Inflation/Gas Prices/Rising Prices in General

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by blankall

Trudeau is 100% to blame for housing right now. You can't increase immigration and keep the housing supply the same without housing prices going up. I'm all for immigration, but you have to have a plan to accommodate growing populations.

Immigration numbers as a % of the population have basically been dead flat for the last 30 years at just over 1% of the population per year. That will likely go up in the coming years, but that hasn't had an impact on housing prices yet.

And there have been ~200K housing starts per year for the last decade, so with the average Canadian household size of 2.9 people, that should be enough housing for almost 600K additional people every year, well above the rate of population growth of 300-350K per year over the last several years.

Sale prices have gone up so fast primarily because of exceptionally low interest rates that were maintained far too long, and because people are having to compete more with investors for purchases than they did in the past. About 1/3rd of new supply in most Canadian cities is ending up in the hands of investors, and in the hottest markets its even higher (nearly 50% of the units completed in the last 5 years in BC are investor-owned).

[Harry Lime]

Age demographics in Canada have the five year span of 20-24 at around 2.4 million and 25-29 around 2.6 million. It's safe to say that this is the time that people branch out from their parents abode. To err on the side of caution, lets say that they immediately triple up in the household of 2.9 people. So, broken down to yearly migration from a family home for two groups of 5 year age demos, that's about 200+K per year.

So taking the 200K or so with the 300K we are starting to look at a tight crunch for housing starts to keep up, considering that the rest of the 33 million people in Canada have moves of their own up and down the housing scale.

We don't have much control over people aging, but both investors and immigration are under our control and there is no reason that there can't be restrictions on immigration based on housing starts (or something similar) and investors on citizenship and PR status. Most countries already do something similar.

Saw a beautiful house advertised in South Carolina online today. 5000 square feet, Victorian architecture, under 300K.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Immigration numbers as a % of the population have basically been dead flat for the last 30 years at just over 1% of the population per year. That will likely go up in the coming years, but that hasn't had an impact on housing prices yet.

And there have been ~200K housing starts per year for the last decade, so with the average Canadian household size of 2.9 people, that should be enough housing for almost 600K additional people every year, well above the rate of population growth of 300-350K per year over the last several years.

Sale prices have gone up so fast primarily because of exceptionally low interest rates that were maintained far too long, and because people are having to compete more with investors for purchases than they did in the past. About 1/3rd of new supply in most Canadian cities is ending up in the hands of investors, and in the hottest markets its even higher (nearly 50% of the units completed in the last 5 years in BC are investor-owned).

This is the correct answer. Immigration has had zero effect on home prices. It’s conservative fear mongering. You could reduce immigration to zero and home prices wouldn’t move one iota.

Home prices skyrocketing is due to interest rates, foreign buyers, domestic investors (both individuals and corporate), rampant fraud, and a crooked real estate industry/commission/bidding system. Even the entire system of how people apply for and are approved for mortgages is stacked against first time buyers and is set up to give huge advantages to existing owners/landlords buying rental properties.

The system is broken and it’s not gonna get any better anytime soon. I laugh when I hear people complain about homelessness and tent cities. Those numbers are gonna increase exponentially as rent and home prices rise. We’re also going to see low income housing explode.

[Harry Lime]

It's just numbers. No reason to politicize it.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

Age demographics in Canada have the five year span of 20-24 at around 2.4 million and 25-29 around 2.6 million. It's safe to say that this is the time that people branch out from their parents abode. To err on the side of caution, lets say that they immediately triple up in the household of 2.9 people. So, broken down to yearly migration from a family home for two groups of 5 year age demos, that's about 200+K per year.

So taking the 200K or so with the 300K we are starting to look at a tight crunch for housing starts to keep up, considering that the rest of the 33 million people in Canada have moves of their own up and down the housing scale.

That's kind of a weird way to look at it for a lot of reasons:

-you're completely ignoring deaths in that math. ~300K people die a year, and they tend to be people living in 1 or 2 person households. So that would free up 150-200K units just there.

-The 20-29 population is relatively smaller than in the past (it has only grown by about 6% in the last decade, whereas the overall population has grown by 13%), so it's actually having a smaller effect compared to prior years.

-the rate of 20-29 year olds living with their parents has gone up significantly, which also reduces the effect that that age group has on housing supply.

We don't have much control over people aging, but both investors and immigration are under our control and there is no reason that there can't be restrictions on immigration based on housing starts (or something similar) and investors on citizenship and PR status. Most countries already do something similar.

Saw a beautiful house advertised in South Carolina online today. 5000 square feet, Victorian architecture, under 300K.

Immigration has significant benefits to society, as it's basically the only way we can keep our demographics at an age breakdown that will allow us to maintain our healthcare system and tax base.

On the other hand, allowing investors (including institutional ones) to buy up new housing stock has little widespread benefit to society. Really, its only positive function is that it plays a role in encouraging housing starts, but the government can do that in other ways that don't result in people having to outbid REITs, professional landlords, and foreign buyers purchasing a 2nd home when buying a house.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Immigration numbers as a % of the population have basically been dead flat for the last 30 years at just over 1% of the population per year. That will likely go up in the coming years, but that hasn't had an impact on housing prices yet.

And there have been ~200K housing starts per year for the last decade, so with the average Canadian household size of 2.9 people, that should be enough housing for almost 600K additional people every year, well above the rate of population growth of 300-350K per year over the last several years.

Sale prices have gone up so fast primarily because of exceptionally low interest rates that were maintained far too long, and because people are having to compete more with investors for purchases than they did in the past. About 1/3rd of new supply in most Canadian cities is ending up in the hands of investors, and in the hottest markets its even higher (nearly 50% of the units completed in the last 5 years in BC are investor-owned).

All of these factors play a role, but to say more people moving onto the same amount of land hasn't is absurd.

Sure lots of closing starts, but what's the quality of these starts? Detached houses? Or small condos? Housing starts is a totally meaningless figure. Canada's population has grown by 23% over the last twenty years. Has the amount of land we can build residential buildings on also increased in proportion?

The fact is that because of zoning restrictions and restrictions on expanding cities, we've been cramming more and more people into the same space. The answer is simple, if you want more people to live here, you need to open up more land. And yes of course everything else, like interest rates, transfer of generational wealth, investors, foreign cash, etc all contribute. It's not a one or the other thing. They all have a cumulative effect.

[CliffFletcher]

Demographics and immigration both play a part in home prices. The median age of buying a first home in Canada today is 34, and we just saw the largest cohort (in raw numbers) of 34 year olds in Canadian history this year as the peak of the Millennial population bulge enters their prime home-buying years. Meanwhile, Canadians are living longer than ever and Boomers are staying in their 3-4 bedroom detached houses instead of downsizing.

Immigration increases demand for housing, so clearly it has an impact on prices. Especially when the overwhelming majority of immigrants buy homes in a handful of already house-scarce cities. It’s no coincidence that housing prices have climbed steepest in immigrant-rich cities like Toronto, Vancouver, London, and Sydney.

As opendoor points out, our public services and finances need immigration to remain viable as our population ages. But we can recognize that immigration is a net benefit while also acknowledging that it has negative impacts on particular sectors - in this case housing prices in major cities.

And immigration is not a discrete problem from investors buying up real estate, as many of those investors are using Canadian real estate as a safe place to store their wealth from undemocratic regimes. Canadian planners are happy to promote Canada as a safe haven for the affluent, their children, and their money, and we don’t ask questions about where that money came from. Vancouver has a lot of parallels to Londongrad - with too many people making too much money from the arrangement to rock the boat. As government policy, it’s quite an attractive way to juice the economy, like a kind of super-tourism. Certainly easier than increasing domestic productivity. But again, those injections of capital have a knock-on effect of contributing to rising housing costs.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

We going to pretend that real estate speculators and anonymous buyers (often foreign) aren't playing a big role in this?

They don't play a role across all of Canada. Winnipeg as an example does not get the foreign investments like Toronto or Vancouver does, but we have housing issues because of immigration levels.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

This is the correct answer. Immigration has had zero effect on home prices. It’s conservative fear mongering. You could reduce immigration to zero and home prices wouldn’t move one iota.

Home prices skyrocketing is due to interest rates, foreign buyers, domestic investors (both individuals and corporate), rampant fraud, and a crooked real estate industry/commission/bidding system. Even the entire system of how people apply for and are approved for mortgages is stacked against first time buyers and is set up to give huge advantages to existing owners/landlords buying rental properties.

The system is broken and it’s not gonna get any better anytime soon. I laugh when I hear people complain about homelessness and tent cities. Those numbers are gonna increase exponentially as rent and home prices rise. We’re also going to see low income housing explode.

I disagree.

If you work in the housing market you realize quickly that there is a big actual shortage of homes being build. NIMBYism, labor shortages, material shortages, zoning stupidity, etc, etc contribute to this because we can't build efficiently enough, but there is absolutely an actual housing shortage.

At this point there needs to be a comprehensive plan to find a way to build houses quicker and more efficiently. For starters we need hundreds of thousands of more skilled workers to fill the gap up and down the line.

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by Azure

I disagree.

If you work in the housing market you realize quickly that there is a big actual shortage of homes being build. NIMBYism, labor shortages, material shortages, zoning stupidity, etc, etc contribute to this because we can't build efficiently enough, but there is absolutely an actual housing shortage.

At this point there needs to be a comprehensive plan to find a way to build houses quicker and more efficiently. For starters we need hundreds of thousands of more skilled workers to fill the gap up and down the line.

So.. more immigration?

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by Azure

I disagree.

If you work in the housing market you realize quickly that there is a big actual shortage of homes being build. NIMBYism, labor shortages, material shortages, zoning stupidity, etc, etc contribute to this because we can't build efficiently enough, but there is absolutely an actual housing shortage.

At this point there needs to be a comprehensive plan to find a way to build houses quicker and more efficiently. For starters we need hundreds of thousands of more skilled workers to fill the gap up and down the line.

There's also a infrastructure issues of continuing to build cities out further and further.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

Age demographics in Canada have the five year span of 20-24 at around 2.4 million and 25-29 around 2.6 million. It's safe to say that this is the time that people branch out from their parents abode. To err on the side of caution, lets say that they immediately triple up in the household of 2.9 people. So, broken down to yearly migration from a family home for two groups of 5 year age demos, that's about 200+K per year.

So taking the 200K or so with the 300K we are starting to look at a tight crunch for housing starts to keep up, considering that the rest of the 33 million people in Canada have moves of their own up and down the housing scale.

We don't have much control over people aging, but both investors and immigration are under our control and there is no reason that there can't be restrictions on immigration based on housing starts (or something similar) and investors on citizenship and PR status. Most countries already do something similar.

Saw a beautiful house advertised in South Carolina online today. 5000 square feet, Victorian architecture, under 300K.

While we have control over immigration you hit the nail on the head that we don’t have control over aging. Immigration is required to support our retirements.

[PeteMoss]

Originally Posted by GGG

While we have control over immigration you hit the nail on the head that we don’t have control over aging. Immigration is required to support our retirements.

Agreed - if we are going to continue to be a thriving country, we need more immigration not less given our declining birth rate.

Are there impacts to that - that we need to consider - yes. But stopping immigration and moving to a country with a declining population isn't the answer.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by belsarius

So.. more immigration?

More immigration of people who work in the trades? Absolutely. More immigration of people looking to stash millions of dollars in Canadian real estate as a safe haven? Maybe not.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by belsarius

So.. more immigration?

Is anyone in this thread actually arguing against immigration? I'm all for immigration. In fact, Canada has a naturally shrinking population, immigration is the only way for Canada to survive. With increased immigration, however, you also need a plan actually house all those people.

Canada is a massive country geographically, yet there's only very small areas we're actually allowed to build in. So if Canada is going to let 400k immigrants in per year, there has to be some effort to meet that demand in housing. A combination of looser zoning, increased residential land supply, and concerted effort to deal with building and labour shortages.

We also need to start training people to actually build the houses. Instead of graduating millions of C students with humanities degrees, perhaps we could actually encourage people to get jobs in fields where there are shortages.

I've spoken on this before, but Canada is one of the few countries in the world with heavily subsidized post-secondary education and no centralized control of that education. Canada is just letting kids take whatever degrees they want and hoping for the best that it somehow matches up with our labour demands. Other countries, like Sweden and Germany, provide even more funding for post-secondary education, but they also strictly control how many students are in each field of study.

Canada has some major problems. We're looking at generations of people where starting a family may not be feasible and the middle class is rapidly being eroded. Our leaders on both sides are obsessed with left vs. right squabbling instead of actually fixing problems.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by blankall

All of these factors play a role, but to say more people moving onto the same amount of land hasn't is absurd.

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?

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.

Sure lots of closing starts, but what's the quality of these starts? Detached houses? Or small condos? Housing starts is a totally meaningless figure. Canada's population has grown by 23% over the last twenty years. Has the amount of land we can build residential buildings on also increased in proportion?

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.

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.

The fact is that because of zoning restrictions and restrictions on expanding cities, we've been cramming more and more people into the same space. The answer is simple, if you want more people to live here, you need to open up more land. And yes of course everything else, like interest rates, transfer of generational wealth, investors, foreign cash, etc all contribute. It's not a one or the other thing. They all have a cumulative effect.

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.

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.

[belsarius]

Originally Posted by blankall

Is anyone in this thread actually arguing against immigration? I'm all for immigration. In fact, Canada has a naturally shrinking population, immigration is the only way for Canada to survive. With increased immigration, however, you also need a plan actually house all those people.

Canada is a massive country geographically, yet there's only very small areas we're actually allowed to build in. So if Canada is going to let 400k immigrants in per year, there has to be some effort to meet that demand in housing. A combination of looser zoning, increased residential land supply, and concerted effort to deal with building and labour shortages.

We also need to start training people to actually build the houses. Instead of graduating millions of C students with humanities degrees, perhaps we could actually encourage people to get jobs in fields where there are shortages.

I've spoken on this before, but Canada is one of the few countries in the world with heavily subsidized post-secondary education and no centralized control of that education. Canada is just letting kids take whatever degrees they want and hoping for the best that it somehow matches up with our labour demands. Other countries, like Sweden and Germany, provide even more funding for post-secondary education, but they also strictly control how many students are in each field of study.

Canada has some major problems. We're looking at generations of people where starting a family may not be feasible and the middle class is rapidly being eroded. Our leaders on both sides are obsessed with left vs. right squabbling instead of actually fixing problems.

I wasn't arguing that people are against immigration. It was more to point out the cyclical effect of the issue. We have too many people for the amount of housing so we need more housing. To get more housing we need more people.

I get what you are saying about people not being trained, but that is decades of telling our youth to get a degree to mean anything, and couple that with builders cutting every possible corner, including wages. So they will use immigrant workers.

And sorry, I like the way our education system operates, the last thing I want to tell poor Jonny is "sorry, I know you wanted to study philosophy but instead you have to be a welder. Deal with it because that is what society needs." Sounds pretty communist to me.

Maybe we should focus on the employers and making those jobs more desirable, not by restricting people from taking an education they want.

[blankall]

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.

[bizaro86]

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In your first paragraph you're looking at immigration to the country, yet in your second to last you note that houses even an hour outside a city don't help. Housing affordability is not generally a Canada wide problem, it's a "few big cities" problem. And those big cities have had more than 100% of the external immigration, because they get most of it plus they attract significant internal migrants. And the land available for housing starts is generally limited in most of them as you note. When you combine that with agriculture reserve and green belt policies outside of Vancouver and Toronto, the supply and demand imbalance is significant. Then you add speculators and momentum followers drawn to an asset with good supply-demand fundamentals and the potential for high leverage.

You can try and restrict speculation if you want, but that's like cutting off the top of a dandelion - it will just grow back. If you want to actually fix housing affordability in Canada you need to fix the root of the problem, which is a supply/demand imbalance in the largest cities. And that problem needs to be fixed municipally (upzoning) and provincially (land use at urban fringe policies).

[blankall]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

In your first paragraph you're looking at immigration to the country, yet in your second to last you note that houses even an hour outside a city don't help. Housing affordability is not generally a Canada wide problem, it's a "few big cities" problem. And those big cities have had more than 100% of the external immigration, because they get most of it plus they attract significant internal migrants. And the land available for housing starts is generally limited in most of them as you note. When you combine that with agriculture reserve and green belt policies outside of Vancouver and Toronto, the supply and demand imbalance is significant. Then you add speculators and momentum followers drawn to an asset with good supply-demand fundamentals and the potential for high leverage.

You can try and restrict speculation if you want, but that's like cutting off the top of a dandelion - it will just grow back. If you want to actually fix housing affordability in Canada you need to fix the root of the problem, which is a supply/demand imbalance in the largest cities. And that problem needs to be fixed municipally (upzoning) and provincially (land use at urban fringe policies).

I would mostly agree, but housing in many smaller cities has become a major problem. As people leave place like Vancouver and Toronto looking for greener pastures, they move to small cities and quickly overwhelm them. It doesn't take much to overwhelm a city of 50k-100k people. It's happened in all of the cities that are around Toronto and Vancouver, and is now spreading to places like the prairies.

The massive income rate hikes could curtail things a bit. However, if housing supply does not increase, all interest rate hikes will do is keep those without lots of cash to start with out of the market. We'll see the trend of Boomers gifting hundreds of thousands to their spawn continue, and the majority of people who weren't lucky enough to be born into a family with property and money will be SOL.

And to add to your point on speculation, the only reason speculation is occurring is because there is a shortage in the first place. The best way to kill speculation is to turn the market towards the buyers, IE increase supply.