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Originally Posted by opendoor

Population growth from immigration has been relatively static for 30 years. If adding ~0.8% to the population for the last 5-10 years is primarily responsible for housing prices skyrocketing, then why didn't that happen in the years and decades before that with the same (or higher) immigration?

Pretty simple. We had the capacity to house our population at one point. As that population grew, we ran out of space until eventually there was a shortage. It's not just immigration. We have the millennials, who are the biggest co-hort ever entering the market, and the babyboomers don't want to downsize.

Originally Posted by opendoor

If you look at a chart of Canada's immigration rate and a chart with housing prices, there's essentially no correlation. The highest rate of increase in prices in the last 40 years was in the '80s which corresponded to the lowest immigration rate we've had since the '60s. Conversely, the period of highest immigration in recent history (early-to-mid '90s) coincided with a crash in housing prices and a decade of zero growth in house prices.

Once again.....we had allocated X amount of space for X amount of people. We then stopped allocated sufficient space. We ran out of space. Hence a shortage.

Originally Posted by opendoor

Housing starts aren't meaningless. That's the number of units that are available, and like anything bought and sold on an open market, the amount of supply is vitally important to the price. Unfortunately the supply of housing units that can be purchased by individuals to live in is being artificially squeezed by speculators and investors buying up at an increasing rate.

How many housing starts are detached houses? Enough to account for the quickly growing population and young people entering the market?

Originally Posted by opendoor

In terms of types of houses, there are definitely more condos now (about 54% of housing starts vs 45% 10 years ago), but condo prices have gone up basically as much as detached prices have. If no one wanted the condos that were built and only wanted detached houses, then there would be much more of a discrepancy in price increases than there is.

There's a shortage across all sectors. We're also forcing people that would otherwise buy houses into smaller and smaller living spaces. When you have a shortage at any level, it affects all levels. We have a shortage at all levels right now.

Originally Posted by opendoor

Open up more land where? Canada already has relatively low density cities. Building more houses an hour or two from a city where few people want to live isn't going to alleviate anything.

Where? One of the least densely populated and largest countries in the world no has a land shortage? Virtually every city in Canada is surrounded by precious farmland that cannot be moved elsewhere for any reason somehow....it's pretty simple. If you had land that house 30 million people, and you bring in 10 million more people to the same amount of land, while also heavily restricting denser zoning. There will be shortage.

Originally Posted by opendoor

Ultimately, the number of housing starts in the last decade has grown faster than the population has, and significantly faster than the rate of immigration has. So simple math would suggest that the reason that housing prices went up so fast in the last decade has far more to do with all those other factors than it does population or immigration numbers.

And the population growth has also been larger than ever before, and, once again, we have the millennials and Gen Z entering the market and the boomers not leaving the market. We do not have enough housing starts, and many of the starts we have do not provide people with what they actually need.

There is a housing shortage in Canada. You cannot debate this. It's a reality.

https://globalnews.ca/news/8752010/h...ge-cost-homes/

The average selling price of a home in Canada has surged more than 50 per cent in the last two years, according to Reuters. Construction, meanwhile, has failed to keep up with the country’s growing population — in fact, a report published by Scotiabank last year found Canada has the “lowest number of housing units per 1,000 residents of any G7 country.”

The most land and least dense population, but also the biggest shortage....

About 286,000 new homes are currently built each year, according to 2021 data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

But the country’s housing supply is not keeping up with population growth. In 2016, there were 427 housing units for every 1,000 Canadians, and in 2020, there were was 424, according to a report Perrault published in May 2021.

During that time, Canada’s population grew by more than 1.3 million people.

While Canada has added more than 100,000 construction jobs in the last four months, the country needs to make structural changes to the education system, according to one construction industry representative.

Canada’s educational systems are, in many ways, geared towards churning out university applicants — not driving students towards hands-on apprenticeships, according to Richard Lyall, president of the Residential Construction Council of Ontario (RESCON).

so....exactly what I've been saying since I graduated from undergrad....almost 20 years ago.

Right now, Canada’s immigration policies have a habit of targeting white collar workers or temporary foreign workers, leaving a gap when it comes to the kind of skilled labour needed to help build homes, Perrault explained.

And yes, that problem can be alleviated with bringing in skilled workers....too bad Canada has a system that caters to rich immigrants and those with existing family ties to Canada.

This is all extremely typical of Trudeau. He's got great ideas, but zero practical experience and zero ability to plan out how to implement these ideas. This is exactly what happens when you allow your government to be hijacked by the wealthy son of a former leader, instead of someone who actually earned their position.