Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
I do not care if people own a vacation home that is empty 9 months of the year. I do not care if people try to arbitrage housing shortages for personal gain. What I do care about is sclerotic and slow city regulation and insane old NIMBYs standing in the way of market-driven housing.
We need to build more. We have two generations plus of housing shortage to correct.
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Canada already builds more units than almost anywhere in the world. We're building at a per capita rate that's about 40% faster than the US and UK, and about twice as fast as Germany. And we have essentially the lowest housing overcrowding in the world based on OECD data (meaning that existing stock likely isn't being used to its potential).
And if you're waiting for developers to eat into their own profits by driving down housing costs through over-building, you're going to be waiting a while. Every single time the housing market softens, housing starts drop to compensate. And the idea that there's this unused capacity to build faster (i.e. tradespeople, investment dollars, etc.) isn't based in reality. Even maintaining the current level of tradespeople will be tough enough given the average age of them.
If you want more affordable housing, a recession is really the only answer. Basically every time the mortgage payment to income ratio has gotten this high (and it has several times in the past), an economic downturn followed shortly after and sorted things out.