this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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Why Canada's ban on foreign buyers hasn't made homes more affordable (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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A year ago, the federal government instituted a foreign buyer ban after passing the Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act in 2022. The two-year ban, which came into effect on Jan. 1, barred non-citizens, non-permanent residents and foreign controlled companies from buying up Canadian property as an investment.

But Wallace says that ban didn't do much for her family.

"There's all of these very luxurious buildings going in all around us that are outrageously priced," said Wallace, after attending an open house at a promising $1.1-million condo. "The foreign buyers tax … I don't think that's making an iota of difference."

Critics say the foreign buyers ban, which was aimed at making housing affordable for Canadians, had many exemptions and was more of a political manoeuvre. They say it's clear housing remains out of reach for too many in Canada, and that the country should look to other places in the world to find strategies to foster home ownership.

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[–] grue@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Actually lowering house prices comes with economic negatives.

That depends strongly on how you go about doing it. If you try to do it by destroying jobs and turning your city into Detroit or something, sure, that's bad. But if you do it the sane way, by fixing the zoning code to allow more density and require less (expensive and space-inefficient) parking, then you're making the city a more desirable place to live at the same time and it becomes a virtuous cycle.

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Plus building density encourages transit, which is more economically and energy effecient than everyone driving. Even if everyone is in an EV, electrified transit is still more effecient.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I would phrase that even more strongly: trying to design cities to accommodate cars is utterly disastrous, and would still be so even if they ran on pixie dust and emitted nothing but unicorn farts.

The biggest problem isn't even pollution or energy efficiency; it's just the sheer amount of space cars waste (in terms of both wide streets and parking lots)! Allowing the presence of cars to destroy walkability -- and make no mistake: accommodating cars and having any other transportation mode (walking, biking, transit) be viable are mutually-exclusive -- has all sorts of knock-on negative effects, up to and including increasing obesity (because walkable cities help keep people fit) and harming mental health (because Euclidean zoning often makes it illegal to build "Third Places" near housing).

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Its almost as if most roadway design theory is based on stuff they made up in the 60s off no real data other than wanting to sell The American Dream

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But no matter how you do it the metrics they mentioned will still go down. Property values will go down because reducing property values and making housing affordable is pretty much equivalent.

[–] FireRetardant@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

The 40-60 year old houses that have been neglected for years sitting on half an acre in an older part of my hometown really shouldn't be worth 750k-900k anyway.