Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
Everyone realizes that we wouldn't be having all these housing problems if the Liberals wouldn't have blown the system apart with their immigration policies?
People have been buying homes & second homes as investments for years. Homes have always appreciated in value for the most part, and therefore it is automatically an investment.
I have no problem going after private equity, foreign investors, AirBNB owners, etc when it comes to their role in the market, but I fail to understand how going after individual home owners is a solution worth anything.
While at the same time not doing anything about the real problem, immigration.
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No everyone doesn't realize that. Housing prices took off during the pandemic (May/June 2020) when Canada only had 280,000 in permanent immigration. It accelerated in 2021 with even lower immigration. House prices have declined overall in the last 2 years where immigration has doubled.
In May 2020 the average home was $539,000 and started a steep climb peaking at $836,000 in Feb 2022.
https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/...e-house-prices
Annual immigration during that time was under 300,000. Immigration started increasing in 2021/2022 just as the prices peaked and has continued at its high level while housing prices fall.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/...nts-in-canada/
There is no correlation between immigration and housing pricing. Now, I'll say if you are looking at cost of renting, there may be a correlation there, but I was only looked at housing prices.
If you look at when the prices started jumping, (May/June 2020), that coincides with the Feds dropping the overnight rate from 1.75 to 0.25 in March of 2020. When did the rates go up again? March 2022, as housing prices peaked the month before, interest rates cooled them off.
Interest rates plus the excess cash available to many people during the pandemic, coupled with a bear stock market and confidence in the Canadian housing market were much more to blame for what happened. Here is an article from the NP in 2021 calling out the housing affordability crisis without a single mention of immigration.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...d-in-one-chart
So it seems like investment in the market, spurred on by excess cash and affordable interest rates drove the problem, not immigration policies.