The expected rise in Canada’s population is likely to make the country’s limited housing supply worse – and ultimately lead to even higher home prices, a report by Zoocasa forecasted.
This is why corporations are rushing to buy as many homes as possible to prevent this situation from getting better.
Two things would work:
-Fix the fucking restrictive residential zoning regs. This is provincial turf.
-Build more public housing. This is also provincial turf, but the feds had been involved in the past.Everything else is window-dressing.
With enough supply, appreciation stops, or maybe declines if construction overshoot demands. Rental companies then have to make their money off of rent alone, but the margins are usually pretty thin, and with a sufficient supply, units start going empty if the rents are higher than what the market will bear. Companies will only hold on to units for so long before flipping, just to cut tax, loan interest and utility costs. A flat market is also a good deterrent for speculators, especially in a higher interest rate era. They can make more money elsewhere.
Having said that, I’ve moved a lot for work. I’ve had good job offers in Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto. The negative impact on my quality of life just wasn’t worth it. I did live in Regina for 10 years and am now in Winnipeg. Housing never really got out of control in either place, commutes are either a 20 minute bus ride or walk/bicycle. Door to door currently is a 25 minute walk to the office, and I can do a big chunk of that in the Skywalk.
Average is about 800k, in Montreal it’s about 700k, how can people, especially young people working at less than 20$/h and sometimes partial time, will do to buy a house? Even rental is out of control here. Buying a condo is even worst with monthly fees, 600$+/month is not uncommon, adding to mortgage, adding 400-500$/month for taxes.
People earn less than 2k/month and have to spent 1200-1500$ on rent.
Adding 500K-1M immigrants per year will brings workforce to build housing, but where will those people live? And housing price will go up anyway?
At one point the system will explode?
Government answer: yes
Corporate answer: yes
Canadian population answer: … huh? … staring at nothing … wah?
how can people, especially young people working at less than 20$/h and sometimes partial time, will do to buy a house?
In fairness, nobody working minimum wage should expect to be able to afford to buy a house, although, high rent is a huge barrier for those people.
I’m more concerned with someone making a decent single income and not being able to afford a place to live or food to eat. Worse, someone with a disability or caring for someone with a disability (one less income in the family) as the support for them is non-existent.
The reality is, these days, you need at least two decent incomes to afford an entire house + the expenses that go along with it.
I’m originally from Spain. I know very well these messages from our bubble (which exploded --sort of-- around 2007 - 2008). “House prices can only go up because X”.
Then, for whatever reason, Y happens, and it turns out that Y >> X.
I know how this ends, and it’s not pretty.
Do the prices come down though?
The prices and the entire fucking country.
Are we doomed?
The problem is that what housing is being built, it is done in the least efficient and most stupid way possible, i.e., car dependent suburban sprawl around major cities.
We need massive investment in building new housing, but for it to not be shitty, it has to transit oriented and following serious urbanist principles. Something like that seems to be happending with the REM in Brossard, but we need a lot more of that: https://piped.video/watch?v=0tbSM4-HC0w
