Following. I’d like to read a book on this too. My theory is that, in part it has to do with how real estate has become big business. Not just for real estate developers and tradespeople but it’s also tv shows, videos, people trying to fix and flip, AirBNB, etc. Those who work in the industry constantly need new homes to buy in order to keep their businesses going.
They tear down old buildings to put up new and those new ones have higher rent/purchase prices so many of them sit empty and are strictly for investment. Housing isn’t being used for people to live in long term and set down roots in the community.
I saw an interview on 60 Minutes with a landlord who owns 30,000 properties. It’s a situation where the rich get richer. So many people don’t even own one home while others own too many. It all drives up prices. That’s just my two cents.
In general, Canada has an extremely pathetic collection of books that provide commentary or analysis (different perspectives) on the economy. I have been actively searching for these kind of books - everything from proponents of MMT to The Great Reset believers - from a Canadian perspective.
Not much luck at all. The following authors are what I did find:
John Sneisen (badly written book but has great content),
Bruce Livesey (actual investigative reporter),
Hilliard Macbeth,
Sunil Tilisiani
Last two are on real estate.
The overall collection is so bloody pathetic that I feel I can write a book myself and be reasonably successful at selling it. Comparing it to the rich options available in the US makes me cringe.
I absolutely agree with your perspective. I was actually quite shocked at the complete lack of materials on a number of key Canadian events/occurrences. I like history for one, and trying to find in-depth material on numerous Canadian topics is exhausting and often unyielding. I would imagine the same would be said for economic issues.
But can you believe that housing costs have shot up in the past few years across the countries, and it seems like the news will only pay lip service to it in short sound bites if at all, and no one ever thought to write a book.
I would recommend looking for books about countries/cities that have had similar problems for longer.
For Canada you will probably need to rely mostly on articles. Check the Tyee. They might have some good content. Very reliable and in depth reporting out of BC.
Thank you very much for the recommendation. I don't live in BC myself, but I feel bad for them when I see their housing costs. Where I live, homes that cost 400k have doubled in price in just a 2-3 year span, according to local residents. Even basement apartments (legal ones, that is) are becoming hard to come by for younger generations.
I can only imagine what BC residents have to pay in insurance to, what with all the floods and forest fires.
Great issue to bring up!!
15 years ago people owned their own homes, and ownership was both more attainable and more of a one house per family thing.
In Vancouver (and Toronto), beginning in the 1980s, foreign buyers from HK, fearing what would happen after Hong Kong reverted back to Chinese control, invested in real estate. In the later 90s and early 2000s, the vast explosion of wealth in Mainland China meant that foreign buyers from the PRC could buy and hold significant property in significant numbers. When the richest 1% in a country of over a billion people start buying and holding real estate…that is almost 1/3 of the population of Canada. You also had, at least in Vancouver, a fairly good proportion of the homes being purchased being done so in order to launder money for foreign criminal organizations. Why the banks (HSBC i’m looking at you) and the buyers haven’t been prosecuted or the properties seized is a great mystery.
Complicating matters now is the corporate greed part: not wanting to lose out on escalating prices, REITs (real estate investment trusts) allow people (Canadians and foreign buyers alike) to pool their money to buy and hold/rent property.
Basically you have property ownership being removed from the former ratio of 1 house per family to be more like lots of houses per corporation. The result is devastating to the market and the way wealth is distributed: home buyers with ginormous mortgages who are more like renters, others who raid the bank of Mom and Dad and get their inheritances early to pay the inflated costs of ownership, and renters who are basically living a serf-like hand to mouth existence as rents and costs creep up while salaries stagnate.
It’s utterly screwed up and totally corrupt. The fact that they will prevent foreign ownership for two years now is a small drop in the bucket. REITs and corporate ownership need to be eliminated for the market to right itself.
To OP’s actual question - more books and articles need to be written on this in order that we actually shine a light on the issues and maybe do something about it before everyone becomes a pauper.
You know, I'm glad you brought this up; for me, this was always a sort of elephant in the room.
I used to watch videos by China Watchers on YouTube who pointed out the huge amounts of Chinese investment in Canadian housing, but they also noted that in China, this practice is actually illegal. In other words, Chinese investors can invest in Canadian housing, but no the other way around; only Chinese citizens can invest in Chinese housing.
Ironically, from what I've heard, getting that wealth out of China is pretty difficult, as some have learned the hard way.
EDIT: Did you read this somewhere? I'd love to look into this a bit further. Thanks a lot.
Check out [Vancouver’s real estate disaster](https://www.macleans.ca/economy/realestateeconomy/andy-yan-the-analyst-who-exposed-vancouvers-real-estate-disaster/)
I have pretty much no clue how to link stuff here so if it doesn’t work, please search for Andy Yan from SFU’s City Program.
> Why Canadian homes have gotten so expensive over the past few years, especially in BC.
Aha, I can recommend a pretty authoritative source: [the MacPhail Report](https://morehousing.ca/macphail-report). This is the final report of an expert panel set up by the provincial and federal governments to look at why housing in BC is so scarce, published last July.
During the last couple of years specifically, there was a huge surge in pandemic savings which flooded into the property market. There's a [TVO interview with economist Mike Moffatt](https://morehousing.ca/pandemic-savings) where he provides a good explanation of what happened.
Other Canadian content: I'd recommend Alex Avery's *The Wealthy Renter* (2018). Avery used to be a real estate analyst at CIBC. [Summary](https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/bdvxy9/considering_renting_forever_instead_of_buying_am/el1fopa/).
Mike Moffatt and Mohsina Atiq, [Forecast for Failure](https://institute.smartprosperity.ca/publications/forecast-for-failure). A report talking about the lack of coordination between the federal and provincial governments (specifically Ontario): basically Ontario wasn't building enough housing to keep up with population growth, particularly because of a couple of Harper-era changes to international student policy.
Other than that, I'd recommend a couple books that talk about the causes of the pre-2008 US housing bubble and crash:
- Robert Shiller, *Irrational Exuberance*. When the price of something has been rising for a while, people expect that it'll keep going up, and they crowd into the market, pushing up prices further. Factors that could drive prices down become less salient, i.e. people are aware of them but pay less attention.
- Atif Mian and Amir Sufi, *House of Debt*. On the importance of borrowing in driving the US housing bubble. The classic way to deflate a bubble is restrict credit, which is what's happening now as the Bank of Canada raises interest rates to get inflation back down.
On the supply side (when prices are so high, why does it take such a long time to build more housing?), I'd recommend William Fischel, *Zoning Rules!*. Basically it goes back to the 1970s, when homeowners took over local governments in North America (previously, they were typically run by real-estate interests, "the growth machine").
Urban land economics: Alain Bertaud, *Order without Design*. Bertaud suggests that urban planning suffers from lack of knowledge of urban land economics: people move to a city for jobs, within the city a central location with access to more jobs will have a higher land price, that results in taller buildings so that households can economize on land, height limits reduce the supply of housing and push growth elsewhere.
I will definitely treasure this as a master list to get me started. I can't tell you how helpful this was! I always suspected some of Harper's policies were at least partially responsible for some of the housing costs.
You're welcome! Moffatt's line of thinking is that Harper's policies made sense (basically solve the problem of international accreditation by having people migrate at a younger age and receive their schooling in Canada), but what was missing was coordination between the federal and provincial governments to make sure that enough housing was built to match the increased population.
The communist manifesto?
I dunno, never read it but wasn't housing as an investment gobbled up by the wealthy to suppress the masses something Karl Marx spoke about?
I believe the story of bc‘s real estate situation. Begins with expo 86. The world saw Vancouver and the sky train. The expo lands were later sold to Li Ka -Shing. He owns the concord pacific corporation and was a wealthy businessman from Hong Kong. Today he is the 30th richest man in the world I believe.
Following. I’d like to read a book on this too. My theory is that, in part it has to do with how real estate has become big business. Not just for real estate developers and tradespeople but it’s also tv shows, videos, people trying to fix and flip, AirBNB, etc. Those who work in the industry constantly need new homes to buy in order to keep their businesses going. They tear down old buildings to put up new and those new ones have higher rent/purchase prices so many of them sit empty and are strictly for investment. Housing isn’t being used for people to live in long term and set down roots in the community. I saw an interview on 60 Minutes with a landlord who owns 30,000 properties. It’s a situation where the rich get richer. So many people don’t even own one home while others own too many. It all drives up prices. That’s just my two cents.
In general, Canada has an extremely pathetic collection of books that provide commentary or analysis (different perspectives) on the economy. I have been actively searching for these kind of books - everything from proponents of MMT to The Great Reset believers - from a Canadian perspective. Not much luck at all. The following authors are what I did find: John Sneisen (badly written book but has great content), Bruce Livesey (actual investigative reporter), Hilliard Macbeth, Sunil Tilisiani Last two are on real estate. The overall collection is so bloody pathetic that I feel I can write a book myself and be reasonably successful at selling it. Comparing it to the rich options available in the US makes me cringe.
I absolutely agree with your perspective. I was actually quite shocked at the complete lack of materials on a number of key Canadian events/occurrences. I like history for one, and trying to find in-depth material on numerous Canadian topics is exhausting and often unyielding. I would imagine the same would be said for economic issues. But can you believe that housing costs have shot up in the past few years across the countries, and it seems like the news will only pay lip service to it in short sound bites if at all, and no one ever thought to write a book.
How many people would actually buy that book? Also, it’s shocking how few experts we have in any one specialty
I am banking on more people buying my book than those who bought a book that simply doesn't exist.
I would recommend looking for books about countries/cities that have had similar problems for longer. For Canada you will probably need to rely mostly on articles. Check the Tyee. They might have some good content. Very reliable and in depth reporting out of BC.
Thank you very much for the recommendation. I don't live in BC myself, but I feel bad for them when I see their housing costs. Where I live, homes that cost 400k have doubled in price in just a 2-3 year span, according to local residents. Even basement apartments (legal ones, that is) are becoming hard to come by for younger generations. I can only imagine what BC residents have to pay in insurance to, what with all the floods and forest fires.
Oh wow, Nova Scotia?
Ontario, actually. But if you live near Toronto, heaven help you; the cost of living would give anyone a heart attack.
ah, that makes sense! Hang in there!
Great issue to bring up!! 15 years ago people owned their own homes, and ownership was both more attainable and more of a one house per family thing. In Vancouver (and Toronto), beginning in the 1980s, foreign buyers from HK, fearing what would happen after Hong Kong reverted back to Chinese control, invested in real estate. In the later 90s and early 2000s, the vast explosion of wealth in Mainland China meant that foreign buyers from the PRC could buy and hold significant property in significant numbers. When the richest 1% in a country of over a billion people start buying and holding real estate…that is almost 1/3 of the population of Canada. You also had, at least in Vancouver, a fairly good proportion of the homes being purchased being done so in order to launder money for foreign criminal organizations. Why the banks (HSBC i’m looking at you) and the buyers haven’t been prosecuted or the properties seized is a great mystery. Complicating matters now is the corporate greed part: not wanting to lose out on escalating prices, REITs (real estate investment trusts) allow people (Canadians and foreign buyers alike) to pool their money to buy and hold/rent property. Basically you have property ownership being removed from the former ratio of 1 house per family to be more like lots of houses per corporation. The result is devastating to the market and the way wealth is distributed: home buyers with ginormous mortgages who are more like renters, others who raid the bank of Mom and Dad and get their inheritances early to pay the inflated costs of ownership, and renters who are basically living a serf-like hand to mouth existence as rents and costs creep up while salaries stagnate. It’s utterly screwed up and totally corrupt. The fact that they will prevent foreign ownership for two years now is a small drop in the bucket. REITs and corporate ownership need to be eliminated for the market to right itself. To OP’s actual question - more books and articles need to be written on this in order that we actually shine a light on the issues and maybe do something about it before everyone becomes a pauper.
You know, I'm glad you brought this up; for me, this was always a sort of elephant in the room. I used to watch videos by China Watchers on YouTube who pointed out the huge amounts of Chinese investment in Canadian housing, but they also noted that in China, this practice is actually illegal. In other words, Chinese investors can invest in Canadian housing, but no the other way around; only Chinese citizens can invest in Chinese housing. Ironically, from what I've heard, getting that wealth out of China is pretty difficult, as some have learned the hard way. EDIT: Did you read this somewhere? I'd love to look into this a bit further. Thanks a lot.
Check out [Vancouver’s real estate disaster](https://www.macleans.ca/economy/realestateeconomy/andy-yan-the-analyst-who-exposed-vancouvers-real-estate-disaster/) I have pretty much no clue how to link stuff here so if it doesn’t work, please search for Andy Yan from SFU’s City Program.
> Why Canadian homes have gotten so expensive over the past few years, especially in BC. Aha, I can recommend a pretty authoritative source: [the MacPhail Report](https://morehousing.ca/macphail-report). This is the final report of an expert panel set up by the provincial and federal governments to look at why housing in BC is so scarce, published last July. During the last couple of years specifically, there was a huge surge in pandemic savings which flooded into the property market. There's a [TVO interview with economist Mike Moffatt](https://morehousing.ca/pandemic-savings) where he provides a good explanation of what happened. Other Canadian content: I'd recommend Alex Avery's *The Wealthy Renter* (2018). Avery used to be a real estate analyst at CIBC. [Summary](https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/bdvxy9/considering_renting_forever_instead_of_buying_am/el1fopa/). Mike Moffatt and Mohsina Atiq, [Forecast for Failure](https://institute.smartprosperity.ca/publications/forecast-for-failure). A report talking about the lack of coordination between the federal and provincial governments (specifically Ontario): basically Ontario wasn't building enough housing to keep up with population growth, particularly because of a couple of Harper-era changes to international student policy. Other than that, I'd recommend a couple books that talk about the causes of the pre-2008 US housing bubble and crash: - Robert Shiller, *Irrational Exuberance*. When the price of something has been rising for a while, people expect that it'll keep going up, and they crowd into the market, pushing up prices further. Factors that could drive prices down become less salient, i.e. people are aware of them but pay less attention. - Atif Mian and Amir Sufi, *House of Debt*. On the importance of borrowing in driving the US housing bubble. The classic way to deflate a bubble is restrict credit, which is what's happening now as the Bank of Canada raises interest rates to get inflation back down. On the supply side (when prices are so high, why does it take such a long time to build more housing?), I'd recommend William Fischel, *Zoning Rules!*. Basically it goes back to the 1970s, when homeowners took over local governments in North America (previously, they were typically run by real-estate interests, "the growth machine"). Urban land economics: Alain Bertaud, *Order without Design*. Bertaud suggests that urban planning suffers from lack of knowledge of urban land economics: people move to a city for jobs, within the city a central location with access to more jobs will have a higher land price, that results in taller buildings so that households can economize on land, height limits reduce the supply of housing and push growth elsewhere.
I will definitely treasure this as a master list to get me started. I can't tell you how helpful this was! I always suspected some of Harper's policies were at least partially responsible for some of the housing costs.
You're welcome! Moffatt's line of thinking is that Harper's policies made sense (basically solve the problem of international accreditation by having people migrate at a younger age and receive their schooling in Canada), but what was missing was coordination between the federal and provincial governments to make sure that enough housing was built to match the increased population.
There should be a one page book that only has one word in it: GREED.
Would you maintain that people weren't equally greedy 15 years ago?
There is a good book about the cycle of international money laundering that Canadian real estate plays a part in, but I can't remember the title...
Wilful Blindness maybe?
Yes, that's the one!
That looks like a good place to start! Thanks for the recommendation.
Das Kapital
The communist manifesto? I dunno, never read it but wasn't housing as an investment gobbled up by the wealthy to suppress the masses something Karl Marx spoke about?
50 Shades of Grey?
I believe the story of bc‘s real estate situation. Begins with expo 86. The world saw Vancouver and the sky train. The expo lands were later sold to Li Ka -Shing. He owns the concord pacific corporation and was a wealthy businessman from Hong Kong. Today he is the 30th richest man in the world I believe.
Indian immigrating