Canada likely sitting on the largest housing bubble of all time: Strategist - BNN Bloomberg
Canada likely sitting on the largest housing bubble of all time: Strategist - BNN Bloomberg
The Canadian housing market is at high risk of unravelling, according to one expert.
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For those people who are actually wishing for the bubble to burst, remember that's exactly what happened in 2008, and what happened back then. Literally the only people who won were the rich as they just bought out all the property that got severely discounted while other rich people got a massive payday from the government (aka regular Joe's tax dollars) for fucking up. And the bubble simply got restored because those rich people could afford to sit on unproductive products for a decade at a time because they knew that without a constantly increasing supply of housing, the prices will explode again because housing is a requirement, not a luxury.
And the losers was everybody who doesn't make 7 figures or more. People's retirements were crushed, their savings crushed, their existing lives crushed. And the economy was set back for years and inflation skyrocketed for a little while, which never came back down.
And in places where such housing bubbles really burst, Japan hasn't seen any growth for 30 years. They're still in what they all the Lost Generation, because they realized that calling it the Lost Decade was premature and it didn't end in 10 years. We're watching China's housing implode on itself right now with hundreds of thousands of people losing their entire investments and retirement savings. We're watching 80 year olds going back to work so that they don't starve to death while youth unemployment reaches levels so insane that they'll take a job that only pays under the table because the company can't afford to pay minimum wage!
You want a dystopia, you'll get it if the bubble bursts. You'll also get it if the bubble continues to inflate.
So the only solution is to slowly deflate the bubble by increasing housing construction so that it outpaces demand in a controlled manner until the prices come back down to something reasonable, then to continue keeping pace. And for that, we need the political will for both government subsidized housing and a overhaul of zoning laws to allow for mixed-use residential to replace all residential zoning.
Detached single family housing don't belong in major cities, and suburbs shouldn't be subsidized by the downtown core.
Detached single family housing don’t belong in major cities, and suburbs shouldn’t be subsidized by the downtown core.
Truer words were never spoken. If you want to be able to live on your own little plot of land surrounded by other people wanting the same thing - then development, upkeep and maintenance of all infrastructure and services needs to be paid for directly from your property tax. When you drive in to downtown to get to work, you should not expect to find parking. Downtown should belong to the people who actually live there, it's crazy how far we bend over backwards to support a lifestyle that's inherently unsustainable.
Whether you hope for it or not, all bubbles burst eventually, and the government has already proven its unwillingness to do anything about it by allowing the bubble to form in the first place.
Oh, they'll do something. They'll make sure the rich don't take a haircut on their investment.
You want a dystopia, you’ll get it if the bubble bursts. You’ll also get it if the bubble continues to inflate.
Yeah, the range of ways out of this that don't suck are small. Even if you get the mildest of fixes: property values stay steady for decades while they're eroded by normal levels of inflation, that's going to be hell for people waiting for the prices to become reasonable, but also hell for people who bought property as an investment and instead see it losing value. Some of those people are rich, but other people were just using it as a retirement plan.
And for that, we need the political will
The problem is that political will always aligns with the self-interest of the parties or their leaders. Since home owners vote and donate, they're the ones who get listened to. Since property developers donate, they get listened to. Homeless people don't vote, and definitely don't donate to political campaigns. People struggling to make ends meet don't take time out of their busy days to get involved in politics, they just hope someone will help them.
Since politicians invariably come from a class that not only owns houses, but often owns multiple houses, the idea that they'll voluntarily take actions that reduce the value of their investments is pretty laughable.
It would be relatively straightforward to block Monopoly getting played should the bubble burst--legislatively speaking--but it would require governments to intervene against it's donor class.
Hawaii's post-disaster response is a good template: the government has threatened to buy land to prevent investors and speculators from doing the same. In Canada, this would be like a bizarro-world version of Doug Ford's Greenbelt giveaway: where the government buys more land, and more houses, to block speculators.
I can't see it happening, because our leaders are either feckless cowards (on the left) or complete corporate toadies (on the right), but I can dream.