Fairbnb’s new co-op platform aims to offer short-term rentals without the destructive side effects by Kunal Chaudhary • The Breach

  • BCsven
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    1 year ago

    You are right nobody will push for a fix because everyone has too big a mortgage that is not really the true property value in a normal market. So the problem remains under reported. The numbers to look at are what a house sold for compared to asking price. 15 yeara ago ( in Southern ontario ) you never paid over always under asking or close to. Different now since displaced Toronto owners bought in London amd Windsor. Here in BC we had 1 day on market and a flurry of “investors” dropping 50k to 100k over just to secure it. We also have bus tours and flyers for offshore buyers. Maybe it is difficult to equate linear connection numbers but a single house sold over asking drives up rest of “values” because the person that didn’t make the cut on that place steps down a home level but offers more to secure it. Pushing the person in that market out. It has a knock on effect increasing price throughout the market, not just one house. And the biggest casualty is a low income earner being pushed to the street. so I don’t see 1 out of 50 homes being Airbnb or foreigned owned as a 2% problem. Maybe I’m at the class level where I see how much it affects friends, family, coworkers, so claiming it isn’t a big issues seems incorrect.

    • BlameThePeacock
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      1 year ago

      Yes, if demand is higher than supply, price goes up.

      The problem is that demand for housing will ALWAYS exceed supply, not matter what. Even if everyone had a home, people would want bigger homes. Even if everyone had a detached home, people would want better views. Even if everyone had a detached home with a view, people would want a vacation home.

      The demand for housing is effectively infinite. Unfortunately, the supply is constrained by reality. Even if we wanted to build five times as many units across the country, we couldn’t. There aren’t enough construction workers and there isn’t enough material available.

      You’re suggesting that 2% of the market coming back available would help, and you’re not wrong, it would help, it just would not move prices in any meaningful way for the people currently being pushed out of the market. We are building around that many units new each year, and prices have been going up 10-20% per year anyways.

      Meaningful change means prices going DOWN relative to wages. That’s not going to happen until land prices go down, and land prices won’t go down until the government changes how we tax property so that regular homeowners stop making money off doing nothing but having got there first.

      • BCsven
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        1 year ago

        Agreed on wages vs prices. Homes are not affordable and I don’t think they will be for my childrens generation. I’m not suggesting the 2% coming back into market will increase supply to lower prices, I’m saying stopping the seemingly endless cash from foreign investment would have a price impact so that average joe isn’t competing with an offshore government backed purchasing fund.

        While I ageee with you somewhat on the housing , I was in Windsor Detroit when you could pick up a property for taxea owing, or 2 bedroom detached for $20k simply because there were more homes available than buyers during a poor economy. The Toronto prices though soon changed that when people sold and moved to windsor detroit area. Now those houses are easy $300-400k

        • BlameThePeacock
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          1 year ago

          The average joe will still compete with the average joe, that’s what I’m trying to say. There are 40 million people in Canada, plenty of bidders for housing in desirable areas, only about 15 million people live in the top 5 cities.

          The residential ownership rate isn’t going down particularly fast right now and it’s still higher than it was 20 years ago, there’s little evidence that all the property is being scooped up by foreign investors or corporations at all. It’s mostly still the same Canadians buying property.

          In BC in 2022, transactions involving foreign buyers were around 1% of all real estate deals. - https://globalnews.ca/news/9382591/bc-foreign-homebuyer-ban/ Yes the taxes and bans allowed PRs and others to buy still, but it’s really not as big a segment of the market as people think, and the experts agree on that.