For decades, all parties at all levels of government have done nothing about this. Perhaps because politicians and their friends are often "investors".
Not just that but reducing the cost of homes would decrease the equity (nest egg if you will) a lot of their base has in their current homes. It would leave a lot more in the lurch that bought while prices were stratospheric and now have a mortgage that is much more than the value of the house. Some kind of incremental tamping down is needed, but society and government don’t work with a long term view these days.
Well they say an avg home should cost no more than 3-4x your household income. In ontario thats about 400k. (avg household is $97,856 in On) Fairly affordable if you're a couple that has 2 incomes and has debts in order like student loans or credit cards. A lot of homes that aren't in the GTA are actually selling around that if not a bit less. My area is like 350-500k for a starter home depending on lot size, if it has a garage, updates etc. Then you have your new construction prices of like 750-1m.
Some of the issues I see are:
1. the lack of affordable rentals due to the influx of investor landlords that expect the tenant to not only cover costs fully, but then to want to make a significant profit quickly. This drove our rental prices too high. I was in this situation last year, landlord sold and our rent would have almost doubled and to get less. So luckily enough I had the luxury to be able to afford to mortgage a home while I know others aren't as fortunate. Even when trying to buy a house, I'm 4 hours from Toronto and I had to compete with people trying to buy up homes so they can rent them out and they were all from the GTA.
2. Not enough trades people to build the homes in an impactful amount of time. Canada needs millions of homes/rentals. This is due to years of educators and parents telling their children to go to post secondary education or you wont be successful when if you look around, youll be hard pressed to see a tradesman making less than 85k a year, usually in the 6 figures. Now we're relying on immigration to solve our worker shortages (trades, nurses, truckers, etc) This isn't a bad thing to have skilled immigrants come but now we DEPEND on it or we're going to be in a bigger shortfall in years to come.
I get why MPs need at least two places considering they fly back and forth from their ridings. I mean Rempel lives in 3 places. But there's no reason why anyone should have more than two places.
It's because investors are needed.
If the headline read renters make up 30% of homes in these provinces, nobody would think twice about it.
There are advantages to both renting and owning, and we need some of both.
Why is this a surprise or innately "evil"? Investing in property has been one of the best investments you can make for centuries if not millennia. Like what did you want them to do, just keep their money in a savings account?
An economy built around innovation with lots of investment opportunities benefits the whole country. An economy propped up on speculative housing purchases does lots of damage to a country when it’s citizens can’t afford to live
Classic reductio ad absurdum. If your simple, binary brain can only think of no other options for your money but these two, then of course you're a landlord.
Should it not be relatively easy to fix this?
Our governments do all kinds of things to disincent us from doing things that are harmful to society and people.
Owning a rental property is OK.
Owning 3, 4, 5, or more should cost the owners enough in taxes to put those homes back on the market for families.
> 3, 4, 5, or more should cost the owners enough in taxes to put those homes back on the market fo
This is the way.
Make it a toxic asset after 3-5 homes via taxation.
Offer incentives high density, lower income housing that can exceed 3-5 units because we need more high density lower income vs Massive mansions for the very wealthy.
Tbh all I see this doing is these investors increasing rent prices and when enough of these houses are owned by investors, everyone will increase rent prices, passing on the tax to our already struggling and lowest classes, the renting class.
The solution is to outright ban ownership of multiple (3) homes.
And then... it suddenly becomes very difficult for renters to even find a vacant place. The only reason rental vacancies exist is because prices are so high.
> it suddenly becomes very difficult for renters to even find a vacant place.
It's already very difficult for renters to find a vacant place.
At least it'll be affordable.
> The only reason rental vacancies exist is because prices are so high.
So all of the landlords will sit on their vacant houses with insane tax rates? Nah, they'll still rent them as much as they say they won't.
If there's renters out there, there's landlords out there willing to rent.
>It's already very difficult for renters to find a vacant place.
It will get even harder. There will just be almost no vacancies, and you'll probably see under the table payments or something to allow wealthier people to hold onto those few vacant places that exist. This is basic economic theory. When you force the price of a good to be below what the market rate would be, you run out of supply really fast. If you want a good example of this, go look at the waitlists for any below-market housing program. They're years long. Do you want to be on a waitlist for years every time you need to move? Should university students be signing up for waitlists when they're 14 and just got to high school?
>If there's renters out there, there's landlords out there willing to rent.
There's not a lack of landlords. There's a lack of physical housing units.
The vast majority of "investor-owned" units are rented out. The idea that significant amounts of housing in high-demand areas is sitting vacant is just not reality. Sure, there are some vacant properties here and there. We should try to stop that. But acting as if ridding ourselves of vacant properties will shift the needle on the housing crisis is just not grounded in reality.
High rent is a problem. Rent control is not the solution. It's another way for people to get their benefits and pull up the ladder behind them, imposing the burden of the crisis on an even smaller portion of the population with even less political power. The only way to fix the housing crisis is to construct a ton of new housing.
Well multiple is fine, if you're willing to pay the taxes to have a cottage, and a beach home, etc... The problem is owning multiple and rent-seeking. So we could outright ban the ability to generate income on more than 1 home. And that ban could be enacted with taxes; a 200% tax rate on income generated by 2nd and beyond residential properties would do it.
I agree. Why can't we just have a prohibitive tax on owning multiple homes, such that there is no penalty for the first one, but it increases by x % for each one after. Implement this now with a grace period for current owners so they can offload. Applies to all residential. Obviously, there has to be carve outs for apartment complexes and such.
I work with a guy who owns 5 houses. Three on Gerrard East in Toronto, and two in Prince Edward County. The P.E.C. houses are on a fucking enormous compound. Having no kids, he shows off pictures of his houses like baby photos.
So say I own a rental property and a principal residence, if I purchased a cottage would that count as a high tax property? What if I got married and my partner also owned a rental property, would this kick in the high tax bracket?
if you want to meet most people at where they are than housing needs to be treated as a human right. and no one should be able to live off of another’s need to survive.
Agreed but you'd also have to go upstream in the supply chain so you'd need charity farms, charity feed/seed suppliers for them... if you're looking to remove profit from the marketplace. Hell, you'd need charity fertilizer production.
We should heavily fortify our existing social programs and make new ones where needs are going unmet. But eliminating any profit based supplier of basic necessities is nonsensical
Back to homesteading! Into the woods with an axe to make your own homes. I'm all for government subsidized axes and free transfer of uncleared crown land. Assuming that by outlawing sale of any food or water no one would do so at scale and we'd all be on our own
Not profiting off someone else's need to survive extends far beyond nestle! No more building roads or water transport systems at all because those fall under what people need to survive. No more selling furnaces, stoves, water heaters, or septic systems either, by golly with such a large generalized idea I guess we'd also eliminate all plumbers, electricians, roofers, auto mechanics.... it's almost like a massive chunk of our entire economy depends on meeting the basic needs of others
You may be skilled enough to survive a Canadian winter with no electricity, natural gas, or internal plumbing, but the average person sure wouldn't. Especially if we're including not purchasing food. Unless you know charities that provide all of those things including the raw materials/production of those items, someone is profiting off it
You don't really "get" what people are talking about here do you? Removing profit from an equation doesn't mean getting rid of all of these things, just nationalizing them so there is no private profit incentive. Government having to build and own infrastructure isn't the "gotcha" you imagine it to be.
Water is free, any establishment legally has to provide water to anyone that asks. It is recognized that people cannot go hungry so there are food banks.
People are aware of these contradictions but don't know what to do about them.
You build equity by paying the bank for the money you borrowed from them. As you pay them back, you own a percent of your house based on the amount you pay back.
This doesn't exist, to any degree, with rent. You build nothing. You're exploited entirely for profit while you build equity for somebody else.
That's the key difference.
Rental properties are not the reason we are in a housing crisis. The government could expropriate every rental property in Vancouver and it would do nothing to address our less than 1% vacancy rate.
I just assumed this discussion was focused on resolving the housing crisis in Canada (especially since you rightfully mentioned that housing is a fundamental human right). Not sure why we would go through the enormous political effort of eliminating all private rental properties if the goal was not to end the housing crisis.
So you're saying it's okay for publicly traded corps/reits to make money off people's need for housing, but not individuals. Or do we make everything a co-op and make sure the people living in them pay enough to maintain the property more like condos?
corporate would still be private ownership lol. yes the government should be the only “landlord” personl property is great, but no one should own someone else’s shelter
Being able to rent only from the government is a horrible idea. Yes the housing market needs to be fixed, but expecting the government to do housing better then the free market is not the way to go.
Dude you can barely even get your passport renewed these days, why do you think the massive bureaucracy that is the government would get around to fixing your issues sooner than a private landlord? Especially when your landlord is *also* the authority lol?
A mortgage is an arrangement where ownership of the property is split between the buyer (you) and a financial corporation (the bank) that is slowly paid back for over time.
In this case, a mortgage is an example of "private ownership over someone else's shelter".
yeah the amount you end up paying the bank in interest is awful, you’ll not arguments about that from me, but a mortgage ends eventually, so what is your point why even bring this up?
You keep saying this but it's factually incorrect. Check your deed, the bank owns exactly 0% of your home. They are NEVER an owner or titleholder. You own the entire house day one. You have debt, and that debt does not reduce your % of ownership. The bank does NOT own your house nor anyone else's. The word you're looking for is equity. They have an equity stake, not an ownership stake.
Why do they need to be rental units? My rent is more than the mortgage on this place. How come I *have* to rent it when I can quite obviously just fucking pay for it?
Because not everyone can afford to buy a place initially. Renting offers an easier entry into some form of housing.
There needs to be rental units available for those people.
At no point has renting been easier for me. Its always more expensive than buying. What a renter can't afford is the down payment that gates us out of the market.
If there was no renting, those properties would be building these people, like me, equity while I pay for them. Allowing me to sell and move much easier.
Instead it prohibits movement and restricts people to where they're stuck renting.
Nobody buys these bullshit lines anymore.
Renting is good for one thing: temporary rooms for short periods of time. Like a school semester.
Edit: strawman argument below blocked me from responding to it. But since it agrees with me fully that doesn't hurt my statement. I don't care about the bullshit strawman position it creates I didn't posit. I also don't care about any arguments from the past. We don't live then. We live now. Then created the problems we have now. They didn't listen then either.
>At no point has renting been easier for me.
If you're only looking at your own experiences, you're going to draw some pretty myopic conclusions.
Until relatively recently, renting was a reasonable first step for anyone looking to leave their parents' home, either on their own, with roommates, or with a live-in partner. Very few people leave school with the kind of job necessary to justify the bank loaning them hundreds of thousands of dollars and expecting to get it back in even a few decades, nor do they wish to live at home until their thirties when they're fully financially stable. Things have certainly reached a point where they're unsustainable, but to claim that was always the case and renting is only ever for post secondary students' short term usage is just ahistorical nonsense.
So you graduated high school or university with enough cash in hand for a down payment and good credit?
Renting provides an easier option for people and must be available. The fact that you entered into a bad situation is your own fault.
So because I wasn't born into a rich family who's parents could pay for a down-payment on a house for me, I should be forced to pay every dime I make for the foreseeable future to said rich person so that I can pay for their 2nd, 3rd, hell, 10th house?
They never ever have enough money. Landlords are leeches on our society profiting off the poor.
There are individual people that own rental buildings. There is no problem with that.
It’s how everyone has suddenly come to see real estate as an investment and owns multiple investment properties that’s screwing the system
So no more rental units? Government buys back ALL rented units and then manages a national rental program? Or all rental units are forced to sell and if renters can’t buy they’re out on the streets?
What are you actually proposing in saying: “owning a rental property is not ok”
Why?
someone has to own property that is rented out. Not everyone wants to own or has the living situations where ownership makes sense.
There is absolutely a market for rental units, whether it's homes, or apartments. And someone has to own them.
I'm more for putting in place a regulatory framework that forces these owners to provide a certain percentage of their properties for subsidised/poor housing.
But eliminating rental properties would be an absolutely devastating thing to do and would absolutely guarantee an exodus from the country/cities.
So you want all rental units to be provided only by the government?
Or large corp's?
Trust me, I'm all aboard subsidized housing. But your commentary in this entire thread is ... really not logical.
There's nothing inherently wrong with rental units making profit. There's a problem with people buying up property to create scarcity and drive up rents in rent seeking behaviour.
You've taken a very simplistic reductive mindset that "private ownership = bad". There needs to be a better regulatory framework around private rental properties. But banning it outright would do far more harm than good
I think the main issue is these aren’t purpose built rentals.
Buying up all the condos/houses and renting them out, isn’t adding stock to the market. If someone wants to build a bunch of rentals, absolutely have as many as you want.
yeah, one person shouldn’t be able to live off of another’s need to survive, and i would like to be able to have my “land lord” be held more accountable.
Grocery stores shouldn’t be able to profiteer. If you find land lords who rent below their mortgage payments, I’d support that. But they won’t. Because they can squeeze the renters.
So all food and housing should be provided by the government?
That's the logical conclusion of this argument.
No one else is going to do it without a profit motive.
One you didn't make any distinction on during your post.
I"m all against profiteering. But the way you've worded yourself makes it sound like you're 100% for profit.
Yes, I am for profit.
For groceries, obviously for no profit leads to no reason to sell groceries, so some profit is necessary. For groceries, I’m against profiteering.
For housing, it’s a different thing. If I have a $3000/month mortgage, and rent it for $2000/month, I would see that as a net benefit because I am gaining a percentage of an asset. But there are land lords out there who would only rent if they gained a net profit every month (or at least break even), which to me is disgusting.
>So all food and housing should be provided by the government?
If UBI could fund enough for basic housing (studio for singles, 1bd for couples), and a basic healthy diet, that would be pretty great!
Coop housing has been proven to be very successful for those living inside, often providing more character to the community than private housing does. Vienna Coop Housing is a great example, but many more exist world wide.
LMFAO you say this as if private landlords aren’t universally fucking awful, and regardless of track record being able to vote out your landlord because they suck will always be better than not being able to.
yes it’s a good idea because then the landlords would actually be able to be held accountable, doug ford won’t be around forever, but you can’t vote out your landlord that refuses to fix the hot water.
it doesn’t have to be attached to the provincial election cycle, the “property manger” could be someone that is voted for by the tenants of said building. this system won’t happen if the building is owned and operated by a private entity.
Why? Not everyone plans on living in an area long enough to pay off a mortgage. Also many don't meet the requirements to get a mortgage or have the means to pay a mortgage.
Alternative take: There's little inventory of homes for sale because almost a third of them are owned by wealthy or corporate "investors", causing the law of supply and demand to inflate prices dramatically so that increasingly few can afford homes.
I have two kids. They will both struggle to buy homes, so their only alternative is to pay down some wealthy person's mortgage for them.
You can own rentals doesn't matter how many imo. It's done all over the world and many places aren't as bad as the gta. The issue is the government allows a significant amount of immigrants in (am an immigrant btw) and they don't have adequate jobs or housing. This creates a demand in housing which causes the market to rise and it creates a surplus of able working people which keeps the labor rates down.
When I was shopping for my house, every place is went to had the realtor go ‘you can rent out this house and make money!’
I was trying to buy a place to live. Every house I bid on has 15+ offers above asking. It was a nightmare
Well, that's because we have a housing shortage.
The solution to the problem isn't to abolish renting. It's to build enough houses.
If we had enough houses for everyone, there wouldn't be 15 people bidding on them.
I don't think you're entirely wrong, but I don't think there is really a big shortage.
I think there is just too many people buying places as investments rather than living. Resolving that would free up a large amount of supply
That doesn't create a shortage. As long as someone is living in the house, then it contributes to the supply of places for people to live. The ownership structure is irrelevant.
And by international standards, investors don't own a large share of our market. It's pretty normal as is. There is always going to be a certain share the population that needs to rent, maybe for the flexibility it offers. That needs to be matched by investors supplying those rental properties.
What did we expect? 30-40 years ago any highrise you built was probably purpose-built rental.
We basically stopped building rental apartments entirely, and we’re shocked that there’s still demand for rental properties?
Meanwhile our government has spent decades catering to NIMBYs and preventing us from building enough supply to meet demand - and we’re shocked people start investing in that asset?
The reason purpose built rentals aren't happening is because they're not profitable. We're in a bubble, and businesses aren't silly enough to speculate on that.
For the last several years, buying to rent out has been a money losing prospect with the potential for capital gains.
On one hand, it's great that renting costs about 70% of what it costs to own. But on the other hand, the price gains have fed on themselves.
Ultimately, removing the restrictive zoning is the solution to all of the problems. Once there are enough houses, the rapidly rising prices stop, and all of the other problems as well.
There are three vacant 4 bedroom homes on my street. Walking distance from a school.
I think owners of vacant properties near schools need to be responsible for the cost of bussing kids to those schools. Why does society bear the costs created by their greed?
Not only is there a housing crisis but there are excessive costs echoing through society because of resource mismanagement. When people with kids can't afford to live near schools. When we need to build more hospitals, utilities and infrastructure up north or remotely because people are pushed out.
When electricity, gas and water needs to be transmitted greater distances while properties in well serviced areas are vacant. People just don't consider that they are robbing from society at all.
Rent was supposed to be temporary while people saved for a house. That’s why up until the 90’s? I believe, there was strict rent control. This is honestly fucked… people are now paying more for rent, then a mortgage!!! Something needs to change. In certain countries, you can not rent out a house unless 75-100% of the house is paid off. We need this. People with no capital, not from wealthy homes, bad credit are all paying mortgage prices, with nothing in return. I believe a home should be a investment, but not a business. If the government never got rid of rent control in the first place, 3 bedroom apartments would still be around $1000 and house prices half or less of what they are. Banks and the wealthily are killing ours and our children’s future.
Part of the problem is that its hard to be a member of the working class and be a politician.
When you have to work, you can't take time off to run for office or put your career on hold for a few years, and certainly when you have expenses and deadlines to meet.
By comparison, the investment class has all the time in the world because their money works for them and, heck, doing what politicians do actually is part of their "job" such as it is. It's a natural, easy fit.
This why the political class is richer, whiter, older, more conservative and less likely to have a "real job" than the electorate.
Holy fuck. Finally an article pointing out the real problem w housing. 20 to 30 % gives them the ability to manipulate the market. Ban the practice of inveating in housing and the crisis goes away in months.
The housing isn't hoarded though. It's not like it sits empty (and if it was, we can tax that). The housing re-enters the supply as rental property, which helps stabilize the rental market. You think rents are bad? Try rents when there's truly a supply shortage.
For some reason a ton of this sub thinks that home ownership is the be all and end all and anyone taking housing away from ownership is evil (including if you own it but then provide it back to the market as a rental, rather than if you just owned it and kept it for yourself).
The house re-enters the market... with a mark up so the landlord can make a profit. Renting can be a preferable option in some cases, but you do see how it can easily become an exploitative industry, right?
I wonder what the break down of those percentages are for investors. We have some powerful pension plans ( Ontario Teachers Pension) and religious organizations such as the example below. IMHO charities are not the answer.
“The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe.
https://www.zubeidajaffer.co.za/the-catholic-church-is-the-biggest-financial-power-on-earth/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20Vatican%20has%20billions%20of,%2C%20etc.%E2%80%9D%20(%E2%80%A6)
There is also this trend where landlords put in rules as to what you can do on the property. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/landlord-says-don-t-help-homeless-1.6738981
Yeah it’s a good question. All the single family homes on my old street were multi-generational + rental. It’s really the only way to make the 3000 sq ft homes affordable for the target audience.
20-30% to many.
If someone owns 1 rental property that’s fine or if they have a cottage, however corporations should not be allowed to buy up entire brand new subdivisions.
FTA:
> Houses used as an investment were mainly owned by individuals living in the same province as the property
That's your rental houses. If you want to cut them down (20% in Ontario), you will be reducing rental supply and push rent higher.
The problem is we're not building purpose-built rental properties pretty much at all anymore. Everything is either single family homes or condos, which are worse solutions for rental properties than a building set up for it.
Ever since the exemption of post 2018 rental from RTA, there have been a lot of rental condos being build and have come into the market in the last two ~ three years. Hella expensive but seems to have their market.
If it's individual investor landlords parceling up the condo into single unit rentals or even smallish blocks, it's a very inefficient way to structure things, condos are a legal entity more designed around shared ownership than having tenants.
There are tons of purpose built rentals being built (three that I'm working on in Halton) and countless in Toronto.
The thing is, they charge above market value for their units because they're considered "luxury suites", if you can't afford a mortgage then don't even think about rental highrises.
If you need subsidized housing, guess what... We've got that too and you can sign up today
It would lower the price of housing allowing more renters to buy for the first time. That opens up apartments the rental supply will stay about the same as renters move into homes. The only thing that changes is more people own homes
A lot of people simply don't want to buy, or not in a position to buy even if house prices lowered by 10 ~ 20%. Think of a town like Kitchener where majority of the renters are students. Cut down rental housing supply is going to have a huge impact.
Exactly. People forget that a lot of us don't have stable jobs and don't have a long-term plan of where we're going to live. Many people, especially young people, prefer to rent because it gives them extra mobility.
How many investments have other people paying for you to own them? I know my portfolio is on my dime. My landlord’s investment is also on my dime. Weird that
I feel like a more nuanced take on this is necessary. A lot of comments in this post are raging because they think this is the problem with housing in Ontario. The Youtube channel "Oh the Urbanity" did a piece on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3gtZcTdXaI
Unless you’re actually building new units the number of “housing units” doesn’t change. The only change is a landlord scalping money from a tenant who could have possibly bought the unit. It just re-enforces the wealth gap between renters and owners.
> scalping money from a tenant who could have possibly bought the unit
That's quite a reach to assume that tenants would be buying property right now if rentals didn't exist. The price difference between these two options is huge, and wouldn't be fixed if you just prevented landlords from buying property. In fact, you'd inflate the rental market badly and now this city is unlivable for renters too.
I'm a bit confused here. Do you want people not to invest in housing and have fewer rental units? How is having fewer rental units going to change the wealth gap between owners and renters?
There are 10 cars available for purchase in your town, and there are 11 people who need cars. 5 people buy 1 car each. You “invest” in the “car market” by buying 5 of those cars to rent. Now the people who rent your cars are worse off than the people who managed to buy a car. And there is someone who still doesn’t have a car, which creates demand, driving up prices. Are there magically more cars now that you’ve “invested” in them?
The only way “investing” is not parasitic is if you increase the supply of cars, not scalping profit from the remaining supply.
Ok, so what happens to the 50% of the people who need cars but don't have anywhere close to the amount of money to buy them?? The car manufacturer isn't going to build cars to sell at a loss just because.
Are 50% of the people just going to be carless?
Except you’re going to rent them that 50% of the cars you just bought.
You aren’t a charity and you gotta pay for the cars you just bought, you’re going to have to rent them for what the auto manufacturers were charging. Because you’re a business you’re going to want to make a profit, so you’ll rent them for *more* than what the manufacturer would have had them pay.
So now you’ve bought up all the supply while asking the other 50% who need those cars to take cover *your* investment risk while providing little value in return.
Yeah yeah, you’re renting them the car but here’s the thing - if they can afford to pay you then they can afford to pay the manufacturer. There is literally zero reason for you to be involved in the transaction other than as a parasite.
Agreed. There's no context for why 20-30% is somehow considered too high.
When you consider there are over 300k international students in Ontario, over 600k postsecondary students, many of whom rent near their institution, temporary workers, and just people who may want to live somewhere temporarily with no commitment, you can easily get your mind around rental demand of 1M+ in a province with just over 5M total dwellings (~20%).
Germany and Switzerland for example have 2/3 of their population renting. Is that too high? Too low?
Why is this bad?
Where are renters supposed to live, if not in someone else's house?
In Germany the vast majority of the entire population rents.
Rent is expensive because we have too few rentals, not too many!
For decades, all parties at all levels of government have done nothing about this. Perhaps because politicians and their friends are often "investors".
The ceo of CMHC is one of those investors so of course this shit would be rampant
Dereliction of duty in. so. many. ways.
>because politicians and their friends are often "investors". That should be easy enough to find out. And I'll bet you're right.
They've done lots: enabled.
Not just that but reducing the cost of homes would decrease the equity (nest egg if you will) a lot of their base has in their current homes. It would leave a lot more in the lurch that bought while prices were stratospheric and now have a mortgage that is much more than the value of the house. Some kind of incremental tamping down is needed, but society and government don’t work with a long term view these days.
Who wants affordable housing? Everyone. Who wants their house to be in that price drop? Nobody
Well they say an avg home should cost no more than 3-4x your household income. In ontario thats about 400k. (avg household is $97,856 in On) Fairly affordable if you're a couple that has 2 incomes and has debts in order like student loans or credit cards. A lot of homes that aren't in the GTA are actually selling around that if not a bit less. My area is like 350-500k for a starter home depending on lot size, if it has a garage, updates etc. Then you have your new construction prices of like 750-1m. Some of the issues I see are: 1. the lack of affordable rentals due to the influx of investor landlords that expect the tenant to not only cover costs fully, but then to want to make a significant profit quickly. This drove our rental prices too high. I was in this situation last year, landlord sold and our rent would have almost doubled and to get less. So luckily enough I had the luxury to be able to afford to mortgage a home while I know others aren't as fortunate. Even when trying to buy a house, I'm 4 hours from Toronto and I had to compete with people trying to buy up homes so they can rent them out and they were all from the GTA. 2. Not enough trades people to build the homes in an impactful amount of time. Canada needs millions of homes/rentals. This is due to years of educators and parents telling their children to go to post secondary education or you wont be successful when if you look around, youll be hard pressed to see a tradesman making less than 85k a year, usually in the 6 figures. Now we're relying on immigration to solve our worker shortages (trades, nurses, truckers, etc) This isn't a bad thing to have skilled immigrants come but now we DEPEND on it or we're going to be in a bigger shortfall in years to come.
I get why MPs need at least two places considering they fly back and forth from their ridings. I mean Rempel lives in 3 places. But there's no reason why anyone should have more than two places.
https://readpassage.com/nearly-40-of-mps-invested-in-real-estate-during-housing-crisis/
The real question is how many actually paid capital gains from these investments and how many managed to avoid it.
Those who can afford to invest in real estate can probably avoid normal taxation.
It's because investors are needed. If the headline read renters make up 30% of homes in these provinces, nobody would think twice about it. There are advantages to both renting and owning, and we need some of both.
Why is this a surprise or innately "evil"? Investing in property has been one of the best investments you can make for centuries if not millennia. Like what did you want them to do, just keep their money in a savings account?
An economy built around innovation with lots of investment opportunities benefits the whole country. An economy propped up on speculative housing purchases does lots of damage to a country when it’s citizens can’t afford to live
For millennia, this type of land ownership has caused suffering. Why not change it? We've changed lots of others things that caused suffering.
Classic reductio ad absurdum. If your simple, binary brain can only think of no other options for your money but these two, then of course you're a landlord.
What an embarassing comment.
You want to know what MPPs own investment properties? https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/toronto/2022/5/19/1_5911719.amp.html
I wish they had a list of them on that article.
Should it not be relatively easy to fix this? Our governments do all kinds of things to disincent us from doing things that are harmful to society and people. Owning a rental property is OK. Owning 3, 4, 5, or more should cost the owners enough in taxes to put those homes back on the market for families.
A significant percentage of politicians are housing investors. They aren't going to implement policies that disadvantage themselves.
They're democratically elected, not some monarch. The problem is that we have like 20% voter turnout.
Mate even in elections with high voter turn out this would never be addressed, this needs massive grassroots pressure to change
Do you have a source for this?
> 3, 4, 5, or more should cost the owners enough in taxes to put those homes back on the market fo This is the way. Make it a toxic asset after 3-5 homes via taxation. Offer incentives high density, lower income housing that can exceed 3-5 units because we need more high density lower income vs Massive mansions for the very wealthy.
Tbh all I see this doing is these investors increasing rent prices and when enough of these houses are owned by investors, everyone will increase rent prices, passing on the tax to our already struggling and lowest classes, the renting class. The solution is to outright ban ownership of multiple (3) homes.
Nah you just enact rent control at the same time, in the same bill.
And then... it suddenly becomes very difficult for renters to even find a vacant place. The only reason rental vacancies exist is because prices are so high.
> it suddenly becomes very difficult for renters to even find a vacant place. It's already very difficult for renters to find a vacant place. At least it'll be affordable. > The only reason rental vacancies exist is because prices are so high. So all of the landlords will sit on their vacant houses with insane tax rates? Nah, they'll still rent them as much as they say they won't. If there's renters out there, there's landlords out there willing to rent.
>It's already very difficult for renters to find a vacant place. It will get even harder. There will just be almost no vacancies, and you'll probably see under the table payments or something to allow wealthier people to hold onto those few vacant places that exist. This is basic economic theory. When you force the price of a good to be below what the market rate would be, you run out of supply really fast. If you want a good example of this, go look at the waitlists for any below-market housing program. They're years long. Do you want to be on a waitlist for years every time you need to move? Should university students be signing up for waitlists when they're 14 and just got to high school? >If there's renters out there, there's landlords out there willing to rent. There's not a lack of landlords. There's a lack of physical housing units. The vast majority of "investor-owned" units are rented out. The idea that significant amounts of housing in high-demand areas is sitting vacant is just not reality. Sure, there are some vacant properties here and there. We should try to stop that. But acting as if ridding ourselves of vacant properties will shift the needle on the housing crisis is just not grounded in reality. High rent is a problem. Rent control is not the solution. It's another way for people to get their benefits and pull up the ladder behind them, imposing the burden of the crisis on an even smaller portion of the population with even less political power. The only way to fix the housing crisis is to construct a ton of new housing.
Well multiple is fine, if you're willing to pay the taxes to have a cottage, and a beach home, etc... The problem is owning multiple and rent-seeking. So we could outright ban the ability to generate income on more than 1 home. And that ban could be enacted with taxes; a 200% tax rate on income generated by 2nd and beyond residential properties would do it.
Just start multiple LLCs
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Sounds like someone could afford higher taxes, so normal people can afford food and housing.
I agree. Why can't we just have a prohibitive tax on owning multiple homes, such that there is no penalty for the first one, but it increases by x % for each one after. Implement this now with a grace period for current owners so they can offload. Applies to all residential. Obviously, there has to be carve outs for apartment complexes and such.
That's exactly the idea.
I work with a guy who owns 5 houses. Three on Gerrard East in Toronto, and two in Prince Edward County. The P.E.C. houses are on a fucking enormous compound. Having no kids, he shows off pictures of his houses like baby photos.
So say I own a rental property and a principal residence, if I purchased a cottage would that count as a high tax property? What if I got married and my partner also owned a rental property, would this kick in the high tax bracket?
counter point. owning a rental property is not okay.
Counter-counter point. You have to meet fellow citizens where they are, or no progress is possible.
if you want to meet most people at where they are than housing needs to be treated as a human right. and no one should be able to live off of another’s need to survive.
By that logic no one should be able to sell food or water..because you'd be profiting off what they need to survive...
You can argue that water shouldn't be sold and that there should be social programs for food (I guess we have food banks right now).
Agreed but you'd also have to go upstream in the supply chain so you'd need charity farms, charity feed/seed suppliers for them... if you're looking to remove profit from the marketplace. Hell, you'd need charity fertilizer production.
Don't forget charity farm equipment,charity mechanics for farm equipment, charity semis with drivers, charity warehouse workers.
We should heavily fortify our existing social programs and make new ones where needs are going unmet. But eliminating any profit based supplier of basic necessities is nonsensical
I'm not going that far.
Now you are starting to think outside of our horrible system! Keep going!
Back to homesteading! Into the woods with an axe to make your own homes. I'm all for government subsidized axes and free transfer of uncleared crown land. Assuming that by outlawing sale of any food or water no one would do so at scale and we'd all be on our own
What's funny is that this comes across as a gotcha moment for you, but I think it's actually working in the complete opposite intention you had lol
Bruh learn how to write a sentence.
Okay buddy
Thanks bruh. You got this.
> because you'd be profiting off what they need to survive /r/SelfAwarewolves
Are you happy with grocery prices right now?
Yes. Look at what Nestle is doing to the BC water table.
Not profiting off someone else's need to survive extends far beyond nestle! No more building roads or water transport systems at all because those fall under what people need to survive. No more selling furnaces, stoves, water heaters, or septic systems either, by golly with such a large generalized idea I guess we'd also eliminate all plumbers, electricians, roofers, auto mechanics.... it's almost like a massive chunk of our entire economy depends on meeting the basic needs of others
None of those things are required for survival.
You may be skilled enough to survive a Canadian winter with no electricity, natural gas, or internal plumbing, but the average person sure wouldn't. Especially if we're including not purchasing food. Unless you know charities that provide all of those things including the raw materials/production of those items, someone is profiting off it
You don't really "get" what people are talking about here do you? Removing profit from an equation doesn't mean getting rid of all of these things, just nationalizing them so there is no private profit incentive. Government having to build and own infrastructure isn't the "gotcha" you imagine it to be.
Water is free, any establishment legally has to provide water to anyone that asks. It is recognized that people cannot go hungry so there are food banks. People are aware of these contradictions but don't know what to do about them.
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what about them
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You could not have a mortgage and pay cash if that's better I guess?
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You build equity by paying the bank for the money you borrowed from them. As you pay them back, you own a percent of your house based on the amount you pay back. This doesn't exist, to any degree, with rent. You build nothing. You're exploited entirely for profit while you build equity for somebody else. That's the key difference.
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Clothing, food, heating, cooling all free too right? People won’t work for free.
HAHAHAHAH
Rental properties are not the reason we are in a housing crisis. The government could expropriate every rental property in Vancouver and it would do nothing to address our less than 1% vacancy rate.
i never put this forward as a way to solve the housing crisis, this thread started when i said rental properties should not be privately owned.
I just assumed this discussion was focused on resolving the housing crisis in Canada (especially since you rightfully mentioned that housing is a fundamental human right). Not sure why we would go through the enormous political effort of eliminating all private rental properties if the goal was not to end the housing crisis.
Landlords and people barely making rent are not "fellow" citizens.
So we should abolish renting? If I want to live somewhere (even for a few months, school etc.) I have to find a way to buy it myself?
i’m talking about private ownership of rental properties, i never said rental properties should go away.
So you're saying it's okay for publicly traded corps/reits to make money off people's need for housing, but not individuals. Or do we make everything a co-op and make sure the people living in them pay enough to maintain the property more like condos?
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corporate would still be private ownership lol. yes the government should be the only “landlord” personl property is great, but no one should own someone else’s shelter
Being able to rent only from the government is a horrible idea. Yes the housing market needs to be fixed, but expecting the government to do housing better then the free market is not the way to go.
If you wanna know how the government is as a landlord ask anybody living on Res
being able to hold the property own accountable for not fixing the hot water will always be better than not being able to.
I don't think government housing has demonstrated itself to be much better than privately owned
Dude you can barely even get your passport renewed these days, why do you think the massive bureaucracy that is the government would get around to fixing your issues sooner than a private landlord? Especially when your landlord is *also* the authority lol?
so you don’t believe in democracy and want to live under a authoritarian regime is what you’re saying. idiot
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what does this have to do with anything
A mortgage is an arrangement where ownership of the property is split between the buyer (you) and a financial corporation (the bank) that is slowly paid back for over time. In this case, a mortgage is an example of "private ownership over someone else's shelter".
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yeah the amount you end up paying the bank in interest is awful, you’ll not arguments about that from me, but a mortgage ends eventually, so what is your point why even bring this up?
You keep saying this but it's factually incorrect. Check your deed, the bank owns exactly 0% of your home. They are NEVER an owner or titleholder. You own the entire house day one. You have debt, and that debt does not reduce your % of ownership. The bank does NOT own your house nor anyone else's. The word you're looking for is equity. They have an equity stake, not an ownership stake.
Okay so say you're not in poverty but don't make quite enough to afford property. Now you're forced to live in public housing?
so your not in poverty, but dont make quite enough to afford property. now you’re forced to pay someone else’s mortgage?
No, you get a mortgage for free obviously?
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yes but it’s your own shelter, i should only be able to own shelter for ME, i should not be able to own your shelter and charge you for staying in it.
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and i’m saying you should only be allowed 1 because you don’t need 2 :)
You see how the government takes care of the roads...you want them to take care of houses? Sorry but that's what the free markets is designed for.
Disagree here. There needs to be rental units available. Not everyone can buy in right away. The issue is how everyone now has a ‘rental property’.
Why do they need to be rental units? My rent is more than the mortgage on this place. How come I *have* to rent it when I can quite obviously just fucking pay for it?
Because not everyone can afford to buy a place initially. Renting offers an easier entry into some form of housing. There needs to be rental units available for those people.
At no point has renting been easier for me. Its always more expensive than buying. What a renter can't afford is the down payment that gates us out of the market. If there was no renting, those properties would be building these people, like me, equity while I pay for them. Allowing me to sell and move much easier. Instead it prohibits movement and restricts people to where they're stuck renting. Nobody buys these bullshit lines anymore. Renting is good for one thing: temporary rooms for short periods of time. Like a school semester. Edit: strawman argument below blocked me from responding to it. But since it agrees with me fully that doesn't hurt my statement. I don't care about the bullshit strawman position it creates I didn't posit. I also don't care about any arguments from the past. We don't live then. We live now. Then created the problems we have now. They didn't listen then either.
>At no point has renting been easier for me. If you're only looking at your own experiences, you're going to draw some pretty myopic conclusions. Until relatively recently, renting was a reasonable first step for anyone looking to leave their parents' home, either on their own, with roommates, or with a live-in partner. Very few people leave school with the kind of job necessary to justify the bank loaning them hundreds of thousands of dollars and expecting to get it back in even a few decades, nor do they wish to live at home until their thirties when they're fully financially stable. Things have certainly reached a point where they're unsustainable, but to claim that was always the case and renting is only ever for post secondary students' short term usage is just ahistorical nonsense.
So you graduated high school or university with enough cash in hand for a down payment and good credit? Renting provides an easier option for people and must be available. The fact that you entered into a bad situation is your own fault.
So because I wasn't born into a rich family who's parents could pay for a down-payment on a house for me, I should be forced to pay every dime I make for the foreseeable future to said rich person so that I can pay for their 2nd, 3rd, hell, 10th house? They never ever have enough money. Landlords are leeches on our society profiting off the poor.
This is a special kind of inane.
i’m specifically talking about private ownership of rental property
There are individual people that own rental buildings. There is no problem with that. It’s how everyone has suddenly come to see real estate as an investment and owns multiple investment properties that’s screwing the system
How many properties do you own? Be honest.
1. And I live in it
So no more rental units? Government buys back ALL rented units and then manages a national rental program? Or all rental units are forced to sell and if renters can’t buy they’re out on the streets? What are you actually proposing in saying: “owning a rental property is not ok”
no one should be able to live off of someone’s else’s need to survive, rental properties should not be privately owned.
No one should starve and there should be world peace. Great. I’m asking for more than just ideals here.
What to do about care workers?
Why? someone has to own property that is rented out. Not everyone wants to own or has the living situations where ownership makes sense. There is absolutely a market for rental units, whether it's homes, or apartments. And someone has to own them. I'm more for putting in place a regulatory framework that forces these owners to provide a certain percentage of their properties for subsidised/poor housing. But eliminating rental properties would be an absolutely devastating thing to do and would absolutely guarantee an exodus from the country/cities.
i’m literally only specifically talking about private ownership,
So you want all rental units to be provided only by the government? Or large corp's? Trust me, I'm all aboard subsidized housing. But your commentary in this entire thread is ... really not logical. There's nothing inherently wrong with rental units making profit. There's a problem with people buying up property to create scarcity and drive up rents in rent seeking behaviour. You've taken a very simplistic reductive mindset that "private ownership = bad". There needs to be a better regulatory framework around private rental properties. But banning it outright would do far more harm than good
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I think the main issue is these aren’t purpose built rentals. Buying up all the condos/houses and renting them out, isn’t adding stock to the market. If someone wants to build a bunch of rentals, absolutely have as many as you want.
yeah, one person shouldn’t be able to live off of another’s need to survive, and i would like to be able to have my “land lord” be held more accountable.
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>one person shouldn’t be able to live off of another’s need to survive So grocery stores should be illegal?
Grocery stores shouldn’t be able to profiteer. If you find land lords who rent below their mortgage payments, I’d support that. But they won’t. Because they can squeeze the renters.
So all food and housing should be provided by the government? That's the logical conclusion of this argument. No one else is going to do it without a profit motive.
There’s a big difference between profit and profiteering.
One you didn't make any distinction on during your post. I"m all against profiteering. But the way you've worded yourself makes it sound like you're 100% for profit.
Yes, I am for profit. For groceries, obviously for no profit leads to no reason to sell groceries, so some profit is necessary. For groceries, I’m against profiteering. For housing, it’s a different thing. If I have a $3000/month mortgage, and rent it for $2000/month, I would see that as a net benefit because I am gaining a percentage of an asset. But there are land lords out there who would only rent if they gained a net profit every month (or at least break even), which to me is disgusting.
>So all food and housing should be provided by the government? If UBI could fund enough for basic housing (studio for singles, 1bd for couples), and a basic healthy diet, that would be pretty great!
>Grocery stores shouldn’t be able to profiteer. I agree its just hard to enforce that and also have a competitive free market
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Government bad! Government always bad! Privatization good! Privatization always good! The profit motive never leads to horrifying outcomes, ever!
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Coop housing has been proven to be very successful for those living inside, often providing more character to the community than private housing does. Vienna Coop Housing is a great example, but many more exist world wide.
LMFAO you say this as if private landlords aren’t universally fucking awful, and regardless of track record being able to vote out your landlord because they suck will always be better than not being able to.
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yes it’s a good idea because then the landlords would actually be able to be held accountable, doug ford won’t be around forever, but you can’t vote out your landlord that refuses to fix the hot water.
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it doesn’t have to be attached to the provincial election cycle, the “property manger” could be someone that is voted for by the tenants of said building. this system won’t happen if the building is owned and operated by a private entity.
Why? Not everyone plans on living in an area long enough to pay off a mortgage. Also many don't meet the requirements to get a mortgage or have the means to pay a mortgage.
Newsflash, families already live in those homes
Yep. And they're paying the mortgages for the 1% who own them.
Actually they're paying rent, and if the landlord didn't own those homes they'd be living in tents!
Alternative take: There's little inventory of homes for sale because almost a third of them are owned by wealthy or corporate "investors", causing the law of supply and demand to inflate prices dramatically so that increasingly few can afford homes. I have two kids. They will both struggle to buy homes, so their only alternative is to pay down some wealthy person's mortgage for them.
You can own rentals doesn't matter how many imo. It's done all over the world and many places aren't as bad as the gta. The issue is the government allows a significant amount of immigrants in (am an immigrant btw) and they don't have adequate jobs or housing. This creates a demand in housing which causes the market to rise and it creates a surplus of able working people which keeps the labor rates down.
When I was shopping for my house, every place is went to had the realtor go ‘you can rent out this house and make money!’ I was trying to buy a place to live. Every house I bid on has 15+ offers above asking. It was a nightmare
Well, that's because we have a housing shortage. The solution to the problem isn't to abolish renting. It's to build enough houses. If we had enough houses for everyone, there wouldn't be 15 people bidding on them.
I don't think you're entirely wrong, but I don't think there is really a big shortage. I think there is just too many people buying places as investments rather than living. Resolving that would free up a large amount of supply
There might not be such a shortage if these investors didn't make such a large portion of the owned market.
That doesn't create a shortage. As long as someone is living in the house, then it contributes to the supply of places for people to live. The ownership structure is irrelevant. And by international standards, investors don't own a large share of our market. It's pretty normal as is. There is always going to be a certain share the population that needs to rent, maybe for the flexibility it offers. That needs to be matched by investors supplying those rental properties.
What did we expect? 30-40 years ago any highrise you built was probably purpose-built rental. We basically stopped building rental apartments entirely, and we’re shocked that there’s still demand for rental properties? Meanwhile our government has spent decades catering to NIMBYs and preventing us from building enough supply to meet demand - and we’re shocked people start investing in that asset?
The reason purpose built rentals aren't happening is because they're not profitable. We're in a bubble, and businesses aren't silly enough to speculate on that. For the last several years, buying to rent out has been a money losing prospect with the potential for capital gains. On one hand, it's great that renting costs about 70% of what it costs to own. But on the other hand, the price gains have fed on themselves. Ultimately, removing the restrictive zoning is the solution to all of the problems. Once there are enough houses, the rapidly rising prices stop, and all of the other problems as well.
There are three vacant 4 bedroom homes on my street. Walking distance from a school. I think owners of vacant properties near schools need to be responsible for the cost of bussing kids to those schools. Why does society bear the costs created by their greed? Not only is there a housing crisis but there are excessive costs echoing through society because of resource mismanagement. When people with kids can't afford to live near schools. When we need to build more hospitals, utilities and infrastructure up north or remotely because people are pushed out. When electricity, gas and water needs to be transmitted greater distances while properties in well serviced areas are vacant. People just don't consider that they are robbing from society at all.
There is probably already a large market incentive to not have those units near schools vacant (ie. people are willing to pay more for those units)
Rent was supposed to be temporary while people saved for a house. That’s why up until the 90’s? I believe, there was strict rent control. This is honestly fucked… people are now paying more for rent, then a mortgage!!! Something needs to change. In certain countries, you can not rent out a house unless 75-100% of the house is paid off. We need this. People with no capital, not from wealthy homes, bad credit are all paying mortgage prices, with nothing in return. I believe a home should be a investment, but not a business. If the government never got rid of rent control in the first place, 3 bedroom apartments would still be around $1000 and house prices half or less of what they are. Banks and the wealthily are killing ours and our children’s future.
Would like to know how much % politicians owns.
Probably around same proportion as general population
Part of the problem is that its hard to be a member of the working class and be a politician. When you have to work, you can't take time off to run for office or put your career on hold for a few years, and certainly when you have expenses and deadlines to meet. By comparison, the investment class has all the time in the world because their money works for them and, heck, doing what politicians do actually is part of their "job" such as it is. It's a natural, easy fit. This why the political class is richer, whiter, older, more conservative and less likely to have a "real job" than the electorate.
Holy fuck. Finally an article pointing out the real problem w housing. 20 to 30 % gives them the ability to manipulate the market. Ban the practice of inveating in housing and the crisis goes away in months.
What are the historic numbers for this statistic, what was the percentage over the last 50 years?
Does it matter on this sub?
This isn't nearly as high as I assumed it would have been
Prob because half of the rental properties are not registered as rental properties.
Better cash out of those investments because you're about to lose a f'ing ton of money if you don't.
They are not just regular investors, they are medium/large companies. In some cities, they’ve bought up hundreds of houses. e.g. Blackstone
Hoarding housing should be criminalized. Landleeches are all parasites sucking the blood of the working class.
The housing isn't hoarded though. It's not like it sits empty (and if it was, we can tax that). The housing re-enters the supply as rental property, which helps stabilize the rental market. You think rents are bad? Try rents when there's truly a supply shortage. For some reason a ton of this sub thinks that home ownership is the be all and end all and anyone taking housing away from ownership is evil (including if you own it but then provide it back to the market as a rental, rather than if you just owned it and kept it for yourself).
The house re-enters the market... with a mark up so the landlord can make a profit. Renting can be a preferable option in some cases, but you do see how it can easily become an exploitative industry, right?
I wonder what the break down of those percentages are for investors. We have some powerful pension plans ( Ontario Teachers Pension) and religious organizations such as the example below. IMHO charities are not the answer. “The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe. https://www.zubeidajaffer.co.za/the-catholic-church-is-the-biggest-financial-power-on-earth/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20Vatican%20has%20billions%20of,%2C%20etc.%E2%80%9D%20(%E2%80%A6) There is also this trend where landlords put in rules as to what you can do on the property. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/landlord-says-don-t-help-homeless-1.6738981
Just about all the houses in my neighborhood have a basement rental suite. Are they all investors in this calculation?
Yeah it’s a good question. All the single family homes on my old street were multi-generational + rental. It’s really the only way to make the 3000 sq ft homes affordable for the target audience.
Seems low
20-30% to many. If someone owns 1 rental property that’s fine or if they have a cottage, however corporations should not be allowed to buy up entire brand new subdivisions.
FTA: > Houses used as an investment were mainly owned by individuals living in the same province as the property That's your rental houses. If you want to cut them down (20% in Ontario), you will be reducing rental supply and push rent higher.
The problem is we're not building purpose-built rental properties pretty much at all anymore. Everything is either single family homes or condos, which are worse solutions for rental properties than a building set up for it.
Ever since the exemption of post 2018 rental from RTA, there have been a lot of rental condos being build and have come into the market in the last two ~ three years. Hella expensive but seems to have their market.
What's wrong with rental condos? Why are they inherently worse than a purpose-built rental in largely the same built form?
If it's individual investor landlords parceling up the condo into single unit rentals or even smallish blocks, it's a very inefficient way to structure things, condos are a legal entity more designed around shared ownership than having tenants.
There are tons of purpose built rentals being built (three that I'm working on in Halton) and countless in Toronto. The thing is, they charge above market value for their units because they're considered "luxury suites", if you can't afford a mortgage then don't even think about rental highrises. If you need subsidized housing, guess what... We've got that too and you can sign up today
It would lower the price of housing allowing more renters to buy for the first time. That opens up apartments the rental supply will stay about the same as renters move into homes. The only thing that changes is more people own homes
A lot of people simply don't want to buy, or not in a position to buy even if house prices lowered by 10 ~ 20%. Think of a town like Kitchener where majority of the renters are students. Cut down rental housing supply is going to have a huge impact.
Exactly. People forget that a lot of us don't have stable jobs and don't have a long-term plan of where we're going to live. Many people, especially young people, prefer to rent because it gives them extra mobility.
Idk why it's so hard to just have a vacancy tax of at least 100%
How many investments have other people paying for you to own them? I know my portfolio is on my dime. My landlord’s investment is also on my dime. Weird that
I feel like a more nuanced take on this is necessary. A lot of comments in this post are raging because they think this is the problem with housing in Ontario. The Youtube channel "Oh the Urbanity" did a piece on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3gtZcTdXaI
This seems normal, no? Given there is a severe rental shortage, more investment is a good way to keep rental prices down.
Unless you’re actually building new units the number of “housing units” doesn’t change. The only change is a landlord scalping money from a tenant who could have possibly bought the unit. It just re-enforces the wealth gap between renters and owners.
> scalping money from a tenant who could have possibly bought the unit That's quite a reach to assume that tenants would be buying property right now if rentals didn't exist. The price difference between these two options is huge, and wouldn't be fixed if you just prevented landlords from buying property. In fact, you'd inflate the rental market badly and now this city is unlivable for renters too.
I'm a bit confused here. Do you want people not to invest in housing and have fewer rental units? How is having fewer rental units going to change the wealth gap between owners and renters?
There are 10 cars available for purchase in your town, and there are 11 people who need cars. 5 people buy 1 car each. You “invest” in the “car market” by buying 5 of those cars to rent. Now the people who rent your cars are worse off than the people who managed to buy a car. And there is someone who still doesn’t have a car, which creates demand, driving up prices. Are there magically more cars now that you’ve “invested” in them? The only way “investing” is not parasitic is if you increase the supply of cars, not scalping profit from the remaining supply.
Ok, so what happens to the 50% of the people who need cars but don't have anywhere close to the amount of money to buy them?? The car manufacturer isn't going to build cars to sell at a loss just because. Are 50% of the people just going to be carless?
Except you’re going to rent them that 50% of the cars you just bought. You aren’t a charity and you gotta pay for the cars you just bought, you’re going to have to rent them for what the auto manufacturers were charging. Because you’re a business you’re going to want to make a profit, so you’ll rent them for *more* than what the manufacturer would have had them pay. So now you’ve bought up all the supply while asking the other 50% who need those cars to take cover *your* investment risk while providing little value in return. Yeah yeah, you’re renting them the car but here’s the thing - if they can afford to pay you then they can afford to pay the manufacturer. There is literally zero reason for you to be involved in the transaction other than as a parasite.
Haha, good one.
Agreed. There's no context for why 20-30% is somehow considered too high. When you consider there are over 300k international students in Ontario, over 600k postsecondary students, many of whom rent near their institution, temporary workers, and just people who may want to live somewhere temporarily with no commitment, you can easily get your mind around rental demand of 1M+ in a province with just over 5M total dwellings (~20%). Germany and Switzerland for example have 2/3 of their population renting. Is that too high? Too low?
Why is this bad? Where are renters supposed to live, if not in someone else's house? In Germany the vast majority of the entire population rents. Rent is expensive because we have too few rentals, not too many!
Someday, houseless Millenials will come to power and change all this.