Wow ... that 100 yo house went for close to $2M ...??!! Like I alluded to ... it's over here in YVR. Good luck Millenials, Gen Y, Gen Z. But ultimately, all this will get passed on to the next generation ... even if you have to wait till mom/dad says goodbye one last time. You're blessed if you are the only child and don't have to split it 2 or 3 ways with your siblings.

Only if your parents live in Vancouver. I’m trying to find ways to help my mom afford to live here as much as she helped me when I moved.
Not trying to act like I’m hard done by here. Financially we are pretty good or I wouldn’t get to play with shitty old cars, like all of us here.
Even if it were just a bit cheaper for us to get a house, not even a nice one and divide so my mom could live with us, but with her budget that still leaves 1.2 million for me and my wife to get something that’s pretty shit. What’s average household income out here? 90k? People need to make triple that for a house, or as civic blues mentioned, scrap that better life that peoples parents worked so hard for them to have.

Jesus, there is some serious pot stirring going on in here..... It's like the covid thread 2.0

I AM AMUSED POGGERS

Maybe I should make my way out to the ricescene meats and find gerbs, westopher, and hondaracer and just talk shit for an hour, haven't been out since like 2012......
Are the meats still even a thing? Or everyone's in the covid thread now instead of real life?

I’ll go for a beer once it’s a normal thing to do again.
We are in the metaverse for now since cuckerberg knows the way the pandemic is going people won’t be able to interact in person until all the rich people get to space and the rest of us die of climate change.

@Traum, you raise an interesting point, here are my thoughts:

1. IMO, the opportunity for people to own homes as their principal residence trumps the need for investors to use residential real estate as a source of passive income. There are no alternatives to being a homeowner other than being a renter for life, whereas investors have multiple asset classes to generate passive income. If one is so inclined on real estate, why note REITs?

2. I don't have empirical data to back this up but my view is that most investors in the residential real estate market, in GVA and GTA, are primarily in it to chase outlandish capital gains, and not to generate passive income. With current prices in the GVA and GTA residential market, you are looking at such low cap-rates (or yield) that you would be a fool to invest in it if you didn't believe there was going to be excellent capital gains on it (taking into consideration of all the carrying costs like property tax, rental mgmt cost, maintenance cost etc.). I am willing to bet that if I proposed to keep tax on rental income unchanged, but introduce a 70% tax on capital gains instead, we'd probably eliminate most speculative investors in the market just like my original proposal.

I like many of the socialist policies because they actually work better for the economy.

When the middle class is healthy (fair wages, good benefits) there are more consumers and the economy grows more (proven over and over again).

When daycare is cheap/free more moms can work generating more economic value.

When we house the homeless it costs less than letting them be homeless which causes more crime, deaths, and property damage.

When we deprioritize the car and make neighbourhoods more walkable citizens are healthier, live longer, and do more work.

When we add bike lanes businesses get more business b/c cars mostly just drive by while bikes (and walkers) stop and buy things.

When we make schools good and make university cheap people do more with their lives - they invent, they cure, they discover...

The US is one big experiment with social policies and every shithole state doesn't believe in the above. They are every man and woman for themselves, they think handouts are theft, they don't believe in the collective good. I've been to one of these shithole states (Louisiana) and it's pathetic.

I would think twice before doing that. There is a lot of building science behind leaving a fan on 24/7. I'm not an expert but my understanding is you want to make a house as air tight as possible and then control the amount of air that comes in.

First few minutes explains it.


His personal house he is building has a air handling system that runs 24/7/

re: point 2. The existing cap gains tax is 50% (or more accurately, you're taxed on 50% of your gain at your income tax rate) - are you suggesting a tax rate of 70% on all gains or taxing 70% of the gain? The former is pretty punitive relative to current taxation. What if I just want to have a cottage up in Powell River that I rent out when I'm not there? I have trouble with taxes that are out of proportion with norms and are inequitable b/c taxes tend to stick around well past their usefulness date (like the chicken tax in the US and the property transfer tax here).

That said, I only have anecdotal evidence but all the people I know who own an investment property are operating on the basis that the rent covers their costs (or thereabouts). There's enough tax write-offs available that this still works despite our crazy sale prices b/c rental rates are also skyrocketing. The increase in value is just gravy and none of the people I know are planning to sell to make gains - in fact one of them uses the capital cost allowance to write stuff off so selling is would be problematic from a tax standpoint.

GGnoRe,

For #1, I think you didn't completely pick up on my mentioning of how some people just do not understand / do not believe in non-physical investments -- they just wouldn't understand what an REIT is. Or they might have a rudimentary grasp, but would prefer to do the actual RE investment themselves by purchasing property and becoming landlords. And who can blame them for wanting / preferring something physical? My dad has an old chum who is exactly like that. He doesn't understand or believe in stocks / securities / funds, and throughout his working life here in Canada since the late 70's, he has practically sunk every spare penny into purchasing real estates. I think he has something like 7 or 8 detached homes + a number of apartment units, and he rents all of them out. He is a blue collar worker and handy man all his life, and to this day, I think he still does the vast majority of maintenance on all of those rental properties. He is a good landlord. I wish my old man is as disciplined and methodic as his friend is LOL~

In a normal world, I don't think there is anything wrong with renting or owning -- it's just a matter of personal preference. I also don't think there is anything wrong with people preferring to invest in funds / stocks or RE. Again, it's just a matter of preference. So why force someone away from RE and into funds instead? And why steer people into home ownership if they prefer to rent?

For #2, you are absolutely correct that the massive capital gain over a relatively short period of time is one of the major reasons that housing becomes unaffordable in TO and Van, and that applies to home owners / would-be home owners as well as renters, and I wish the federal and provincial governments would take up a bigger role in regulating this. At the provincial level, I'd say that BC's empty home tax is a good tool to mitigate the problem, although the BC Liberals / Gordie Campbell / Christy Clark have obviously reacted too late to put it in place. I don't know the Ontario market well enough to know whether a provincial level policy like that is needed there, but at least Toronto has an empty home tax policy as well.

I agree with all of these policies, the problem is that the government is so inefficient, they can't implement these things without taxing us through the butthole.

This is exactly my point. I’m not performing surgery or building microchips in my living space. The effort and cost involved with something like this is excessive considering if I open a window or door then it is all useless. We’ve all made it this far growing up in structures that are decades old. No need to re-invent the wheel, we need a roof, smoke detector and heat. Crank out some housing for the exponential population growth and hundreds of thousands of people immigrating to this country annually, or stop making people.

Also real estate is the only thing I’m aware of where it is easy to get 5x to 20x leverage compared to other investments.

It really depends on how air sealed your building is. Older structures can be very leaky and therefore naturally ventilate. This is great from the perspective of bringing in fresh air but is awful in terms of energy efficiency.

Newer buildings are much more tightly sealed and any incoming air goes through a ERV/HRV (i.e not through windows or other penetrations). The ERV/HRV will bring fresh air into the building while retaining heat/moisture. The effort to incorporate a ERV/HRV system in a new build is marginal but the long-term benefit is significant.

It sorta doesn't actually matter if the govt is inefficient or if you're taxed through the butthole (at least in your opinion) if you get to be happier, live longer and healthier, and get more for your dollar. If the trade is you pay less taxes and the private sector does more of the projects but you get to die earlier, have more health issues, and you can't afford daycare for your family is that a good trade for you?

The countries with the highest standard of living and the most happiness are invariably the ones with the highest taxes. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/09/the-...-in-taxes.html

There are some things gov't is simply the best at delivering (everything I listed) even if they are seen as inefficient (this is often true) - they don't work for a profit motive and must make as many different stakeholders happy as possible, very different incentives.

Edit: If you think you're being overtaxed in Canada take a look at this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...e_to_GDP_ratio

Canada is way down the list when it comes to our tax rates and is only slightly higher than the US - the US is grossly inefficient in how it spends its tax dollars considering how poorly they do with health, education, income inequality etc. Would you trade your Canadian tax rate for an American one? Also, surprise surprise, the states with the highest tax rates are also the ones with the best outcomes for you whether it's health or making money.

Taxes are a good thing, they pay for civilisation. Taxes gave me the chance to become well off.

@supafamous

Ok, those are fair points. I would say i'm better off than the average person, but I have my life in order (at least I think I do). I can afford to pay more taxes.

But, what about all the other average people who aren't as "savvy" financially as myself?

I can agree to taxing us more, let's say on the income tax, but not this 1% housing surtax though.

^ Curious to hear thoughts on how we could implement policies that discourage speculation and money-laundering through RE that don't involve amending taxation policies on housing. Obviously there is no silver bullet but the run-away train is really getting out of control.

Although tax evasion here isn't AS bad some countries, we all know the current state of income tax isn't catching nearly enough of the bad actors out there that are skirting by.

New houses are a lot tighter. If you shut off the fan you will not get as much fresh air coming into your house. Stagnate air is not good. You will also have a greater chance of mold. Having a tighter house will mean needing less heat in the winter and less A/C in the summer.

Also I think a house also needs indoor plumbing and A/C.

What if 3rd or 4th homes gets a higher property tax rate since most likely that would be an investment. Could it be as simple as this? And while we are at it, slap a capital gains tax on these as well.

Since we are a capitalistic society, first 2 homes are at basic rate. For a married couple ...this could potentially be like 4 homes already. So no complaints ...that's a lot of leeway.

Lol that $1.899 house, old owners are Chinese contractors so most likely they diyed everything. They made big bucks though, you must really want it to pay $1.9 for that plus you're not gonna spend another $1m+ to tear it down to rebuild.

https://www.willow.ca/

Everyone gets a piece of the property.

A slightly wacky thing with high tax rate countries and low income people - in these countries the rates are high enough that they pretty much have to tax low income people but it actually works out just fine b/c the services that low income people get in exchange for paying taxes more than make up for the taxes. This is actually really logical - taxes create more equality - but kinda hard to wrap our heads around cause taxing the poor seems means.

Taxing everyone (and everything) also seems to create a greater sense of unity - everyone's pitching is so therefore we're going to work together. I'm not that certain that it's true but there's some evidence that it works. Contrast that with the US where the rates are relatively low and you have people being pitted against each other.

Tentative yes? Reverse the homeowners grant or only allow the grant to be claimed on one of your properties and raise the basic property tax rate. However, this mostly hits local, small time investors though as the foreigners (and the rich) have ways to set up corporations to avoid this tax.

FWIW, there already is a capital gains tax on anything that's not your principal residence.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/1700...sa-heatherwick

Yeah, some developers are greedy but this kind of stuff from our planning department (and the politicians who support such policies) is the kind of stuff that makes my head explode.

A loss of 2/3rds of the planned retail space, the loss of a daycare, a loss of additional housing all because the building for a few weeks of the year projects a shadow on a small part of a neighbouring park.

It's insane that, in this market, we're making decisions like this. Who do these planners think they are helping? Who are these neighbourhood NIMBYs?

There used to be one every Thursday in Richmond!

But nobody at the meet is talking about how doomed us Millennial / Gen Z's are if we ever wanna own a house.


Just caught up reading and I'm genuinely surprised to see this thread mention REITS or the smith maneuver. I thought we are bullish on physical investments with negative cap rates only :ilied:

This is interesting.

I assume the properties are purchased outright by the 100,000 shares. Meaning one isn’t taking advantage of the exponential growth when mortgaged. Obviously less risk, but I suppose the company would have to back the mortgages somehow.

So if your investing a significant amount, it still makes more sense to purchase a property outright vs. diversifying different properties using the method above. Unless you expect the market to go down. Lol.