CMHC and Stats Canada release foreign buyer numbers - "They have been shouldering much of the blame for Vancouver’s and Toronto’s rapidly escalating housing prices, but foreign buyers, in fact, own less Canadian real estate than originally thought... Beginning with the Greater Vancouver Area, 4.8% of residential properties are owned by non-residents, however, that number increases in Vancouver proper, where non-residents own 7.6% of residential properties. That number jumps even higher in Vancouver proper condo apartments, 10.6% of which are non-resident-owned... In the Greater Toronto Area, 3.4% of residential properties are owned by non-residents, but that number increases slightly to 4.9% in the City of Toronto. Condos in the Toronto region are 7.2% non-resident-owned, but in Toronto proper 8% are owned by non-residents... While it’s become indisputable that non-residents own newer and more expensive homes, they don’t compose a large enough share of homeowners to have any discernible effect on home prices."
Of course, when this measure didn't work, people pretended that it was because it was not strict enough
This won't stop condo haters from pretending that they are 100% foreign-owned
How a foreign homebuyer ban in Canada could backfire - "“There are some Americans who buy property here, but there are a whole lot of Canadians that buy property in the United States and we need to be very very careful that the Americans don’t respond in kind,” said Mike Moffatt, senior director of policy and innovation at the Smart Prosperity Institute, said in a recent interview. “You can just imagine all the snowbirds who have places in Florida, Arizona, Las Vegas, and all of a sudden they have to start paying an extra tax? If the Biden Administration or the governor of Florida says, 'Well, the Canadians are going to do that to our people who own fishing lodges in New Brunswick? Okay, we'll put a one per cent tax on any Canadian that owns a home in Orlando.'” “Globally, we are often the foreign buyers and I don’t think Canadians would be too happy if we were given a taste of our own medicine”... Canadians are the top foreign buyers of property in the United States... the policy itself is more about political optics than actually addressing Canada’s housing crisis, she added. “Foreigners don’t vote so it is a really easy policy for the electorate to buy into, but I’m always wary of policies that aren’t backed up with data and analysis that demonstrates that they are responding to the crux of the problem”... According to UBC’s Davidoff, the impact of preventing those who are not Canadian citizens or permanent residents from buying homes in this country would be negligible at best. “Maybe if [foreign buyers] were two per cent of the market, then maybe you could double that share and get a four per cent price impact or something like that, but I think that would be on the high end,” he said. “I don’t think entry-level affordability will be impacted almost at all.” Davidoff and others have long argued the nationality of a homebuyer matters far less than the purpose that newly-purchased home will serve. “Let’s compare two situations: in one situation, somebody in Moscow buys a condo in Toronto and rents it out … In another situation, somebody in Vancouver buys a little pied-a-terre in Toronto and never uses it, so that is now a unit that is out of circulation in the housing market,” Davidoff said. “In which situation should the buyer get taxed more? The answer is the guy from Vancouver, not the guy from Moscow.”"
Why the best housing-affordability plan for Canada is no plan at all - "The reasons behind Canada’s soaring housing prices ought to be obvious. City governments constrain supply through zoning laws so neighbourhoods can keep their “character,” and land-usage rules that contain “urban sprawl.” Most solutions promoted by the federal government — tax incentives for first-time homebuyers, insurance for mortgages with low down payments — boost demand but do nothing to increase the supply of housing, driving prices even higher... The NDP plan to double the homebuyer’s tax credit and allow the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to insure 30-year mortgages, for example, may make it easier to buy a home, but, as other parts of the plan don’t actually address why costs have soared, increased demand will drive up prices further still. Waiving the GST on the construction of rental properties, and making it easier for social housing to get approved, as the NDP also promises, may help, but likely just on the margins. And the party’s commitment to “environmental energy efficiency goals” suggests it will create regulations that will make housing even less affordable. All three major parties are targeting so-called speculative housing investors: those who purchase real estate, usually foreigners we’re told, who leave their properties vacant before reselling them at a profit... the underlying reasons that encourage speculative investment are left intact. Never mind that homeowners should be able to sell their homes to whoever is willing to pay the asking price, and use their properties as they see fit, free of government harassment in the form of taxation. These policies are also largely redundant, as vacant property taxes already exist in places like Vancouver, and soon Toronto, having been introduced by municipal governments apparently oblivious to their own role in keeping housing supply low. The vast majority of Vancouver, for instance, is zoned for single-detached homes or duplexes, and yet for years foreign investors have been scapegoated for ever-increasing housing prices. A 20 per cent tax on foreign buyers of residential property, separate from the vacant property tax, was brought in by the Government of British Columbia in August 2016. Prices did fall immediately in the following months, but rebounded to new highs the year after. A similar tax brought in for southern Ontario in 2017 was more successful at initially lowering housing prices and slowing their rebound, but while speculation may contribute to rising costs, it is a reaction to an overheated market rather than the cause... A 2018 C.D. Howe Institute study compared the cost of construction per square foot of new homes to the eventual sale price in the “eight most restrictive cities” — Vancouver, Abbotsford, B.C., Victoria, Kelowna, B.C., Regina, Calgary, Toronto and Ottawa-Gatineau. The authors found that barriers to development accounted for between 23 per cent and 50 per cent of the total cost of new homes. This means that, on average, Canadians in those cities were paying an extra $230,000 per new home over construction costs, once accounting for developer profits and excluding the cost of land. In Vancouver, it was $640,000. In Ontario, the authors of the C.D. Howe study considered what housing costs would be if the number of new buildings subject to zoning review in a given municipality was lowered to the provincial average, and if development charges were similarly lowered. In 2016, that would have meant that the average home would have cost $13,000 less in Hamilton, $52,000 less in Halton Region and $74,000 less in Toronto. This is a relatively conservative approach that could be partly achieved by updating decades-old zoning rules. Rezoning single-family neighbourhoods to include row housing and mid-rise apartment buildings would increase supply and lower prices even further. If the federal government must have a housing strategy, the best approach would be one that offered incentives for provinces and municipalities to roll back unnecessary restrictions on development. The Conservative platform, which also wisely avoids tinkering too much with demand, comes closest, with a promise to “require municipalities receiving federal funding for public transit to increase density near the funded transit.” The plan, unfortunately, is too narrow. Better to target density across entire regions, rather than just neighbourhoods near transit, and better to leverage infrastructure spending more generally, rather than just transit spending. It would have also been preferable if the Conservatives explicitly identified restrictions on development as a driver of housing prices. But acknowledging that municipalities should be held at least partially accountable for limiting housing supply is a start, and highlights why the best federal housing plan is no plan at all."
Opinion: Politicians are selling us a myth on housing: that more supply will be our salvation - The Globe and Mail - "Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre gained nationwide plaudits for a slick video denouncing insane house prices across the country. He blamed them on “gatekeepers” – municipal politicians – who he said are adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of every new home built. Mr. Poilievre never says how he would get rid of these extraordinary (or, more accurately, imaginary) costs these “gatekeepers” are adding to the price of housing – but hey, it’s the soundbite that’s important. Meanwhile, Scott Aitchison – the Parry Sound—Muskoka MP also seeking the Tory leadership – believes ending exclusionary zoning to get shovels in the ground faster is the solution to things. And the Conservatives are not alone: the federal Liberals have said that getting municipalities to approve housing faster is the answer to all that ails us. But they’re all empty and simplistic words. In fact, not one thing these folks are recommending is going to rein in house prices on their own. A massive new condominium complex being built in the heart of Vancouver by the developer Westbank shows us why. The project will add 3,323 homes to the city – so it’s exactly the kind of boost in housing supply that everyone’s talking about. There’s only one problem: only 13 per cent of the homes for sale or rent are deemed “affordable” – i.e. those that can be obtained on a low-to-middle-class family income. The rest are luxury units being sold between $2,000 and $2,500 per square foot. So a two-bedroom 1,000-square-foot condo built at $2,250 per square foot would go on the market at a minimum of $2.25-million. The units are being marketed to the wealthy, even if they don’t live in Vancouver or even in Canada – and they’re going to sell... The federal government recently announced a two-year ban on foreign buyers, but there are more holes in the legislation than in a fashionable pair of jeans. For instance, foreign students can still buy real estate. We’ve seen this movie before in Vancouver, where kids at the University of British Columbia were buying $30-million mansions. Even if the percentage of foreign buyers in Canada is relatively small – 7.6 per cent in Vancouver proper, 8 per cent in Toronto – it’s still a complete joke. There are other issues that aren’t easily fixable. More than 100,000 people poured into B.C. in the last year. You’re never going to build enough housing quickly enough to satiate the soaring demand those kind of immigration levels create."
So much ignorance on display
On Facebook someone pointed out that all the people claiming new housing won't help because it'll be unaffordable should take a leaf from the used car market: when new cars come out, even though they are expensive, they reduce the price of used cars
The cope for when the ban on foreign buyers did not make housing affordable was already visible even before it passed
At least he acknowledges the role of population growth
Jesse Kline: Blame the government — not foreigners — for the high cost of real estate in Vancouver - "the new buildings were not the large towers one would expect in a city that is boxed in by the sea on one side and mountains on the other, where even crack shacks sell for over $1 million. Instead, the street was littered with a bunch of new low-rise buildings. A look at the city’s Cambie Corridor Plan shows that municipal planners have a meticulous set of regulations laid out for each few blocks. On some sections of the street, developers can build 12-story buildings, while on others, they are limited to six. How did they come up with these restrictions that directly limit the future supply of housing in the city and thus serve to keep prices high? At the intersection of Cambie and Marine Dr., it was done on the basis of a “shadow impact analysis.” The plan states that, “Proposed buildings should not shadow the soccer field during morning school recess period.” God forbid... Vancouver specifically requires new developments to hold public hearings, and residents have a history of resisting changes that would allow more units to be built. Between 2001 and 2011, Vancouver’s population increased by 69,000, but only 28,000 new homes were constructed... other government policies also contribute to high prices and artificially low supply: areas are zoned for specific purposes, densities are controlled and many developments are required to include space for public services, such as social housing, and must conform to specific energy standards — the cost of which gets tacked onto the final purchasing price. As one former real estate developer wrote in the Vancouver Sun, “When I add up the City’s Development Cost Levies, Community Amenity Contributions and public art levies, they equate to about $37,000” on top of the cost of a $460,000 unit."... Another study published in the Journal of Urban Economics in 2012 looked at data from 300 American cities between 2000 and 2009 and found that “restrictive residential land use regulations and geographic land constraints are linked to larger booms and busts in housing prices.” Before getting out the pitchforks and blaming all their problems on Asian people, residents of Vancouver and their elected officials should look at the policies that are keeping prices high, and ask themselves if it’s more important to solve this problem, or ensure that kids never have to play soccer in the shade."
Liberals keep claiming that building new housing won't help, because no one can afford it except rich people, foreigners and investors. No surprise that they don't understand demand and supply
Builders say Canada's foreign buyers ban is stopping construction of new homes - "The wording of the ban, which came into effect at the beginning of this year, unintentionally prevents a broad swath of companies from purchasing vacant land to turn into new housing due to its strict limits on foreign involvement, they say. That’s making it harder for the Trudeau government to ease the country’s housing crisis — the reason the prohibition was introduced in the first place. Some developers in Toronto, Canada’s largest city, have already called off plans to buy land and build new housing for fear they’ll be contravening the ban... The foreign buyers ban, which will be in place for two years and is officially called the Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act, was meant to address concerns that non-residents were helping drive up home prices. However, data suggest foreigners owned no more than 5 per cent of properties in any major market in 2020, and the rapid price gains seen during the pandemic came at a time when borders were largely shut... Because many foreign developers operate in Canada, and domestic ones often team up with them for specific projects, or seek investment from overseas, the industry says the act has effectively frozen a broad range of activity. “The 3 per cent is an absurd level,” said Leor Margulies, a Toronto-based real estate lawyer. “It eliminates any type of foreign purchasing of development land, which is just going to restrict supply.” Margulies said he has foreign developer clients who have stopped pursuing new residential projects, and even companies with only minority foreign ownership are stuck on the sidelines. “It’s irrelevant who builds it — the issue is we want homes for Canadians,” he said. “So if we limit capital and we build less there’s less homes for Canadians.”"
Unprecedented construction needed in B.C. to offset record immigration: Report - "There is "weak evidence" that the ban will achieve its objective of lowering home prices given that a relatively small number of transactions involve purely foreign buyers, the association said. "The potential impact of the increase in immigration is much more significant than the decline in sales due to the prohibition on foreign buyers," the report said. BCREA said an "unfortunate unintended consequence" of the ban on foreign homebuyers is that financing new home construction is more difficult without access to international capital markets."
To liberals, to even mention immigration is racist, so
NP View: Poilievre is right, too many rules are to blame for Canada's housing affordability problem - "It was always about the red tape. Politicians have spent years pointing the finger at foreign speculators or greedy developers to explain away the rapid rise in housing prices, hoping to blame literally anyone but themselves. This charade appears to be dropping, however, as lawmakers at all levels are finally admitting what everybody already knows, that when you artificially limit how much housing can be built, prices are going to go up... Given that Canada boasts the second-largest land mass in the world, the problem is not a lack of space, but onerous regulations that limit densification in major cities and add to the cost of new developments. If he becomes prime minister, Poilievre said he would “require municipalities … to speed up building permits and reduce the governmental cost associated with building things.” This was a sentiment echoed by fellow leadership candidate Scott Aitchison, who promised his government would tie federal infrastructure funding “directly to requirements to build new housing.” If the discussion about cutting municipal regulations that limit the supply of real estate were limited to a couple Conservatives vying for party leadership, it would represent only limited progress. Yet even the federal Liberals, in their recent budget, announced (somewhat vague) plans to make some infrastructure and transit funding contingent on “actions by provinces, territories and municipalities to increase housing supply where it makes sense to do so.” In typical Liberal fashion, the party’s 2021 election platform discussed using federal funding to further the government’s social goals, such as encouraging municipalities to “establish inclusionary zoning bylaws,” which require developers to build affordable housing. But at least the government is acknowledging that zoning regulations have become a major impediment to new development. The unfortunate part of the whole debate is that it looks as though land use will become yet another area of local responsibility that will be directed by the ever-expanding scope of the federal government. Still, there are signs that cities and provinces are also recognizing that supply side challenges need to be addressed. In 2020, the Ontario government released a plan that aimed to force cities to increase density around transit hubs, though it has been bitterly resisted by some municipal politicians. In February, the province’s Housing Affordability Task Force released a report urging the government to bypass municipalities to allow for increased densification — including allowing higher buildings, more mixed-use properties, laneway and other secondary suites, along with multi-tenant dwellings — especially around public transit and major highways. While the Ford government’s actual plan, released March 30, doesn’t go that far, it does pledge to take steps to reduce the red tape and governmental delays that plague many new developments. Meanwhile, Edmonton city council got a chance to see a draft of the city administration’s proposed new zoning bylaw... It is attracting the usual opposition from those who acknowledge the housing affordability problem but fight tooth-and-nail to prevent developments in their own backyards, or any policies that might keep their property values from increasing exponentially. They should be ignored, as it is not the government’s job to protect the value of private assets and we cannot continue to allow petty objections to get in the way of ensuring housing isn’t only available for the wealthy or the lucky. Perhaps the biggest problem, though, is that the bylaw won’t come into effect until at least 2024. And we need to build houses now. Canada has the lowest houses per capita in the G7... data from the Teranet-National Bank House Price Index shows that the resale cost of single-family homes in 11 major Canadian markets increased over 31 per cent between March 2020 and March 2022. The Liberals’ latest budget largely continues the unimaginative policies of the past that have tried to make it easier for new home buyers to enter the market, thus increasing demand without tackling supply, while adding some window dressing, such as a temporary ban on foreign home buyers, which won’t make much difference"
To Fix the Housing Affordability Crisis, Ontario Should End Exclusionary Single-Family Zoning in High-Demand Areas - "According to recent OREA research conducted by Abacus Data, almost 7 in 10 Ontarians say housing affordability should be a top priority for the government. The report also found that 78% of Ontarians support minimum zoning in urban areas to encourage more homes."
Opinion: Red tape – not greedy companies – is the real cause of Canada’s housing crisis - The Globe and Mail - "News that Core Development Group Ltd., a Toronto real-estate development firm, plans to spend up to a billion dollars purchasing detached homes to turn into single-unit rental stock across Canada caused a flurry of outrage. But this type of thing isn’t new. Wall Street firms bought up detached houses after the global financial crisis, and have since become significant landlords in the United States. Of course, it’s easy to paint these firms as villains capitalizing on tight housing markets, but the real problem is the tightness of the markets themselves. That’s largely because of policy choices, not corporate greed; these “villains” are just reading the room, and so are assuming that government regulations will continue to prevent the housing supply from responding to demand in North America. And they’re probably right... municipalities could improve and accelerate the permit process to allow more homes to be built more quickly; a 2017 Fraser Institute study found that it took 18 months on average to secure housing permits in Vancouver."
Newmarket resident: 'I don't want to see my neighbourhood turned into a bunch of soulless buildings' - "When she saw the property at 43 Lundy’s Lane was for sale, she hoped the new owner would lovingly restore it. But she was “appalled” to learn developer Lundy’s Lane Newmarket Assembly Inc. is hoping to tear down the home and other properties and replace them with a four-storey apartment building with 79 rental units at 43 Lundy’s Lane, 592 Watson Ave. and 40, 36 and 32 Bolton Ave. “I do not want to see my neighbourhood turned into a bunch of soulless multi-storey buildings with the inevitable associated increase in traffic and noise,” said Foppa, who fears the development is a “slippery slope.” She's not alone. Whether it's intensification in existing neighbourhoods or on green space, such as many voices raised in opposition in January to a large development proposed by Shining Hill Estates on Oak Ridges Moraine settlement lands north of St. John’s Sideroad... Focusing growth in urban centres such as Newmarket preserves environmentally sensitive lands on the Oak Ridges Moraine and Greenbelt, he added. At the same time, Taylor said Newmarket is growing at only 1 per cent a year, the slowest rate in York Region, and significantly less than the annual growth rate of 7 to 10 per cent in the 1980s and 1990s. With the GTA’s record growth, it’s important municipalities avoid the urban sprawl planning mistakes of the past, Sarah Jamal, communications manager for environmental advocacy group Environmental Defence, said. “The low-density, car-dependent, segregated-use — houses in one place, work or shopping in another — subdivisions we created in the late-20th century are a millstone around the neck of Newmarket and other GTHA municipalities. They are draining public money, driving up property taxes, locking us into unhealthy, sedentary lives, and making it very hard to meet our greenhouse gas emissions targets,” she said. “We can't bring back the farmland we destroyed, but the expected injection of roughly four million extra people and 2.5 million extra jobs over the next 30 years is exactly what existing neighbourhoods and communities in Newmarket and all over the GTHA need to catalyze their transformation into places that efficiently support quality public transit and local services, allow people to live conveniently without a car, and generally serve their residents better.”"
Turning 5 presumably single family homes into housing for 79 families is bad.
Developing green space is bad. Converting farmland to housing is bad. And cars are also bad.
Adam Zivo: Single-family zoning remains untouchable in Ontario, so house prices will keep soaring - "Doug Ford’s newly-announced plan to fix Ontario’s housing crisis is woefully unserious. Though it will somewhat reduce red tape and make it slightly easier to build housing, the plan avoids making drastic changes to the province’s overly-restrictive housing regulations. As a result, the province will continue to be crippled by a severe housing shortage and many of its residents will remain locked out of homeownership due to astronomical prices... Because of restrictive zoning laws, large swathes of Ontario’s municipalities (often 70 per cent of total land or more) cannot absorb new population growth. This means that all new growth is crammed into a few small pockets of land, leading to market distortions that undermine new housing supply. This is why, for example, Toronto has seen a massive condo boom in its downtown core while huge chunks of the city are, paradoxically, experiencing population decline. These distortions create the illusion that our cities are booming — because condo towers are conspicuous additions to the urban fabric — while hiding the stagnation that dominates most areas. Single-family zoning is often justified through appeals to “preserving neighbourhood character.” However, this justification rings hollow when, under current zoning laws, you can knock down a home and build a massive McMansion regardless of how it fits within the community, while building a modest townhouse or triplex is somehow considered intolerable. Generally-speaking, it is questionable why existing homeowners should have the right to exclude new neighbours on specious grounds, especially when the province’s housing shortage has been fuelling a crippling affordability crisis... Many of the housing advocates I spoke to have interpreted Ford’s meekness on housing as a capitulation to Ontario’s municipal politicians. These politicians, as well as the city planners who answer to them, have for years aggressively opposed housing reform that would undermine their authority to control growth within their borders. Among others, the mayors of Mississauga and Aurora, as well as the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, repudiated the housing task force’s boldest recommendations. Yet it is precisely because of these politicians’ irresponsibility that we have a housing crisis in the first place. Municipal politicians and their supporters have spent over a decade ignoring the need for new housing because they are afraid of NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) activists who viciously campaign against growth... there is an election to be won, and suburban seats might become competitive if the Ford government feuds with suburban mayors. Perhaps Ford’s political calculations will backfire in the long run, though. Younger Canadians have been hungry to support politicians who take the housing crisis seriously, which is perhaps why federal Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Polievre, who has been pugilistic on housing affordability, seems to be doing unexpectedly well among that demographic."
Globe editorial: The secret to lower housing prices? It’s all in the zoning - The Globe and Mail - "the argument about character is a smokescreen. Where there is a neighbourhood of single-family homes, there was once a forest or a field. No one mourns the lost character of what had been there before. Character is wielded as a weapon against change. As Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic put it in June, “'Character’ means exclusion.” There is an answer. It’s called the missing middle: small-scale, multiunit housing, from duplexes and triplexes to mid-rise apartment buildings. The missing middle is not a fix-all, but it is an essential step forward. Minneapolis is a beacon of possible change. Last December, city council passed a plan that ended the dominion of single-family zoning. It is regarded as the first of its kind in the United States, but it’s hardly radical. Where a single house was previously permitted, a building with three units, a triplex, is now allowed. The rallying cry has been “Neighbors for More Neighbors.” Oregon was the next to move. State legislators in late June passed a bill that will remake single-family zoning to allow fourplexes in cities of more than 25,000 people, and throughout the Portland region. In Canada, the prospect of change is depressingly dim. In the City of Vancouver, a one-year trial allows applications for duplexes in single-detached zones. This is in a region where the typical house costs $1.4-million and median annual household income is $73,000. Meanwhile, city council is ponderously debating whether to get work started on a new citywide plan that will take three years to complete."
Doug Ford will override municipal zoning to allow more housing | The Star
Naturally, this made lots of people upset because developers would make money, this would be against "democracy" etc. It is better to cut off one's nose to spite one's face.
Presumably it's better for housing to be built through public projects plagued by cost overruns and delays than for the private sector to do it
