There are already more bedrooms in Canada than people by quite a margin, and that doesn’t even take into account that most couples share a room.
It’s fairly easy to do the math, stats Canada has released numbers of units by bedroom count a few times. You just do a little multiplication and realize there are 50 million bedrooms for 45 million people.
The problem is not supply, it’s demand. Theoretically demand could be overcome with supply, but realistically it cannot.
The easiest way to fix this whole mess is to reduce demand. It could literally be done overnight with tax policy. It would crash a good portion of the economy, and wipe out the retirement plans of millions of people, but it would result in affordable housing immediately.
It definitely wouldn’t lead to a “failed state” situation.
Wealth tied up in real estate is almost entirely unproductive. Losing it would cause some downstream problems for certain things and specific real estate based holding companies but it’s definitely not the end of the economy or anything.
If my house was worth 50% less tomorrow morning, not much would change for me except I’d need to start adjusting my long term plans for retirement. I wouldn’t (just barely) even be underwater on my mortgage.
1-2% of the new housing investment can be a heck of a lot more than 1-2% of the bedrooms if you arent building the median oversized single detached.
There are already more bedrooms in Canada than people by quite a margin, and that doesn’t even take into account that most couples share a room.
It’s fairly easy to do the math, stats Canada has released numbers of units by bedroom count a few times. You just do a little multiplication and realize there are 50 million bedrooms for 45 million people.
The problem is not supply, it’s demand. Theoretically demand could be overcome with supply, but realistically it cannot.
The easiest way to fix this whole mess is to reduce demand. It could literally be done overnight with tax policy. It would crash a good portion of the economy, and wipe out the retirement plans of millions of people, but it would result in affordable housing immediately.
it will lead to Canada as a failed state. 80% of all the wealth of Canada is tied up in real estate.
It definitely wouldn’t lead to a “failed state” situation.
Wealth tied up in real estate is almost entirely unproductive. Losing it would cause some downstream problems for certain things and specific real estate based holding companies but it’s definitely not the end of the economy or anything.
If my house was worth 50% less tomorrow morning, not much would change for me except I’d need to start adjusting my long term plans for retirement. I wouldn’t (just barely) even be underwater on my mortgage.