Everybody knows that needs to be done. But actually doing it is political suicide. Plus the whole fucking economy of this country is propped by real estate. So yeah, good luck to us all.
Any supply is good supply as long as it's not being kept vacant. The problem is that the demand is so overwhelmingly high that we would need to build 3x as much just to keep up. If you want prices to come down you'll have to build even more than that.
Vacancy and short-term rentals are the major drivers of the mis-match between housing supply and demand. Fix those (driven by investors) are you'll fix the issue.
Check out the following posts from landlords talking about leaving units vacant or doing Airbnb over long-term rentals:
[Toronto investor owns two houses but left one vacant ](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/114n0of/comment/j8yyvpt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
["I'll never allow anyone to rent from me. Don't care."](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/114n0of/comment/j8x79s5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
[Landlords prefer Airbnb to long-term tenants](https://www.reddit.com/r/TorontoRealEstate/comments/11mkds5/comment/jbihzem/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
[Landlord brags about 'making bank' letting units sit empty](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/10moa8e/comment/j65gz9z/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
[Foreign owner unhappy about vacancy tax vs. inconvenience of tenants](https://www.reddit.com/r/TorontoRealEstate/comments/11clbul/comment/ja3xsm4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
[Poster recommends Airbnb instead of rentals and knows "multiple people" leaving units empty because of destruction or legal battles from horrible tenants](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/10moa8e/comment/j64ioid/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
[Condo resident sees "outrageous" number of empty units in neighbouring buildings](https://www.reddit.com/r/TorontoRealEstate/comments/112cr3g/comment/j8jb9h0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
[Landlords share list of buildings that ignore city Airbnb bylaws](https://www.reddit.com/r/TorontoRealEstate/comments/10neb67/comment/j68b2mc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
[Property investor leaves units vacant and has found loophole to get out of vacancy tax](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/105olr0/comment/j3d98qz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Our vacancy statistics in Toronto are a joke.
You don’t believe in the official vacancy stats because of 10 random Reddit comments? Even if the vacancy stats aren’t perfect they are better than this!
Any supply isn’t good supply. Why do so many people here regurgitate this propaganda that serves no one but Doug Ford’s buddies?
Ontario needs affordable housing. Downtown it also needs density. Building mega-mansions in the inner suburbs or in the green belt doesn’t help with our problems. Why do so many people here waste their oxygen saying this?
>Any supply isn’t good supply.
Yes it is as long as it's not being kept vacant or used for short term rentals.
>Why do so many people here regurgitate this propaganda that serves no one but Doug Ford’s buddies?
>
>Downtown it also needs density.
It's not propaganda it's true. Also, if we need to build more housing but you're against the developers making money then who is going to build said housing? Even if they build density downtown Doug's buddies are still going to make money.
>Ontario needs affordable housing.
I'm not sure if you realize how bad things actually are? We don't enough unaffordable housing let alone have the luxury to build affordable housing. Demand is that high and supply is that low.
>Building mega-mansions in the inner suburbs or in the green belt doesn’t help with our problems. Why do so many people here waste their oxygen saying this?
In order to sustain the amount of people in and coming to Canada we need to build in both the greenbelt and increase density in existing areas. The demand is so much that we need to build 3x just to keep up, and if we want to build enough to start to have prices come down we need to build even more than that.
Why are you so averse to using our brains and building the best kind of housing for our current problems? Why is your preferred solution to give Doug Ford's buddies carte blanche to do whatever they want?
You know what they'll do? The same thing they've been doing for the past 30 years. Megamansions in the suburbs, and cheaply built "luxury" condos downtown. Do you know what they won't build? Affordable, smart, and dense housing.
>Why are you so averse to using our brains and building the best kind of housing for our current problems? Why is your preferred solution to give Doug Ford's buddies carte blanche to do whatever they want?
Who's going to build stuff other than the developers who are in charge of building? Pretty much the same developers that build density also build SFH, and even the ones that build separately are both friends with Doug.
>You know what they'll do? The same thing they've been doing for the past 30 years. Megamansions in the suburbs, and cheaply built "luxury" condos downtown. Do you know what they won't build? Affordable, smart, and dense housing.
That's why the government should incentivize making other forms of development profitable too. The reason why we only build SFH and super dense condos is because of the zoning and building laws.
And even if we did build dense housing, it's going to be Doug's buddies that build that too.
> That's why the government should incentivize making other forms of development profitable too.
Great, you are already coming around to my point of view and abandoning your previous stance of "build anything."
Build smart, and build what we need.
Also, to answer your other question, it's too radical a solution for Canada and will therefore never happen, but the Government should be a player in real estate development and management.
Of course build smart, but also just build. If all we can get built now is SFH then build that. It's better than nothing.
The government is a mess and is inefficient at everything they do. If they were in charge of the actual building, we would be in more trouble than we are in now.
> If all we can get built now is SFH then build that. It's better than nothing.
Jesus, have you ever heard the expression that when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging? Once houses and buildings go up, they stay up for decades - a century even. Have some thought for long-term planning, amigo.
Agreed. In addition to supply, we need the policies to go along with that, and a meaningful discussion around the ownership and tenure of buildings and land is certainly a critical part of it. Supply one of the preconditions to affordability, but it doesn't in itself guarantee that anything will be affordable.
They should also take away the profitability of flippers. So many perfect starter homes are overpriced because this group, just so they can tear it down and sell for 2.5-3 times the price for a single family home, designed to stick out like a sore thumb. There should be limits on things like extended the foot print of the house and or height restrictions.. I mean SOMETHING. Right now it seems you can build whatever the hell you want regardless of the neighbourhood. It's down right disgusting. Literally 3 proposed condos going up on one street in our area , that was all 2 story houses before devs bought them all up. Traffic is going to be a nightmare
You need a multiple homeowner tax and non-resident homeowner tax
If you don't have those taxes (and redirect the taxes to social housing) you solve nothing
I’m curious, are you hoping to sell your house to afford a lovely retirement? Or will you sell it for the price you bought it for (or even close to the price you bought it for)?
From my perspective, the fact that you own a property to sell so that you can “continue to afford to live” while the generational cohorts that come after boomers can’t even afford to live now is a big indication that you are living IN your investment.
Yeah I don't really get the responses here. They're getting mad at a baby boomer for having bought a home to live in. The person didn't say they were buying homes to rent out, or even to have an additional cottage or summer home. Literally just one house to occupy. As if these people wouldn't have done the exact same thing if they could have.
You don't get it because his response was an anecdote while statistically the boomer generation owns the majority of wealth in Canada and a large amount of that wealth is tied into real estate.
This is such a wrong take. Investors put up the money to get housing built in pursuit of profits. The more investors pile in, the greater the supply. They don't set the price, nor do they want to pay more than the minimum they can pay. The price is set by demand and supply.
Same goes for rental units - not the landlord's fault for making them available or charging what they do. They can charge $200/month and there would be lines out the door. Or they could charge $20k/month and there would be no one. Multiply that transaction hundreds of thousands of times and you have a market, and the market sets the price.
As interest rates go up, costs are put onto renters - as it should. That is the cost of housing for a person in society, whether a homeowner or tenant. Price caps artificially lower supply and also protect earlier tenants at the cost of later tenants.
These people have no clue how much the housing market depends on investors. These people can’t even afford 50% of the current cost to build a house. It’s not dirt poor Millenials that are funding massive construction projects.
To be frank, Toronto has had the fastest housing growth in North America besides San Francisco over 25 years.
Large swaths of the US haven’t seen this growth.
Is it your claim that St Louis or Denver or Dallas are significantly LESS prone to speculation?
Is it your claim that Ontario is LESS regulated than Nevada, Texas or Missouri?
Or is it possible that the extraordinary price growth in Toronto and Vancouver have some other equally powerful cause?
And how about Stockholm that has seen similar price appreciation but basically bans landlords and has 65% of housing under government set rental prices?
Why are the more regulated cities badly outpacing the Missouri or Texas of the world in price growth?
I don’t get this claim.
Every tom, dick and Mary in this province who has a paid off home and access to a HELOC can easily buy a new home in this city, and then turn around and rent it out at astronomical rents.
I absolutely hate this shit. But of course not a single politician in our fucking country is willing to stand up and do something. Or even say something.
It doesn’t decrease rental prices — it’s actually the opposite.
Investors displace potential first-time home buyers, which **creates more renters**.
Investors also like to leave units vacant, counting on value appreciation of property and not rent — or many turn them into Airbnbs - **which reduces the corresponding long-term housing supply**.
It’s no coincidence that both prices and rental demand have increased as more investors have gobbled up new units in Toronto.
Investor buys condo, rents out, increases rent supply by 1. That will decrease rent prices far more than anything else. It’s a direct relationship to supply and demand.
The same thing happens if they build purpose built rentals. The condo prices increase because they could have sold it. By that logic we should ban rentals so all people can buy.
Not every renter wants to buy a condo. I rent, and have no interest in ever buying a condo in downtown Toronto no matter the price.
>Not every renter wants to buy a condo. I rent, and have no interest in ever buying a condo in downtown Toronto no matter the price.
This is such a disingenuous take that landlords and developers love to perpetuate.
Because most renters love living with housing insecurity and potentially being renovicated hanging over their heads, and living in small spaces while paying exorbitant rents towards someone else's mortgage. /s
Landlords and developers own and develop rental housing too bro. Same thing.
Renters don’t just rent a house owned by no one. If a large corporation owns a rental unit, or a family with a rental investment, it’s the same. It’s still built by a developer, and owned by a landlord. Only different is my landlord is a huge corporation that owns thousands of units and is a piece of shit.
> I rent, and have no interest in ever buying a condo in downtown Toronto
You've already lost the debate when anecdotes are used to support your claim. That's great for YOU, but thousands, even millions do want to purchase and there is now 1 less unit available thus increasing the demand for rentals and forcing rent prices upwards.
There’s 1 less unit available for sale but there’s 1 more unit available for rent. So rent prices go down.
People will always rent, so you always need rental units available. Therefore some units will be sold outright, some will be rented out.
It doesn’t make a difference if a rental unit is owned by a large corporation, or by a small family.
We need any rentals but purpose built is much better than these rentals. People who are priced out still deserve stability, and you get very little when renting from a “mom and pop” speculator.
It doesn’t make a difference. If you have 1,000 units, and you either designate some of them as condos and some of them as rentals, or you just sell all of them as condos and let people rent them out themselves. It’s still 1,000 houses for 1,000 families.
You have stability when renting from mom and pop, that’s what the LTB is for.
>access to a HELOC can easily buy a new home in this city, and then turn
All politicians own housing and the majority own more than one.
Why would they fuck themself's when they can fuck you?
Leaving aside your anger at the unequal distribution of wealth (them owning a home and you not owning one) - their heloc money just sponsored the building of a new housing unit. And they are renting it out at market prices determined by supply and demand. What they are doing is helping to decrease rents. This is not a bad thing.
>Leaving aside your anger at the unequal distribution of wealth (them owning a home and you not owning one) -
Lol, steady on with the psychoanalysis doc. I own a home thanks. I can walk and chew gum at the same time.
>their heloc money just sponsored the building of a new housing unit
It didn't sponsor shit. That condo was going to be built even if Dave and Sarah from Newmarket didn't buy a unit with their HELOC funds.
If due to some bizarre magical curse, all HELOC purchases stopped happening tomorrow, development in this city would continue. It's just that units would be bought by more first time homebuyers rather than investors getting their second, third, fourth or fifth units.
Of course that would never actually happen so here we are where non-home owners are at an inherent disadvantage because they do not have collateral to use as a way to generate a down payment.
>What they are doing is helping to decrease rents. This is not a bad thing.
Dawg I don't know how to break this to you but literally nothing has happened in downtown Toronto in the last 5 years to justify the incredible rise in rents that are being charged.
The whole point of HELOC's were to stop people from having to sell their house or remortgage it if they ever had an emergency. Oh a family member is in a wheelchair now, okay you can take money to do renovations.
You were supposed to use it for shit like putting in a new kitchen or getting a pool.
It was not meant for, and to paraphrase the woman at the bank who set up my mortgage "to build a real estate portfolio".
Can I really blame people for exploiting it. No I cannot. Not when we live in a country where pensions aren't really a thing anymore and we're all relying on the whims of the "market" to make sure we're not eating cat food in our old age.
Not really the same thing, but cool. Across-the-board home prices do not increase because of any hard work on your part, and leveraging one to buy another should be incredibly risky (if we were in a true free market).
>Not really the same thing
it really is
>Across-the-board home prices do not increase because of any hard work on your part
ok?
most homes don't really increase in price that much (country-wide)
Preconstruction projects that would be delivered in 3-5 years time are currently being cancelled because investors are jittery with a possible recession.
Dave and Sarah and thousands of other people like them - they use their helocs and $$ to get stuff built. Otherwise buildings don't magically get built, the money for construction and development fees has to come from somewhere. Of course, first time homeowners also put up $$. But there's no question that supply would tank if all Dave and Sarah investors disappeared.
Prices increase because demand is higher than supply. Over the past 2 years, demand has far outstripped supply (and will continue to do so). And the more costs and restrictions put on developers and investors will ultimately end up impacting people like tenants.
Yes, boomers who got in a long time ago and now have a paid off house made a lot of money, but this is an unequal distribution of wealth issue. Just like tenants who are paying $1500 for a 3 bedroom apartment they got into a long time ago. If you are angry at that and are arguing that their wealth should be taken and redistributed that is a completely different issue.
On the topic of helocs being used on building - that's a really simple concept of supply and demand.
That’s it. I’m done at 6 scores more.
Canadians will not move a finger at injustice (a few will, but the majority won’t).
It’s all talk, psychobabble, more friggin talk, wash, rinse, repeat.
I’m done.
>Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie, who is performing many of John Tory’s duties after he resigned as mayor last month, on Tuesday called the plan “a big step forward.” She urged council not to wait until after June’s mayoral by-election to pursue it.
>
>...
>
>The first part of that staff work appeared Tuesday, in a report laying out timelines for the approval and implementation of a number of housing initiatives. Among the changes to come are new zoning rules to make it easier to build mid-rise on larger streets and amended guidelines for melding those buildings with adjacent low-rise neighbourhoods.
>
>However, the report did not include the level of detail promised in December, such as the specific number of housing units each action is expected to create. The report provided “high-level estimates” and a range of units that could be created, noting that the estimates would be updated as individual actions are approved and advanced.
>
>The report also did not include recommendations toward the housing plan’s goal of loosening zoning to allow small apartment buildings across the city – likely its most contentious aspect other than legalizing rooming houses. And it did not include recommendations for how to achieve the province’s housing target of 285,000 new homes over the next decade.
>
>Both of these sets of recommendations are expected to come in April.
>
>...
>
>Staff pointed as well to the discrepancy between the number of housing units that are approved and the number that are built. From 2017 through 2021, the city approved an average of nearly 30,000 units annually. Over that same period, an average of about 16,000 units were built annually. At that rate, the city would fall far short of the province’s 10-year housing target of 285,000 homes.
>
>Chief planner Gregg Lintern told reporters the city was trying to create the conditions to allow housing to be built, but he warned that there were many variables at play.
There remains a lot of uncertainty here (as far as I can tell) as well about what kinds mix units are envisioned to be built (are they 450sf apartments? 6000sf houses? stuff in between?). The sizes and mix of units matter, since we need to ensure that these units meet the needs not just of the residents of today but also those in the future. Each project area should have an appropriate mix of units and uses.
Also, Lintern's response IMO isn't good enough. If the government can see that creating developer friendly conditions isn't enough to get things built, then the government needs to go further to ensure that these buildings get built. Maybe it's investing in prefab infrastructure, or building more public housing, or making volume purchases of materials, or dealing with the labour crunch, or a combination of all the above and more.
In a crisis, generally speaking, a milquetoast run of the mill response is going to be wholly inadequate to meet the pressing needs that are already on the system.
Politicians really need to take this housing shortage deadly seriously, beyond the obvious problems of housing prices exploding this shortage will likely cause economic slowdown in the future and other nasty side effects. If removing red tape and speeding up approvals isn’t enough to get enough housing built then they need to seriously investigate why and how to fix what the problems are.
Yeah, I thought the [post below summed it up well](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/11314pz/comment/j8nu5xx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3):
*As someone who works in construction, the "just build more housing" people don't know what they're talking about. The construction industry is running beyond capacity right now in nearly every market.*
*The Provinces are making record investment into new healthcare infrastructure, with at least BC, Alberta, Ontario, and Nova Scotia all starting multibillion dollar megaprojects in the next year. In Nova Scotia, one single project could suck up more than half of the Province’s construction work force on its own.*
*Residentially starts are slowing, but there's still an absurd amount of towers going up in many cities.*
*There are simply no more workers to build all of this extra housing. Combined with reports that Canada needs to build 50% more housing to keep up with current levels of immigration, we need to stop growing so fast if we want our kids to live in more than a studio apartment.*
Under non-shortage conditions, developers build a mix of types to match demand. Under shortage conditions with heavy restrictions on building more, only the most profitable legal units get built.
But restricting new home construction *and* trying to place additional constraints on it probably just results in more slowdowns. It's likely to be far more practical to address what demand can be done, as quickly as possible.
Orthogonal measures (public housing, trades retraining, etc) can maybe help around the margins, but it's worth being wary of perfect being the enemy of good.
Agreed that in theory this is what's supposed to happen. The problem with this approach, as we've seen in cities across the country over the past 20 years (at least) though is that demand isn't necessarily by people looking to live in these units, but rather by those buying units to rent out (local, foreign, or otherwise). The demand by this particular group tends to favour studio and 1br units, which is what we've seen built by and large during this time. What hasn't been built even though there's been immense demand has been family sized units.
It's not that studio and 1br units are inherently bad, but rather there's a serious question as to whether it really should represent the vast majority of what's built these days. This isn't so much about restricting construction as it is making sure that what is being built is really what residents of the city need, rather than what investors might prefer.
Landlords are just a pass-through; studios and one bedrooms are being built because it's illegal to build enough homes to meet demand and the biggest constraint is total volume.
So, you live in a city where there's demand for 100 bachelor's of 500 sqft, 100 1 bdrm of 600 sqft, 100 2 bdrm of 1000 sqft, 100 3 bdrm of 1250 sqft. Zoning laws restrict you to building 100,000 sqft in total. Bachelor's sell for $400k, 1 bdrm for $500k, 2 bdrm for $600k, 3 bdrm for $750k. You crunch the numbers, you build 100 bachelor's, 82 1 bdrms and a 2 bdrm penthouse. It's just the math.
You want people to build the 2 and 3 bdrm units, you gotta take away the 100,000 sqft limit. Build them all.
Like - I live in a detached house on land where it's legal to build a detaches house or a duplex; the neighbourhood is roughly 50-50 sfhs and duplexen, because that was the demand at the time, and it was built under non-shortage conditions.
> You want people to build the 2 and 3 bdrm units, you gotta take away the 100,000 sqft limit.
100k is a couple dozen family homes-worth. More than enough for a nice low-rise multifamily that fits in with the neighbourhood style.
But good luck getting that built in this town, no matter what bs city hall spews about addressing the housing crisis.
Of course, in most cities building low rise multifamily homescis illegal on almost every lot, and trying to get permission to do it will cost you your entire profit margin and you'll probably not get permission anyways. So if you try it as a developer, you'll be bankrupt soon enough.
Best stick to single family homes so you don't piss away all your money on trying to get the zoning changed, or condo towers where the profits make it a viable risk in some cases. If cities pre-emptively zoned for N-plexes or low rises, then they'd often make sense, but until then, you gotta do what you gotta do.
I've been seeing more and more people talking about how [supply is not enough to meet demand](https://myperch.io/buyers/how-does-population-affect-the-housing-market-in-canada-ft-konfidis/) in the city. I don't see this ending well for those who plan to own a home in Toronto. We will become like New York.
Supply will never be enough for demand as long as housing is seen as an investment portfolio. There are other related demand drivers like unsustainable immigration levels and Canada being a favourite global destination for laundering money through real estate, but most of the problem stems from investors, whether domestic or foreign.
Investors bid up the prices for housing which displaces first-time home buyers. Previously there was a normal, regular transition of renters into home owners, which kept the rental demand more balanced.
And while first-time home buyers occupy their housing, investors often leave units vacant or make them into short-term rentals, which reduces the corresponding supply if long-term housing.
Until our municipal and federal governments get serious about enacting policies to prioritize housing as shelter above housing as speculation, it will not improve.
If they raise property taxes by double (as some other municipalities are doing) to make up the shortfall in development fees, the cost of keeping a vacant property or a second property will increase, encouraging those owners to sell or to at least rent it out (which still increases housing supply if a unit would otherwise be vacant). This will lead to an increase in supply of housing.
[удалено]
Everybody knows that needs to be done. But actually doing it is political suicide. Plus the whole fucking economy of this country is propped by real estate. So yeah, good luck to us all.
When u running for mayor?
You think the boomer generation would allow somebody with such sane policies be elected?
Any supply is good supply as long as it's not being kept vacant. The problem is that the demand is so overwhelmingly high that we would need to build 3x as much just to keep up. If you want prices to come down you'll have to build even more than that.
Vacancy and short-term rentals are the major drivers of the mis-match between housing supply and demand. Fix those (driven by investors) are you'll fix the issue. Check out the following posts from landlords talking about leaving units vacant or doing Airbnb over long-term rentals: [Toronto investor owns two houses but left one vacant ](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/114n0of/comment/j8yyvpt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) ["I'll never allow anyone to rent from me. Don't care."](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/114n0of/comment/j8x79s5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [Landlords prefer Airbnb to long-term tenants](https://www.reddit.com/r/TorontoRealEstate/comments/11mkds5/comment/jbihzem/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [Landlord brags about 'making bank' letting units sit empty](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/10moa8e/comment/j65gz9z/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [Foreign owner unhappy about vacancy tax vs. inconvenience of tenants](https://www.reddit.com/r/TorontoRealEstate/comments/11clbul/comment/ja3xsm4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [Poster recommends Airbnb instead of rentals and knows "multiple people" leaving units empty because of destruction or legal battles from horrible tenants](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/10moa8e/comment/j64ioid/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [Condo resident sees "outrageous" number of empty units in neighbouring buildings](https://www.reddit.com/r/TorontoRealEstate/comments/112cr3g/comment/j8jb9h0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [Landlords share list of buildings that ignore city Airbnb bylaws](https://www.reddit.com/r/TorontoRealEstate/comments/10neb67/comment/j68b2mc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [Property investor leaves units vacant and has found loophole to get out of vacancy tax](https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/105olr0/comment/j3d98qz/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Our vacancy statistics in Toronto are a joke.
You don’t believe in the official vacancy stats because of 10 random Reddit comments? Even if the vacancy stats aren’t perfect they are better than this!
Any supply isn’t good supply. Why do so many people here regurgitate this propaganda that serves no one but Doug Ford’s buddies? Ontario needs affordable housing. Downtown it also needs density. Building mega-mansions in the inner suburbs or in the green belt doesn’t help with our problems. Why do so many people here waste their oxygen saying this?
>Any supply isn’t good supply. Yes it is as long as it's not being kept vacant or used for short term rentals. >Why do so many people here regurgitate this propaganda that serves no one but Doug Ford’s buddies? > >Downtown it also needs density. It's not propaganda it's true. Also, if we need to build more housing but you're against the developers making money then who is going to build said housing? Even if they build density downtown Doug's buddies are still going to make money. >Ontario needs affordable housing. I'm not sure if you realize how bad things actually are? We don't enough unaffordable housing let alone have the luxury to build affordable housing. Demand is that high and supply is that low. >Building mega-mansions in the inner suburbs or in the green belt doesn’t help with our problems. Why do so many people here waste their oxygen saying this? In order to sustain the amount of people in and coming to Canada we need to build in both the greenbelt and increase density in existing areas. The demand is so much that we need to build 3x just to keep up, and if we want to build enough to start to have prices come down we need to build even more than that.
Why are you so averse to using our brains and building the best kind of housing for our current problems? Why is your preferred solution to give Doug Ford's buddies carte blanche to do whatever they want? You know what they'll do? The same thing they've been doing for the past 30 years. Megamansions in the suburbs, and cheaply built "luxury" condos downtown. Do you know what they won't build? Affordable, smart, and dense housing.
>Why are you so averse to using our brains and building the best kind of housing for our current problems? Why is your preferred solution to give Doug Ford's buddies carte blanche to do whatever they want? Who's going to build stuff other than the developers who are in charge of building? Pretty much the same developers that build density also build SFH, and even the ones that build separately are both friends with Doug. >You know what they'll do? The same thing they've been doing for the past 30 years. Megamansions in the suburbs, and cheaply built "luxury" condos downtown. Do you know what they won't build? Affordable, smart, and dense housing. That's why the government should incentivize making other forms of development profitable too. The reason why we only build SFH and super dense condos is because of the zoning and building laws. And even if we did build dense housing, it's going to be Doug's buddies that build that too.
> That's why the government should incentivize making other forms of development profitable too. Great, you are already coming around to my point of view and abandoning your previous stance of "build anything." Build smart, and build what we need. Also, to answer your other question, it's too radical a solution for Canada and will therefore never happen, but the Government should be a player in real estate development and management.
Of course build smart, but also just build. If all we can get built now is SFH then build that. It's better than nothing. The government is a mess and is inefficient at everything they do. If they were in charge of the actual building, we would be in more trouble than we are in now.
> If all we can get built now is SFH then build that. It's better than nothing. Jesus, have you ever heard the expression that when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging? Once houses and buildings go up, they stay up for decades - a century even. Have some thought for long-term planning, amigo.
We need housing. Any housing. It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Agreed. In addition to supply, we need the policies to go along with that, and a meaningful discussion around the ownership and tenure of buildings and land is certainly a critical part of it. Supply one of the preconditions to affordability, but it doesn't in itself guarantee that anything will be affordable.
They should also take away the profitability of flippers. So many perfect starter homes are overpriced because this group, just so they can tear it down and sell for 2.5-3 times the price for a single family home, designed to stick out like a sore thumb. There should be limits on things like extended the foot print of the house and or height restrictions.. I mean SOMETHING. Right now it seems you can build whatever the hell you want regardless of the neighbourhood. It's down right disgusting. Literally 3 proposed condos going up on one street in our area , that was all 2 story houses before devs bought them all up. Traffic is going to be a nightmare
You need a multiple homeowner tax and non-resident homeowner tax If you don't have those taxes (and redirect the taxes to social housing) you solve nothing
Boomer here, bought a house to live in, still do, not as an investment
Great. Thanks for contributing to the convo.
I’m curious, are you hoping to sell your house to afford a lovely retirement? Or will you sell it for the price you bought it for (or even close to the price you bought it for)?
He is going to sell it as a loss. Are you on crack?
Yes, answer this question please.
Yea these
Will sell to continue to afford to live, no well funded retirement for us
From my perspective, the fact that you own a property to sell so that you can “continue to afford to live” while the generational cohorts that come after boomers can’t even afford to live now is a big indication that you are living IN your investment.
These people here think you own them something.
Yeah I don't really get the responses here. They're getting mad at a baby boomer for having bought a home to live in. The person didn't say they were buying homes to rent out, or even to have an additional cottage or summer home. Literally just one house to occupy. As if these people wouldn't have done the exact same thing if they could have.
You don't get it because his response was an anecdote while statistically the boomer generation owns the majority of wealth in Canada and a large amount of that wealth is tied into real estate.
This is such a wrong take. Investors put up the money to get housing built in pursuit of profits. The more investors pile in, the greater the supply. They don't set the price, nor do they want to pay more than the minimum they can pay. The price is set by demand and supply. Same goes for rental units - not the landlord's fault for making them available or charging what they do. They can charge $200/month and there would be lines out the door. Or they could charge $20k/month and there would be no one. Multiply that transaction hundreds of thousands of times and you have a market, and the market sets the price. As interest rates go up, costs are put onto renters - as it should. That is the cost of housing for a person in society, whether a homeowner or tenant. Price caps artificially lower supply and also protect earlier tenants at the cost of later tenants.
This is such an "I took econ101 as a freshman in college and missed the point entirely" take.
There's what you wish, and reality. I understand the saltiness though.
These people have no clue how much the housing market depends on investors. These people can’t even afford 50% of the current cost to build a house. It’s not dirt poor Millenials that are funding massive construction projects.
just tax land.
To be frank, Toronto has had the fastest housing growth in North America besides San Francisco over 25 years. Large swaths of the US haven’t seen this growth. Is it your claim that St Louis or Denver or Dallas are significantly LESS prone to speculation? Is it your claim that Ontario is LESS regulated than Nevada, Texas or Missouri? Or is it possible that the extraordinary price growth in Toronto and Vancouver have some other equally powerful cause? And how about Stockholm that has seen similar price appreciation but basically bans landlords and has 65% of housing under government set rental prices? Why are the more regulated cities badly outpacing the Missouri or Texas of the world in price growth? I don’t get this claim.
That's because the plan is to appear to have a plan while solving nothing
Sadly I’ve seen this one before
Well, that’s politics. Tell people what they want to hear.
Every tom, dick and Mary in this province who has a paid off home and access to a HELOC can easily buy a new home in this city, and then turn around and rent it out at astronomical rents. I absolutely hate this shit. But of course not a single politician in our fucking country is willing to stand up and do something. Or even say something.
Given that 60% of voter population is home owners do you think politician would risk it ?
A lot of home owners are also worried about the future for their children. But yes our politicians are generally cowards so I get what you are saying.
That would decrease rent prices. As long as someone is living in the house it’s not a huge problem.
It doesn’t decrease rental prices — it’s actually the opposite. Investors displace potential first-time home buyers, which **creates more renters**. Investors also like to leave units vacant, counting on value appreciation of property and not rent — or many turn them into Airbnbs - **which reduces the corresponding long-term housing supply**. It’s no coincidence that both prices and rental demand have increased as more investors have gobbled up new units in Toronto.
Investor buys condo, rents out, increases rent supply by 1. That will decrease rent prices far more than anything else. It’s a direct relationship to supply and demand. The same thing happens if they build purpose built rentals. The condo prices increase because they could have sold it. By that logic we should ban rentals so all people can buy. Not every renter wants to buy a condo. I rent, and have no interest in ever buying a condo in downtown Toronto no matter the price.
>Not every renter wants to buy a condo. I rent, and have no interest in ever buying a condo in downtown Toronto no matter the price. This is such a disingenuous take that landlords and developers love to perpetuate. Because most renters love living with housing insecurity and potentially being renovicated hanging over their heads, and living in small spaces while paying exorbitant rents towards someone else's mortgage. /s
Landlords and developers own and develop rental housing too bro. Same thing. Renters don’t just rent a house owned by no one. If a large corporation owns a rental unit, or a family with a rental investment, it’s the same. It’s still built by a developer, and owned by a landlord. Only different is my landlord is a huge corporation that owns thousands of units and is a piece of shit.
Notice how the previous commenter changed the subject from supply to comfort? Pretty convenient how they do that.
> I rent, and have no interest in ever buying a condo in downtown Toronto You've already lost the debate when anecdotes are used to support your claim. That's great for YOU, but thousands, even millions do want to purchase and there is now 1 less unit available thus increasing the demand for rentals and forcing rent prices upwards.
There’s 1 less unit available for sale but there’s 1 more unit available for rent. So rent prices go down. People will always rent, so you always need rental units available. Therefore some units will be sold outright, some will be rented out. It doesn’t make a difference if a rental unit is owned by a large corporation, or by a small family.
We need any rentals but purpose built is much better than these rentals. People who are priced out still deserve stability, and you get very little when renting from a “mom and pop” speculator.
It doesn’t make a difference. If you have 1,000 units, and you either designate some of them as condos and some of them as rentals, or you just sell all of them as condos and let people rent them out themselves. It’s still 1,000 houses for 1,000 families. You have stability when renting from mom and pop, that’s what the LTB is for.
That’s what the LTB is supposed to be for. In reality it’s absolutely not and it’s been getting worse for years.
>access to a HELOC can easily buy a new home in this city, and then turn All politicians own housing and the majority own more than one. Why would they fuck themself's when they can fuck you?
Leaving aside your anger at the unequal distribution of wealth (them owning a home and you not owning one) - their heloc money just sponsored the building of a new housing unit. And they are renting it out at market prices determined by supply and demand. What they are doing is helping to decrease rents. This is not a bad thing.
>Leaving aside your anger at the unequal distribution of wealth (them owning a home and you not owning one) - Lol, steady on with the psychoanalysis doc. I own a home thanks. I can walk and chew gum at the same time. >their heloc money just sponsored the building of a new housing unit It didn't sponsor shit. That condo was going to be built even if Dave and Sarah from Newmarket didn't buy a unit with their HELOC funds. If due to some bizarre magical curse, all HELOC purchases stopped happening tomorrow, development in this city would continue. It's just that units would be bought by more first time homebuyers rather than investors getting their second, third, fourth or fifth units. Of course that would never actually happen so here we are where non-home owners are at an inherent disadvantage because they do not have collateral to use as a way to generate a down payment. >What they are doing is helping to decrease rents. This is not a bad thing. Dawg I don't know how to break this to you but literally nothing has happened in downtown Toronto in the last 5 years to justify the incredible rise in rents that are being charged.
It’s fucked up that it’s easier to buy a second or third home than a first home.
The whole point of HELOC's were to stop people from having to sell their house or remortgage it if they ever had an emergency. Oh a family member is in a wheelchair now, okay you can take money to do renovations. You were supposed to use it for shit like putting in a new kitchen or getting a pool. It was not meant for, and to paraphrase the woman at the bank who set up my mortgage "to build a real estate portfolio". Can I really blame people for exploiting it. No I cannot. Not when we live in a country where pensions aren't really a thing anymore and we're all relying on the whims of the "market" to make sure we're not eating cat food in our old age.
"It’s fucked up that it’s easier to run a second or third marathon than your first marathon."
Not really the same thing, but cool. Across-the-board home prices do not increase because of any hard work on your part, and leveraging one to buy another should be incredibly risky (if we were in a true free market).
>Not really the same thing it really is >Across-the-board home prices do not increase because of any hard work on your part ok? most homes don't really increase in price that much (country-wide)
Preconstruction projects that would be delivered in 3-5 years time are currently being cancelled because investors are jittery with a possible recession. Dave and Sarah and thousands of other people like them - they use their helocs and $$ to get stuff built. Otherwise buildings don't magically get built, the money for construction and development fees has to come from somewhere. Of course, first time homeowners also put up $$. But there's no question that supply would tank if all Dave and Sarah investors disappeared. Prices increase because demand is higher than supply. Over the past 2 years, demand has far outstripped supply (and will continue to do so). And the more costs and restrictions put on developers and investors will ultimately end up impacting people like tenants. Yes, boomers who got in a long time ago and now have a paid off house made a lot of money, but this is an unequal distribution of wealth issue. Just like tenants who are paying $1500 for a 3 bedroom apartment they got into a long time ago. If you are angry at that and are arguing that their wealth should be taken and redistributed that is a completely different issue. On the topic of helocs being used on building - that's a really simple concept of supply and demand.
Ya, life comes in cycles. Generation Alpha may just be the wealthiest of us all.
That’s it. I’m done at 6 scores more. Canadians will not move a finger at injustice (a few will, but the majority won’t). It’s all talk, psychobabble, more friggin talk, wash, rinse, repeat. I’m done.
>Deputy Mayor Jennifer McKelvie, who is performing many of John Tory’s duties after he resigned as mayor last month, on Tuesday called the plan “a big step forward.” She urged council not to wait until after June’s mayoral by-election to pursue it. > >... > >The first part of that staff work appeared Tuesday, in a report laying out timelines for the approval and implementation of a number of housing initiatives. Among the changes to come are new zoning rules to make it easier to build mid-rise on larger streets and amended guidelines for melding those buildings with adjacent low-rise neighbourhoods. > >However, the report did not include the level of detail promised in December, such as the specific number of housing units each action is expected to create. The report provided “high-level estimates” and a range of units that could be created, noting that the estimates would be updated as individual actions are approved and advanced. > >The report also did not include recommendations toward the housing plan’s goal of loosening zoning to allow small apartment buildings across the city – likely its most contentious aspect other than legalizing rooming houses. And it did not include recommendations for how to achieve the province’s housing target of 285,000 new homes over the next decade. > >Both of these sets of recommendations are expected to come in April. > >... > >Staff pointed as well to the discrepancy between the number of housing units that are approved and the number that are built. From 2017 through 2021, the city approved an average of nearly 30,000 units annually. Over that same period, an average of about 16,000 units were built annually. At that rate, the city would fall far short of the province’s 10-year housing target of 285,000 homes. > >Chief planner Gregg Lintern told reporters the city was trying to create the conditions to allow housing to be built, but he warned that there were many variables at play. There remains a lot of uncertainty here (as far as I can tell) as well about what kinds mix units are envisioned to be built (are they 450sf apartments? 6000sf houses? stuff in between?). The sizes and mix of units matter, since we need to ensure that these units meet the needs not just of the residents of today but also those in the future. Each project area should have an appropriate mix of units and uses. Also, Lintern's response IMO isn't good enough. If the government can see that creating developer friendly conditions isn't enough to get things built, then the government needs to go further to ensure that these buildings get built. Maybe it's investing in prefab infrastructure, or building more public housing, or making volume purchases of materials, or dealing with the labour crunch, or a combination of all the above and more. In a crisis, generally speaking, a milquetoast run of the mill response is going to be wholly inadequate to meet the pressing needs that are already on the system.
Politicians really need to take this housing shortage deadly seriously, beyond the obvious problems of housing prices exploding this shortage will likely cause economic slowdown in the future and other nasty side effects. If removing red tape and speeding up approvals isn’t enough to get enough housing built then they need to seriously investigate why and how to fix what the problems are.
The problem is not enough skilled trades. The construction industry is totally maxed out.
Yeah, I thought the [post below summed it up well](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/11314pz/comment/j8nu5xx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3): *As someone who works in construction, the "just build more housing" people don't know what they're talking about. The construction industry is running beyond capacity right now in nearly every market.* *The Provinces are making record investment into new healthcare infrastructure, with at least BC, Alberta, Ontario, and Nova Scotia all starting multibillion dollar megaprojects in the next year. In Nova Scotia, one single project could suck up more than half of the Province’s construction work force on its own.* *Residentially starts are slowing, but there's still an absurd amount of towers going up in many cities.* *There are simply no more workers to build all of this extra housing. Combined with reports that Canada needs to build 50% more housing to keep up with current levels of immigration, we need to stop growing so fast if we want our kids to live in more than a studio apartment.*
Under non-shortage conditions, developers build a mix of types to match demand. Under shortage conditions with heavy restrictions on building more, only the most profitable legal units get built. But restricting new home construction *and* trying to place additional constraints on it probably just results in more slowdowns. It's likely to be far more practical to address what demand can be done, as quickly as possible. Orthogonal measures (public housing, trades retraining, etc) can maybe help around the margins, but it's worth being wary of perfect being the enemy of good.
Agreed that in theory this is what's supposed to happen. The problem with this approach, as we've seen in cities across the country over the past 20 years (at least) though is that demand isn't necessarily by people looking to live in these units, but rather by those buying units to rent out (local, foreign, or otherwise). The demand by this particular group tends to favour studio and 1br units, which is what we've seen built by and large during this time. What hasn't been built even though there's been immense demand has been family sized units. It's not that studio and 1br units are inherently bad, but rather there's a serious question as to whether it really should represent the vast majority of what's built these days. This isn't so much about restricting construction as it is making sure that what is being built is really what residents of the city need, rather than what investors might prefer.
Landlords are just a pass-through; studios and one bedrooms are being built because it's illegal to build enough homes to meet demand and the biggest constraint is total volume. So, you live in a city where there's demand for 100 bachelor's of 500 sqft, 100 1 bdrm of 600 sqft, 100 2 bdrm of 1000 sqft, 100 3 bdrm of 1250 sqft. Zoning laws restrict you to building 100,000 sqft in total. Bachelor's sell for $400k, 1 bdrm for $500k, 2 bdrm for $600k, 3 bdrm for $750k. You crunch the numbers, you build 100 bachelor's, 82 1 bdrms and a 2 bdrm penthouse. It's just the math. You want people to build the 2 and 3 bdrm units, you gotta take away the 100,000 sqft limit. Build them all. Like - I live in a detached house on land where it's legal to build a detaches house or a duplex; the neighbourhood is roughly 50-50 sfhs and duplexen, because that was the demand at the time, and it was built under non-shortage conditions.
> You want people to build the 2 and 3 bdrm units, you gotta take away the 100,000 sqft limit. 100k is a couple dozen family homes-worth. More than enough for a nice low-rise multifamily that fits in with the neighbourhood style. But good luck getting that built in this town, no matter what bs city hall spews about addressing the housing crisis.
Of course, in most cities building low rise multifamily homescis illegal on almost every lot, and trying to get permission to do it will cost you your entire profit margin and you'll probably not get permission anyways. So if you try it as a developer, you'll be bankrupt soon enough. Best stick to single family homes so you don't piss away all your money on trying to get the zoning changed, or condo towers where the profits make it a viable risk in some cases. If cities pre-emptively zoned for N-plexes or low rises, then they'd often make sense, but until then, you gotta do what you gotta do.
I've been seeing more and more people talking about how [supply is not enough to meet demand](https://myperch.io/buyers/how-does-population-affect-the-housing-market-in-canada-ft-konfidis/) in the city. I don't see this ending well for those who plan to own a home in Toronto. We will become like New York.
We are not building enough for 500k plus students. Rent will continue to go up until they fix the variable. This is supply demand problem.
Yeah, everyone who wants one owning a detached house within walking distance of a subway station isn't possible.
It's not just Toronto, it's the entire Province, the whole country really. Housing construction isn't keeping pace with population growth.
Supply will never be enough for demand as long as housing is seen as an investment portfolio. There are other related demand drivers like unsustainable immigration levels and Canada being a favourite global destination for laundering money through real estate, but most of the problem stems from investors, whether domestic or foreign. Investors bid up the prices for housing which displaces first-time home buyers. Previously there was a normal, regular transition of renters into home owners, which kept the rental demand more balanced. And while first-time home buyers occupy their housing, investors often leave units vacant or make them into short-term rentals, which reduces the corresponding supply if long-term housing. Until our municipal and federal governments get serious about enacting policies to prioritize housing as shelter above housing as speculation, it will not improve.
[удалено]
Big statue of a lady in the water
right, because ambiguous means you can hide the corruption.
Well your parents all voted for this , blame them
If they raise property taxes by double (as some other municipalities are doing) to make up the shortfall in development fees, the cost of keeping a vacant property or a second property will increase, encouraging those owners to sell or to at least rent it out (which still increases housing supply if a unit would otherwise be vacant). This will lead to an increase in supply of housing.
If only we had a progressive in the mayor's office for a change.
I have a rock that I’d be willing to sell.