Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
100 million people is really just the historical Canadian population growth rate.
It’s about 1.25% for 75 years. This equated 500k population growth. With 2.4 persons per household that’s 208,000 new houses required which is roughly what we build now. Which makes sense given how supply and demand work.
None of PPa housing policies will work because he is focusing on the cost side of the equation. With fixed inelastic demand Cost will always rise back up.
So no GST means 5% more expensive homes, tax breaks for cities who give tax breaks for developers means developers make more money at the same sale price. In theory you might have developers invest more if they can make more profit but that won’t actually happen because profit will be fixed because underlying land value will go up in value so the alternative of just selling the land increases in value.
So if you walk back all of the these cost reduction initiatives all they do is hold prices steady while bare land increases in value.
Now if you target initiatives at the first time buyer only (which Carney is and PP isn’t) now you create differential buying power so not all of the costs just rolled into the land costs. This has potential to help the first time buyer marginally but not really at the scale required.
So there are really only 2 possible ways to avoid this trap. The government builds or underwrites the profits of developers to rapidly increase supply. Carney has talked about this
Or
Tax undeveloped and underdeveloped land to make it more expensive to hold this lower cost of bare land land and encouraging development. In other words take a real close look at each of the platforms policies and evaluate if price just goes up to eat the benefit.
Also in Calgary the housing price has just tracked inflation since the last peak so many of us here bought post 2007 and paid current market pricing for housing. Outside of Toronto and Vancouver affordability is similar to the last peak.
Edit: I should add that I do like pp tying Transit funding to Transit Oriented developement. I also like PPs anti NIMBY policies but they are so antithetical to his base of supporters I don’t believe we would ever see the anti NIMBY stuff applied to change zoning laws forcing boomers to allow basement suites.
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The perceived immigration issue was greatly exacerbated by huge numbers of foreign students. The growth in both categories over a short period of time outstripped housing and other supplies.
Regarding Poilievre’s transit-oriented housing, IIRC it was originally pitched as well give you the money once the units are ready to rent. I don’t know if that’s still the case but it didn’t strike me as a compelling offer for cities and developers.