That real home price chart shows a massive dip in house prices post 2022. A trend that’s continued since.
What changed in 2023? Did Trump come into power and start trade war shit in 2023? No. Did housing supply suddenly skyrocket in 2023? No. Did banks/financial institutions have a sudden shift in policy in 2023? No.
What DID happen in 2023, is that the Federal Government put in the Immigration/foreign student caps to reduce the number of foreigners coming in to the country at a more sustainable level.
We need immigration, but the way the fed had handled it pre-2022, and given that it was the main variable that changed in that time period, and the result is clear on the charts that after that change prices started coming down aggressively…
*edit – like here’s a statista chart showing Canada’s immigration from 2000-2025. Has a dip during covid, followed by a massive spike in immigration for 2021-2022. The price chart shows a similar dip and spike in that period. Then the immigration levels trail off post 2022, and the housing prices dip post 2022. Another spike up on both in 2015/2016, and a dip following in both…
The amount of empty units is staggering, but they are not there for you and me, they are there for people to use as investment tool. It’s just an asset to flip. It’s disgusting, and this type of shit should be banned.
Ban flipping homes, property transfer can’t happen for atleast 5 years after transfer unless you appeal to a board as there’s always extenuating circumstances. If you own more than 2 properties you are taxed at a obscenely high rate
And add in an ‘empty fee’. If a property sits empty for x amount of time, there’s a significant fee added per month until it’s sold or rented. Though people much smarter than me would have to figure out how to prevent rich assholes from just selling to each other to avoid the fee I suppose.
Bottom line, if you buy a place as an asset and the rental market dips below your liking, tough, rent it lower than you planned or get rid of it.
Solving the housing crisis has been a central plank of the Liberal party during their decade in power,
LoL!!!
That is an understatement. Rent in my city was quite affordable in 2015. In just 6 years it became unbearable.
I think they got their conclusions all wrong.
So housing prices still go up even though there was an increase in housing development?
First of all, home prices have gone up due to speculation. Housing has become a commodity as an investment vehicle instead of a basic human right. So the main culprits here are investors and the real estate agents that enable them because they have everything to win from higher home prices since they are paid by commission which is a % of the sales price. In fact, we’ve seen many such real estate agents get caught in all kinds of ethical cases tying to inflate property values for their own gains.
Also, any new housing units, whether they are condos or houses, will be sold at whatever the market prices are, which are high already. Thus keeping new buyers out of the market. This is used as an incentive for developers to build new homes so they can turn a bigger profit. As an anecdote, In the 80’s my parents benefitted from a government program where new home prices couldn’t exceed $60k. This was to allow people to afford a home by putting a ceiling on home prices. This is the kind of program that we need right now, but it would definitely cause a decrease in new home construction because it would reduce profits for developers. We would end up with poorly built housing where corners are cut.
Finally, as the author mentioned, for people who already own property, this has been a huge windfall. Especially if their mortgages are paid. However, these people have been using their property as collateral to invest in more housing. We end up with housing barons where, like in Montréal for example, less than half than 1% of the population own over a third of the housing properties in the city. So when new housing is built, they are often the hawks that swoop in to buy these properties using their existing properties as collateral. They can easily price out anybody trying to buy themselves a home to live in. Then you’re left with nothng but rentals where you’re stuck paying crazy rent prices to these property barons and essentially paying off their mortgage for them.
And one more thing: the author mentions that housing size has increased over the years. I don’t know where they got that because that is absolutely not what I have observed. Most new housing around here have been condos and they have been increasingly smaller over time to a point that a double bed can barely even fit in the bedroom!
That’s a pretty damning argument. I knew most parts of it but never put all of them together like this. Does anyone find anything obviously wrong with it?
I think they are making a good data-driven argument: If supply is the issue, why are prices so high compared to the 70s when supply per capital was lower? I think one could make the argument that this doesnt address where this new supply is distributed vs where people are distributed, but I would wager that since places like Toronto and Vancouver experience the most construction that it wouldn’t change the story much.
I think if I were being very critical of the article, you could say that while it provides a simple but compelling argument as to why supply is not the cause of the housing crisis, it does not adequately show that financialization of the housing market is the cause. Personally, I believe that is one big aspect of it, but if you compare other statistics between now and the 70s, you could make arguments that things like the reduction of social housing stock being the cause of the housing crisis.
I am going to need some explanations. First, they say there are 510 dwellings per 1000 adults, and then they say there are 1017 dwellings per 1000 households. In the first number, that requires more than two adults per dwelling. That deems like we haven’t hit demand yet, let alone surplus. The second numbers are only possible if there are hundreds of thousands of extra adults beyond a couple in most households. Or hundreds of thousands of homeless adults. None of those imply to me any kind of surplus. So I don’t see a source of downward pressure based on over supply. If those 17 dwellings per thousand households are sitting empty, and we have homeless people, then either those 17 are uninhabitable, or they are unaffordable relative to the mode or median incomes.
Why doesn’t increasing affordable supply help solve that issue?
The solution suggestions do make sense, it is the argument that there isn’t a supply shortage that has missing pieces.
Increasing affordable supply will always help. The argument is that increasing supply regardless of type, does not. It’s how you get empty condos being held as investments.
Because the only viable way to increase supply is to have a public construction company that builds at cost.
And thanks to Alberta and US media, that will never fly.
You dont even need that. Just public policies that encourage affordable housing. Example
If you just have policies and leave it to private companies, you end up with Vancouver.
Where we have tons of policies and initiatives for affordable housing that only result in private developers stopping construction until the price has increased enough for them to profit, and then abusing loopholes to reduce/remove the amount of affordable housing in the actual building.
E.g. during the post-covid boom, Vancouver was a world leader in housing starts. Now that the price has cooled, starts have plummetted, so cons and US-Media are crying out about regulations. But no new regulations exist.
