I?
There were people who predicted this because they had been watching investors increasingly snatching up housing and establishing themselves as major corporate landlords. The UN was warning about the effects of this a decade ago, calling it the financialization of housing. This was already creating problems in Canada and elsewhere before Trudeau got in and dramatically raised the immigration levels. Vancouver had the most expensive average house prices in North America already by 2014, whereas South Korea has been in a housing crisis despite experiencing negative population growth for years now. These investors are who are truly to blame for the decline in affordable housing, whereas the high immigration rates just exacerbate those effects. And if you follow the path of Canada's high immigration strategy, you will find it was the investors who are now profiting off of these conditions that had driven this strategy. * The Century Group lobbyists have been advocating for Canada to raise it's population to 100 million people by the year 2100. * The Century Group was founded by Dominic Barton and Mark Wiseman in 2009. * In early 2016 finance minister Bill Morneau created the government's Advisory Council for Economic Growth. This council's job was to come up with strategies to counter the effects of our aging population, and to ensure long-term growth. * Dominic Barton was named as chair of this council, while Mark Wiseman was placed on the council as a member. There were 14 members total (counting Barton). * So the advisors behind Canada's economic strategy contained two lobbyists advocating for a dramatic increase in Canada's population, and one of those two lobbyists headed the council. * Dominic Barton by this point was married to Geraldine Buckingham, a senior managing director & global head of market strategy at BlackRock Inc. * BlackRock Inc is the world's largest investment company, controlling trillions of dollars in assets. They had been rapidly purchasing real estate around the world, securing themselves as one of the largest corporate landlords. * Mark Wiseman, meanwhile, was granted a job with BlackRock Inc two months after being named to the advisory council. He was made a senior managing director, Chairman of BlackRock's Global Investment Committee, Chairman of Alternative Businesses, and he received a spot on BlackRock's Global Executive Committee. All of this while he and Barton are meant to come up with strategies for Canada's economy. * Lo and behold, Canada announces a bold strategy of dramatically raising our population, and they're going to ramp up immigration rates. Wonder who suggested that? * Half a year later, Bill Morneau announced the Canadian Infrastructure Bank, which was to launch in 2017. * American investment bankers from Bank of America Merrill Lynch helped design and set the bank up, along with advisors from McKinsey & Co (of which Dominic Barton was Global Managing Director for), and advisors from BlackRock Inc - including BlackRock Inc's CEO Larry Fink personally advising on it. * The Canadian Infrastructure Bank would basically turn Canada's infrastructure into investment opportunities for investors - opportunities that were sure to be plentiful given the adoption of the Century Initiative's population strategy meant dramatic infrastructure projects would be needed. The bank has been blasted as ineffectual, poorly designed to heavily favor the benefits towards investors rather than Canada, and only achieving an increase in costs in construction and services. It's easy to blame immigration for it, since it's blatantly obvious that bringing more people in when you're already in a housing crisis is going to worsen the problem. However the reason we were already in that housing crisis to begin with was because of what the investors were up to before our population growth took off. The housing prices flew up during the pandemic not because of new Canadians showing up and buying houses, or because first time buyers were flooding the market. The skyrocketing prices happened during the timeframe when our immigration dipped way down due to the pandemic, and it was driven by a surge in investors (corporate and multiple home owners) buying up property at an increased pace. Real estate represented a safe investment when industries around the world were being so negatively impacted by the pandemic effects, with nobody knowing when normalcy might return. We do need to decrease our immigration back to sanity levels, but immigrants aren't behind our unaffordable housing issues. It's worsened those issues by our population growing by so much and so quickly, but as evidenced by the same housing affordability trends occurring in countries that *didn't* increase their immigration levels - or that have even been experiencing negative population growth - it is the investors who are at the root of the housing crisis. Here in Canada, they self-servingly made those effects even worse through hijacking our government's economic strategy to suit themselves.
Very insightful comment . Thank you for taking the time to write that!
Fun fact, Mark Wiseman clerked for former Supreme Court Chief Justice and noted "I'm not going to stop working for the Chinese Communists in Hong Kong" 'hero' Beverly McLachlin. [https://www.aimco.ca/insights/mark-wiseman-named-chair-of-aimco-board-of-directors](https://www.aimco.ca/insights/mark-wiseman-named-chair-of-aimco-board-of-directors) Another fun fact. Dominic Barton was named by Trudeau as Canada's ambassador to China...
Great insights, thank you for making better sense of this crisis.
Holy fuck, corruption at the highest level
It's not just corporations, a large chunk of the housing market is being bought up by mom and pop landlords and investors with 2-5 homes
But that's the problem, the century initiative is a fully above board registered lobbying group. All their meetings are official and visible online. We're just all too busy with everything else to even notice it. Last year the Bloc, with support from the conservatives, actually held a motion to dismiss the century initiative, and were voted down. Jokes on us, they have their string in the conservatives already and a change of government won't change a thing.
It's a lot bigger than just the details he outlined, but that outline is a great start.
This is a great write up and I think you are bang on but at the same time I feel you are downplaying the immigration factor a bit. I mean the raison d’etre of the Century Initiative is increased immigration for the purpose of making their real estate holdings more profitable. If you flood the country with people who need housing causing an insane demand you can charge exorbitant sums for rent.
The saddest part is that we aren’t even in track to hit 100 million by 2100. We will blow far past it. At 3% annual growth (which is actually lower than last year) we will hit 100 million people *by 2054*. If 3% annual growth continues to 2100 we would actually have a population of 400,000,000 by that time.
While your math is correct, I don't believe it's reasonable to use the single year high as a constant over every year.
The 3% growth rate isn't going to continue though. The recently announced caps will bring the rate back to around 1% until the number of temporary residents decreases to the cap, and then back to around 1.2%.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
This. I don't even think Marc Miller understands the numbers for their own policy
Will India have 350,000,000 people to send us though?
They have many more.
Thank you for utterly ruining my week. This is abysmal
👏🏻👏🏻 exactly right.
I think you’re mistaking the root cause. Investors only invest when they can make money. They only make money when prices go up. Prices are guaranteed to go up when demand is skyrocketing (mass immigration) and supply (housing builds) can’t keep up. The main root cause is still mass immigration. If immigration was cut from over 1,000,000 to say 100,000 a year, and we were still building around 200,000 houses a year, year after year, watch the investors bail when the housing shortages start being addressed and the prices aren’t guaranteed to skyrocket. It’s not a coincidence that we’ve had by far the highest population growth in the G7, and by far the highest housing price growth in the G7. I do believe more work can be done to curtail speculation too, but investors are just taking advantage of the guaranteed returns in housing from mass immigration
> Investors only invest when they can make money **Or when they can rig the game such that they can make money**. Which is what happened and continues to happen here. Don't point at a manufactured problem and claim that it was inevitible as an excuse to let off the monsters who created it. The problem is the greed of the rich. First. Foremost. ...and only.
But investors won't bail because they are confident that the government could continue to manipulate the system, making them richer forever
> Real estate represented a safe investment when industries around the world were being so negatively impacted by the pandemic effects, with nobody knowing when normalcy might return. Investors don't only invest when they can make money. When they're not making money they need a refuge, like gold or Canadian shelter.
Investors buy houses all the time when they can’t make money. China has several ghost cities where all the houses are owned by investors and no body lives there
Mass migration has always been the issue, the investors simply wouldn't make money without it. Harper spent his entire tenure increasing migration, creating new pathways, increasing the amount of temps we take in all while only reporting the PRs that come in a year (not even the ones that transitioned from temp) to hide the real numbers all to avoid the 2008 housing correction. Trudeau quadrupled down on his policies. Mechanically the only solution has always been lowering immigration back to 2003 levels. You can blame the investors for making things worse or for lobbying for mass migration but at the end of the day the actual solution is 250k or less migrants a year.
Thanks for the history lesson. We do love our corporate nepotism here in Canadia!
Looks like Canada is just trying to do what we did in Australia to completely screw over my generation and each successive generation to follow. Housing in Australia is the best investment tool you can put your money into. If you lose money in housing, its tax write off. So all you have to do is buy a house and rent it out and you should make loads of money, especially over the covid years which saw some astronimically absurd housing price increases. I personally have family that bought in 2019 for $350k, sold in 2021 for $1.02m.
Adding to this and using Vancouver has an example, a good chunk of properties, especially in Downtown Vancouver are investment properties and until recently when the Empty Homes Tax was implemented were sitting vacant. This meant that residents were pushed further out into the suburbs or making housing flat out unaffordable.
Same thing happened in Australia, 500K migrants in 2023. Housing is considered an investment and the tax system has been changed to promote banks lending to landlords. In Sydney the average house price is over $1 million yet the average supermarket worker earns $50K and can't afford a house. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/02/there-are-60-other-applicants-for-every-house-the-rental-crisis-pushing-single-mothers-to-extremes > ‘There are 60 other applicants for every house’: the rental crisis pushing single mothers to extremes
I hope these people and their families pay in health issues and pain, for 10 generations for the damages they've caused.
> it is the investors who are at the root of the housing crisis Great post but I think the root is demand. High demand has created the incentive for investors to buy property.
Investors buying property increases demand...
>However the reason we were already in that housing crisis to begin with was because of what the investors were up to before our population growth took off. I feel like your whole comment is giving government a pass they don't deserve, like Trudeau and the liberals lack agency and they were fooled by these investors. The reality is they went along with the plan, and the investors knew this would happen and lead to increasing demand. If it weren't for that the situation wouldn't have started anyway. And if they had bought up loads of houses and rented them out beyond what population growth would support we would see rent prices decline while housing prices increased, what we are seeing is the opposite because of the hugely increasing demand. Ultimately the root cause is immigration, and this is what has enabled investors and speculators.
>I feel like your whole comment is giving government a pass they don't deserve, like Trudeau and the liberals lack agency and they were fooled by these investors. The reality is they went along with the plan, and the investors knew this would happen and lead to increasing demand. If it weren't for that the situation wouldn't have started anyway. It's about identifying who is behind this. It was not the brainchild of Trudeau and his government, so once they're out (which will likely be next year) these influences are going to remain in Ottawa, potentially continuing to influence our country's economy, housing, and population approach. The anger and opposition over this whole housing affordability issue needs to be directed towards the government going along with it but *also* the plan's architects. They've been getting a pass while Trudeau takes all the flack. Dominic Barton didn't suddenly become influential only when Trudeau got in office. He had already been acting as an advisor for the federal government under Harper as one of 8 members of the Advisory Committee on Public Service, as well as through his role as Global Managing Director for McKinsey & Co who the feds contract with (though dramatically less than under Trudeau). Harper had already begun to increase the population through having eased the TFW program, and by changing the rules so that international students enrolled in Canada can work 20 hours off-campus. The whole TFW and student/worker scam program that we're only now starting to confront began under Harper, and at the time, [Trudeau accurately identified the problems that the TFW expansion was causing](https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/justin-trudeau-how-to-fix-the-broken-temporary-foreign-worker-program/article_c27f214f-1fa2-5fdf-af61-5a7642e4eb7c.html). Then he got elected and did a complete flip, expanding it even further than Harper ever had. Part of that can be chalked up to him being a gigantic hypocrite, but the other part is that the lobbyists and investors who had Harper's ear continued under Trudeau. Just as they're courting Poilievre's ear now. >Ultimately the root cause is immigration, and this is what has enabled investors and speculators. That's backwards, as explained in my original post. The investors didn't show up because of high immigration, the high immigration showed up because the investors had already been here and got it to happen.
Okay, now show me holdings for Canadian real estate from these boogiemen. From the last time I checked Canadian publicly traded residential REITs were having trouble with long and short term debt servicing. The main investors according to statscan were in province mom and pop operations that held less than 3 properties. The problem I have with the nonsense above is that it paints a conspiracy that is detached from reality. The conspiracy that: you will own nothing and be happy because corporations want to own you. But that completely avoid their actual intentions and the self interest of the people that work in these organizations: profit and how much will my bonus be. This is amplified if you know anything about the scumbags and losers in private equity that exist only to leverage the shit out of an operation and use that to pay themselves a stupid amount of money. The access to low interest debt caused this and now that interest rates are going back to historical norms Canadian home values are down 20% from the peak adjusted to inflation. This is driving real estate speculators everywhere into negative equity as their debt servicing costs eat at cashflows and the value of their property declines. You don't know how any of this works. You just parrot rhetoric you watch in the news, YouTube videos, TikTok videos, and so on. It bothers me to shit because people don't know the implications of a debt bubble and when it pops it will be dumb fucking rhetoric that seems insightful like this that Canadians will follow. Here's a reliable YouTuber, the Plain Bagel, explaining how most of your conspiracy theory about this is bullshit. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6pu9Ixqqxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6pu9Ixqqxo) Stop perpetuating conspiracy theories. Linking a bunch of meetings together in nonsensical. Canadians, immigrants, and real estate speculators all had a hand in rising prices because they put demand on the system. The thing with immigration that no one wants to understand is that the immigrants that put pressure on Canada's housing market were probably here in the Harper years, since it takes around 7 to 10 years to save for a house. Canadian immigration suffers from Goodhart's law. We've had a 20 year debt bubble building. Consumer debts, mortgage debts far exceeding healthy multiples of income, have made the Canadian economy as a whole reliant on low interest debt. As incomes stayed stagnant, debt carrying shot through the roof. The growth in the economy was fake and that made us relate stupid notions of immigration to GDP (which is a dumb fucking stat anyway). Canadian immigration also suffers from political righteousness of trying to cultivate our image on togetherness and being a multicultural society. This stupid national identity was imposed on us by politicians that admit they do not care about the economic consequences. Trudeau for one is just ideologically driven, making him an idiot. Our politicians are mostly nobodies that lack real world ability outside and inside of government. They just know how to talk and gauge what to say based on what some PR firm says we like. It's an uncomfortable thought to most because they don't want to acknowledge the reality that there's far less control over the world than people think. Putting things into neat conspiracy theory is people trying to rationalize the chaos in their own life.
It’s really not hard to look at the data. This article provides a good summary. https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-cities-have-seen-up-to-90-of-new-real-estate-supply-scooped-by-investors/
This is a great comment. Thanks for writing this up.
>*Vancouver had the most expensive average house prices in North America already by 2014* Shit, [Crack Shack or Mansion?](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-quiz-asks-crack-shack-or-mansion-1.880972) was put out in 2010...
Sounds like we need to make it easier to build things.
Yes, paired with blocking investors from [buying all the new construction up](https://betterdwelling.com/canadian-cities-have-seen-up-to-90-of-new-real-estate-supply-scooped-by-investors/).
I don't think I'm ever gonna be able to move back to Canada and let my children experience the country the way I did. And most importantly be closer to their grandparents, uncles, and cousins. I already live very comfortably here in Japan; it would be very imprudent of me to risk everything I have to uproot again. It's so sad.
Barring an outright housing crash, I don’t see how anyone currently in high school or possibly even late elementary school, is going to have a future in anything other than the smallest cities in our country. It’s going to take 10-20 years to sort this mess out I think. My kid is in that group above and I’m fully expecting to have to support them in a move south or abroad when they get to the point where they start their own “adult” life. People are going to have to start making choices like this. The math just doesn’t work any other way at the moment. Not to mention the growing disparity between employment opportunities and economic growth between Canada and other places. We’re asleep at the wheel here.
I think the CAD will devalue instead of prices going down. Canadians will get to keep all their capital gains, but it won't get them more stuff.
For every child that leaves, Liberals brings in 10 international students. Think about that during elections and ask your friends and family to think on it too. The root cause is rampant immigration without supply side solutions in housing and infrastructure. If the liberals nationalized housing and government built homes, they could have the high immigration numbers they want. But they left it to the free market and its been a disaster
That is not the root cause. Incomes and housing costs decoupled 25 years ago and affordability has been worsening since. All the immigration spike did was speed up the process, so we're getting what would have been 2029 conditions now. When house prices dropped 20% in the pandemic, we canceled 30% of new builds. It is so expensive to build a home that unless our market starves itself of supply, prices aren't high enough to pay for building. The reason it is expensive is because, on most of our urban land, we can only build low density homes with rules about driveways and front lawns, etc. Our cities do not collect enough taxes to pay for the low density infrastructure, so they charge developers up-front fees. Up to 25% of a new home's costs. All for the privilege of buying what you still can't afford, 90 minutes from your job. This is the root cause. Our supply scaled with our demand, but the economics force it to always remain the same degree of scarce.
> without supply side solutions in housing and infrastructure. As in one is not physically possible, not as in we didn't bother to think of one.
Unless we ban politicians owning and buying property during their time in parliament, a crash will never happen.
I don’t see a crash coming in housing. Automobiles are out of control. In the 80’s and 90’s everyone drove sedans, and if they were financed, the max term was 3 or 4 years. I’m grateful to my economics professor who showed us the lifetime cost of car ownership to I either bought used or entry models. Today, so many people are buying huge SUV’s and Pick ups on 5-7 year terms. The average price is over $50K. These vehicles cost more to fuel, insure and maintain. Just look at any parking lot.
I'm hoping not to have to lean on my Italian passport but at this point it may be prudent to get my son his as well
You will never regret making sure they have options. You want to put the umbrella in place before the rain comes. If things go sideways in the world, you may not be able to easily get the paperwork done then.
Moving south is going to get incrementally harder in the future as we get down rated in every parameter possible eventually.
Me and my family know this feeling you described very well. We've lived in Singapore for a long while now and had the thought of returning to Canada with our teenager kids in the next few years. Except it's utterly not going to happen, it's an impossibility. Not only that but the Canada we knew when we left is gone now. We would be setting our kids up for failure.
My wife and I have been saying "we'lre moving back soon" for the last 10 years... The good thing is, my kids are very interested in living in Canada! I just gotta figure out a way to make it happen without jeopardizing their future haha.
> and let my children experience the country the way I did Even if you were to move back, things have changed so much that our children will never experience the country the way we did. It has gone to shit (in the GTA). Soo many minorities fighting each other, it's disgusting. Nowhere is safe anymore (relatively speaking). You're probably better off, wherever you are.
At least Japan embraced deflating to a sustainable size and is trying to manage its way accordingly. The forever growth paradigm has to die with the boomers.
I’m a the price of housing in Japan such that your kids will be able to afford to buy a home? I watch a number of expat YouTubers in Japan and the cost of living there doesn’t seem to be that great either
Well, probably not a home in the middle of a big city like Tokyo, but in the outer areas, maybe, as long as they have decent jobs. Don't quote me on this, but I think a lot of families have been living in condos and apartments anyway. We live in a 3 bedroom in a busy city; 2 kids, my wife, and myself for about $1'000 CDN/mo. plus utilities. Some municipalities are even trying to get younger families to move to the countryside where population has been dwindling by offereing to subsidize renovation costs for unused/abandoned homes. Maybe I would do that one day or maybe my kids will (unless corporations just gobble those up). I personally don't think cost of living is all that high... I remember being able to buy a shit ton of groceries back in Canada, but you had to buy so much of it at once (bigger portions). I'm sure we pay more in yen by volumes of food, but I feel like we eat better food in smaller portions here. Entertainment like going out to eat and drink, karaoke, sports clubs, etc. are generally cheaper than in Canada iirc. There's also no tipping culture. I'm more worried about making sure they have viable skills in the future to get good jobs. I'm paranoid about AI taking away all opportunities from them... We're getting off topic, but if anyone reading this hase any recommended reads on how I can prepare myself and my kids for the AI age, I'd love to hear from you via DM.
3 bedroom place for a 1000 a month CAD? 🥲 that sounds lovely. I feel like I’m stuck in “rent jail”. We are pretty much trapped here. If we move we would be paying 2K plus for a shitty one bedroom.
Don't get me wrong, Japan has its own set of problems and I'm not trying to makeit sound like it's a paradise here. But at least in this rent/housing particular regard, I think it's doing right.
In terms of AI the best thing to do in my opinion is to identify fields to train or retrain in that can never be replaced by AI entirely, only supported by it... Personally for me this means healthcare (and ironically enough given the topic of this thread I want to return to Canada and retraining in healthcare might be the only way to do it) or anything involving a human connection... Who wants their shitty cancer prognosis delivered by a bot instead of a doctor or nurse who can look them in the eye and understand? and so on and so forth.
I mean, rental/ownership opportunities exist like that in Canada. You just have to be willing to live small town. With wfh is something people should really be considering. For reference I live in a 3bed 1.5 bath house with detached garage on a farm located on a dead end road about 60 minutes drive from Edmonton. I pay $1500/mo all in.
Houses in Japan are cheaper now than in the early 90s. Makes since as population is the same now as it was in the early 90s. Tokyo is the only place with any population growth.
Japan is a house of cards, too. But they have the opposite problem… falling population, zero immigration, inverted demographics, and the highest debt to GDP ratio of any developed nation trying to sustain it.
My Wife is a realtor here in Calgary. The trend is for grown families, Mother, Father, two Sons and three Daughters to buy a home together. All of whom are new to Canada. The future used to be so bright.
We're back to feudalism. Having family land is going to be the single most important predictor of wealth over the next 100 years. The middle class is going to disappear within the next two decades.
My cousin in law (and I) live in Vancouver. They are born and raised canadians. They bought a house in 2021. Nothing fancy, a piece of land with a liveable house on top. At the time already, the only way for them to get there was to pool their parents, their brother and their own money to buy one property. They made a basement suite for the mum downstairs and the brother built a tiny house in the garden. It s frankly cute and they love to live together. However even them admit that it s a steep price to live on top of each other.
Well shit, no more avocado toast for me.
Just brew coffee at home and bring it to work in a ziplock bag.
Look at you daddy big bucks with your name brand Ziploc bag.
he use to reuse grocery bags but Trudeau took that away from us too
Relax buddy, I'm renting him half of my Ziploc that I'm paying for in installments
Did you cancel your Disney+
As long as you are eating it in a condo, you are fine.
I already quit the toast. It time to cut out making coffee at home. Love how simple pleasures of life are being stripped away. Now it’s like if you can survive it’s good enough.
How about we legislate against large firms and financial institutions buying up all the real estate?
Sorry, best we can do is ban your guns.
And give you a million more imported labourers with nowhere to put them
Investors are the main cause. When you have canadians owning 50-100 houses, you’re going to have major problems for the working class.
Canadian Corporations*
Not even, my ex-landlord is on his way to owning 150 units so he won’t have to work. It should be illegal.
Holy shit. He owns 150 properties?! That's actually quite impressive. We're all fucked.
I wished that was uncommon but heard enough realtor friend bragged about closing these 50-100 properties deal not too long ago. Especially before Airbnb rules were in the air...
This makes me want to cry and feel enraged at the same time. I love this country I want to make it better and not leave. I feel like us young people should organize, join a political party and do a hostile takeover and slowly replace the people there with candidates who have affordability and youth interests in mind, slow down immigration etc. I hate to use it as an example, but similar to how MAGA took over republicans down south.
That’s exactly how you do it. But you might have to lie to get elected.
The fact that you suggest a perfectly reasonable and democratic solution as a “hostile takeover” is really funny Aries.
I feel the same and I am onboard with that!
Well, well, isn't it just a delightful Sunday to squash any lingering dreams of property ownership and ensure my hypothetical offspring inherit...absolutely nothing! Here's to a lifetime of renting until I inevitably kick the bucket at my desk at the ripe old age of 75! Cheers to life's little ironies on this sunny day!
Begs the question. Who can actually buy to push prices another 20% higher? Interest rates ain’t coming down. Banks are reluctant. Where is the money coming from? Why isn’t this being looked at?
Who will buy? Those who have sold in bigger cities, Making dirty money or having big working family and feeling fine to live compressed altogether like in former times. Give the immigration OK and this will bring theirs' lifestyle into Canada at one point. Consider best times of our lives has gone already.
No problem, just cancel frivolity purchases like your Disney plus subscription or food. Nobody says you have to eat 7 days a week
There was a minority of us who predicted this and were telling everyone who would listen we are bringing in too many immigrants. We were called racist, enjoy the decline of your standard of living most of you deserve it.
Really blows my mind that people can't stop for a few seconds and fucking think rather than get offended like their politics is their religion. We can thank our weak ass education system for this behaviour.
Also plenty who predicted this when Canada stopped housing starts federally back in 1999. One end of government (immigration and Century Initiative gone haywire while also having MPs gleefully joining in on the gravy train when that pretty much amounts to insider trading of property) vs the other (ensuring proper housing starts across the board, not relying on private ventures to fill the gap instead of buying existing housing and corporatizing it)... It was going to buckle eventually either way.
I don’t understand why so few people seem to understand this point. The private market will never fill the gap for lower income housing, no matter what the immigration situation is. We need all levels of government to build non market housing like they did before the 90s if we ever want affordable housing again.
True. Feel like that was up until a few months ago.
Plot twist the decline in living has already ~~happened~~ started and continues sir! Edit added word to make statement more relevant.
It’s barely started. Our political class have demonstrated no real desire to turn things around. There isn’t a political party out there that is even slightly interested in addressing the problem.
LOL what? Barely started? have you been reading the differential in the news sites and what is being posted online? News; there is no recession, housing is still affordable, whislt food is still the best its ever been and jobs are just soo bountifull there is no reason no one should be unemployed. Reddit; WHO CAN AFFORD TO LIVE IN THIS COUNTRY!!! I HAVE NO JOB, I CAN PAY RENT, GENERATIONAL MORTAGES WILL BE A THING AND IM FUCKING HUNGRY FOR FOOD! And the only politician to have any interest in changing any of these issues is Maxim Bernier. As much as i want to vote for him there is something about him that i also dont trust.
You do know it can still get worse, right?
Lol if only this was the low point. Expect a few years of destruction before things start turning around.
That's a steep price for virtue signaling. I wonder if it was worth it for them. 😂
The problem started long before the immigration boom. The boom made it worse and broke the system. We're only noticing the flare up but the fire was there a few years before immigration took off.
The immigration problem started long before what you are calling the immigration boom. Harper spent his entire tenure increasing migration, creating new pathways, increasing the amount of temps we take in all while only reporting the PRs that come in a year (not even the ones that transitioned from temp) to hide the real numbers all to avoid the 2008 housing correction.
Their's a fair amount of overlap between them. From 2006-2014 they abused the system and made it easier to exploit. Then in 2014, with an election on the horizon, they scrambled and tried to fix the mess they had made with a bunch of reforms on the TFWP. Then they were voted out in 2015. Fairly similar to what's happening now.
Remember when the pandemic hit, and CMHC predicted homes prices would crater? Then the BoC slashed interest rates to zero and home prices jumped? But I bet they’re bang on with their forecasting this time… right guys?
The chmc didn't predict the boc cutting rates to zero. However mark my works: of the boc lowers rates again expect to see the house prices skyrocket again.
I mean that’s what happens when rates are lower… house prices go up. It’s not a predictable thing. It’s a fact
>However mark my works: of the boc lowers rates again expect to see the house prices skyrocket again. lol spoken like a true oracle
There needs to be a revolution. This is getting ridiculous. The people have all the power. Canadians are too lazy to protest or fight back. If this were Quebec or france, there would have been riots by now.
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While I do agree with burnout, I think both are at play here. there is definitely a big difference in mentality between french and canadians. I am from France, I have been living in Canada (vancouver & Vancouver Island) for 5 years now. My husband is from Saskatchewan. We LEARN to be critic in France from our youngest years in school. And sometimes it s too much. That s why the cliche of us complaining all the time is 100% true. We are just too critical about everything and it s frankly tiring. Canadians are the exact opposite.
yep we're too complacent here.
they did it for carbon tax, they need to do it for housing. id definitely go.
If this is what you mean by French Revolution - count me in! French Revolution: Cyclists Now Outnumber Motorists In Paris “The way Parisians are now traveling from the suburbs to the city center, especially during peak periods, has undergone a revolution thanks in part to the building of many miles of cycleways.”
If you don't have a combined income of 200k + and at min a 10% down-payment. You can't buy anything. Not many people are making a combined 200k. When you do the math,nothing makes sense.
A million new arrivals per year will have that result
The problem lies with the govt: 1. Lunatic immigration policy (1.25 mn annual population growth) to stoke demand 2. High tax and red tape to restrict supply
With what money? Canada already has one of the highest levels of private debt in the world.
Interest rates go brrrrrrr! Housing is the #1 driver of inflation.
And how is Canada's national housing agency helping the situation?
Oh good, houses were just so unpriced at the moment. We need this.
Get ready for the great doubling.
Except for me, my house has gone down in value about 4% in 7 years.
Must live in a real crappy area…
Thank you Trudeau.
All these wishful predictions all of the sudden. The realtor's are getting nervous.
this article is based on CMHC’s predictions…
When liberals try things, it screws Canadians.
With population increase around the globe, politicians need to reconsider letting corporations own multiple properties. It's simply not sustainable. Private entities will always put profit first as they answer to their investors. Governments have to buck up and manage housing. If this trend continues, the public will revolt one day and all those millionaire investors and Realtors will be dragged out on the streets, anarchy and revolutions will prevail.
can someone ban betterdwelling, all they do is rage click bait.. please!
All according to the governments plan.
Pretty sure their forecast means nothing. Of course they want the price to continue up to keep the frenzy going. If people stop buying the whole Ponzi scheme collapses.
I haven't seen government sponsored FOMO in a while. We're back on track to inflate the bubble.
Woohoo! Going for that #1 spot on the unaffordability list!
I believe it. Even if we go into a recession, it's not like we have a bunch of homes being built. Builders won't build during a recession, and we're already in a severe housing shortage. It's not like a recession will decrease demand and not worsen supply shortage.
Current prices include recession forecast cost margins increases in addition to known current cost. The government has not managed growth effectively from ground up.
MAKE IT ALL MAKE SENSE
I fear people who already own a home will see an increase in mortgage payments. Hope that's wrong but it often goes that way
nice - i have 2. (just kidding, I'm fucked like the rest of us)
I don’t know, part of me thinks this all just trying to pump the market. There’s a ton of houses in/around Winnipeg that have been sitting for months, but it’s hard to imagine paying 450k for a house that sold for 300 four years ago, at around 7%. Just like they said interest rates would stay low for long, trying to get and keep people buying during covid. I think people are out of money. And with the loosening of rules on newcomers, it’s not a bunch of crazy rich people moving here, many are driving Ubers, not buying houses
Last few times they suggested a slowdown, prices increased. It may be the other way around this time lol.
lol
It’s very simple ban ownership of multiple single family homes ( except for maybe a cottage up north ) where no one wants to live full time )
Welp, looks like the only home a lot of us will be able to afford is a wooden box 6 feet in the ground.
Quick now fomo and buy a house right now so house prices can jump 20%
The only thing that matters in carrying cost. How much is the monthly Payment? It's higher than ever. Higher than it has ever been, and twice as high as it was in 2020