To match other advanced countries on square feet of land and house per person on average, we’d have to build a lot more smaller houses on a lot smaller lots. The unit counts only tell half the story, and everyone is somehow ignoring that.
For comparison, the UK average house size is only 41% the size of Canada, and the largest European size is Denmark and it’s still only 75% as big as Canada.
Globally, The countries having the worst time housing cost wise, are the ones with the largest average house size.
Yes I’m talking about inequality, but it’s systematic, people who’ve been around longer bought up everything in the major cities and now aren’t sharing.
The amount of privately held land is fixed, but that doesn’t mean someone’s going to pay the same amount. Not at all.
Let me ask you a question, how much would you pay for a car, if you knew that car would sell for more money in 10 years than you paid for it today. No matter how much you spend on the car, it has a 99% chance to go up in value over 10 years. The logical choice is to spend as much money as you can possibly afford, because the more you spend, the more you get back. This is what’s been happening with houses for the last 40 years.
Now tell me how much you’d spend on a car if you knew is was going to lose half of it’s value over the next 10 years, like cars normally do, and you’re going to give me a much lower number.
The tax has to be high enough to make sure you and everyone else always lose money on the house. Then, you’ll only pay for what you need, or maybe splurge a little bit more for some extras, but you wouldn’t go crazy unless you were rich.
Under this plan that Zoomer family can afford my parent’s house, because they’re working and now don’t have to pay income tax. Meanwhile it’s going to be cheaper because there’s more supply of larger houses and less demand for them. My Boomer parents wouldn’t get that tax break because they retired and all that tax is now is a significant drain on their finances unless they downsize. Further into town where those taxes would be even higher because of desirability, those houses will be bought up by developers, and turned into condos, which because the tax is on land only and not the value of the building will have even cheaper per month taxes for the occupants. Good for both my downsizing Boomer parents, and for childless folks who don’t need a full sized house.
I’d be curious to find out if these stats take into account the prevalence of secondary (or even tertiary) suites, especially the unofficial ones. Officially the place I live in is a single family home, originally designed for a family of 4. My family of 3 lives in about 700sqft and there’s another family of 4 living in about 1000sqft upstairs. Do the stats count us as 1 household? I’ve never been sent a census form to fill out, I don’t have a legally distinct address or seperate utilities. I know many people in similar living arrangements, how are we counted in the statistics?
It’s StatsCan, so a household is defined as all the people living in a single unit together. It usually comes down to, if you share a kitchen with the other people, you’re considered 1 household. If you have separate kitchens, you get a separate census to fill out. Five roommates in a house next to a university would be 1 household for the purposes of the census which is completed every 5 years.
Right, but I guess my point is how would statscan know if a house has 1, 2, 3, or 4 units if they all share the same official address? Tax data? Driver’s licence/service cards? And as for the census, how is it accurate if only one of the households in a multi unit house gets one?
Either way it’s irrelevant to this discussion, because the article you linked didn’t use statscan data:
Most data was curated from a select number of sources: Japan Statistical Yearbook, European Housing 2002, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canadian Home Builders Association, Infometrics, US Census.
As you said it doesn’t really matter. Number of rooms isn’t a census question. Neither is the population.
Census households generally report accurately because the data isn’t reported to anyone else so there’s no downside to being truthful. It’s also correlated with other data to double check the validity.
The discussion is are there enough rooms for everyone? The answer is overwhelmingly yes. Our distribution is just absolutely fucked up.
To match other advanced countries on square feet of land and house per person on average, we’d have to build a lot more smaller houses on a lot smaller lots. The unit counts only tell half the story, and everyone is somehow ignoring that.
https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house/#%3A~%3Atext=The+average+house+size+in%2C2+(1%2C948+ft2).
For comparison, the UK average house size is only 41% the size of Canada, and the largest European size is Denmark and it’s still only 75% as big as Canada.
Globally, The countries having the worst time housing cost wise, are the ones with the largest average house size.
Yes I’m talking about inequality, but it’s systematic, people who’ve been around longer bought up everything in the major cities and now aren’t sharing.
The amount of privately held land is fixed, but that doesn’t mean someone’s going to pay the same amount. Not at all.
Let me ask you a question, how much would you pay for a car, if you knew that car would sell for more money in 10 years than you paid for it today. No matter how much you spend on the car, it has a 99% chance to go up in value over 10 years. The logical choice is to spend as much money as you can possibly afford, because the more you spend, the more you get back. This is what’s been happening with houses for the last 40 years.
Now tell me how much you’d spend on a car if you knew is was going to lose half of it’s value over the next 10 years, like cars normally do, and you’re going to give me a much lower number.
The tax has to be high enough to make sure you and everyone else always lose money on the house. Then, you’ll only pay for what you need, or maybe splurge a little bit more for some extras, but you wouldn’t go crazy unless you were rich.
Under this plan that Zoomer family can afford my parent’s house, because they’re working and now don’t have to pay income tax. Meanwhile it’s going to be cheaper because there’s more supply of larger houses and less demand for them. My Boomer parents wouldn’t get that tax break because they retired and all that tax is now is a significant drain on their finances unless they downsize. Further into town where those taxes would be even higher because of desirability, those houses will be bought up by developers, and turned into condos, which because the tax is on land only and not the value of the building will have even cheaper per month taxes for the occupants. Good for both my downsizing Boomer parents, and for childless folks who don’t need a full sized house.
Whoops, pressed send early. Stand by.
I’d be curious to find out if these stats take into account the prevalence of secondary (or even tertiary) suites, especially the unofficial ones. Officially the place I live in is a single family home, originally designed for a family of 4. My family of 3 lives in about 700sqft and there’s another family of 4 living in about 1000sqft upstairs. Do the stats count us as 1 household? I’ve never been sent a census form to fill out, I don’t have a legally distinct address or seperate utilities. I know many people in similar living arrangements, how are we counted in the statistics?
It’s StatsCan, so a household is defined as all the people living in a single unit together. It usually comes down to, if you share a kitchen with the other people, you’re considered 1 household. If you have separate kitchens, you get a separate census to fill out. Five roommates in a house next to a university would be 1 household for the purposes of the census which is completed every 5 years.
Right, but I guess my point is how would statscan know if a house has 1, 2, 3, or 4 units if they all share the same official address? Tax data? Driver’s licence/service cards? And as for the census, how is it accurate if only one of the households in a multi unit house gets one?
Either way it’s irrelevant to this discussion, because the article you linked didn’t use statscan data:
As you said it doesn’t really matter. Number of rooms isn’t a census question. Neither is the population.
Census households generally report accurately because the data isn’t reported to anyone else so there’s no downside to being truthful. It’s also correlated with other data to double check the validity.
The discussion is are there enough rooms for everyone? The answer is overwhelmingly yes. Our distribution is just absolutely fucked up.