r/canadahousing

Adam Smith, Mill, George, and Friedman all agreed land was the ideal thing to tax. But we did the opposite, and that's why housing is unaffordable.

The root cause is a single belief almost no one questions. That your primary home is supposed to grow in value forever.

If homes are investments, prices have to keep rising. So you protect prices with zoning. In 2019, 75% of San Francisco's residential land was restricted to single family homes. Vancouver was 81%. You can't build, so supply stays tight and prices climb.

Then you keep the taxes on that asset absurdly low. A million dollar home in Vancouver pays around $3,000 a year in property tax. A similar home in Dallas pays closer to $19,000. Low carrying costs mean people hoard property and prices stay detached from wages. On top of that some countries (Canada, Australia and New Zealand) charge zero capital gains on the sale of a primary home, and you can use that exemption over and over. You work, you get taxed 30 to 50%. You sitt on a piece of land that quadruples, you pay nothing.

Since property barely gets taxed, cities have to fund themselves somehow, so they tax new construction instead. For example, Toronto's development charges add 20 to 25% to the cost of a home. That cost lands on the buyer, not the existing owner. The people who already won get protected, the people trying to get in get screwed.

Then governments juice demand even further. In Canada, the CMHC backstops mortgage risk, which prices home ownership like it's nearly risk free and pulls in more capital than a rational market would. Layer on foreign capital programs (Quebec's investor visa funneled tens of thousands of wealthy migrants into Vancouver and Richmond instead of Quebec lol) and you get asset prices completely detached from local incomes.

The reason none of this gets fixed is incentives (shoutout to my boy Charlie Munger). Homeowners vote and they're the majority. Young people mostly don't. No politician on the left or right will let prices fall, because falling prices lose elections. So the system keeps inflating until something breaks, and then you get the bailout like when Japan injected ¥60 trillion when its property bubble burst.

The uncomfortable part is this whole structure exists to protect people who already own. The ones who get crushed are younger buyers, often the same people voting for the politicians keeping it running. Truly sad...

Anyway, that's my two cents. Btw I make videos on this stuff if you're into economics and geopolitics. Curious where people think this argument is weakest, especially on the property tax stuff.

It seems that the Real estate boards in Canada have spent decades arguing that MLS listing data is their intellectual property — created and maintained by their members. They’ve used that argument to lock it down, charge for access, and build a moat around the profession.

CREA (the Canadian Real Estate Association) controls the MLS trademark and has successfully lobbied to keep sold prices and detailed listing data behind board membership walls. In the US, data is far more accessible — sites like Zillow and Redfin have rich public data. Canada deliberately chose a different path.

The actual transaction — the sale price, the date, the address — gets registered at the Ontario land registry (Teranet) which is technically public record. But it’s locked behind GeoWarehouse’s $4k/year paywall. So the data exists in public records, it’s just been commercialized by a private company that won the contract to digitize it.

Compare to other countries:

UK — sold prices are fully public, searchable free on Land Registry

Australia — varies by state but largely public

Sweden — completely public

US - data is far more accessible — sites like Zillow and Redfin have rich public data.

Canada — one of the most locked-down in the developed world

Hello! Bonjour! My name is Laura and I'm a reporter with Radio-Canada (CBC French) in Toronto. I'm working on a story on Stats Canada's new report which found that more millennials are living with parents and not buying homes. A CTV clip on the same report made the rounds on this subreddit a few days ago and it got a lot of people talking so I'm interested in hearing what anyone has to say!

I'd love to chat specifically with millennials in GTA/Ontario and hear some stories, especially in you speak French! Have you been able to buy a home? How? Have you had to put your home-ownership goals on the backburner, or given up on them completely?

Please feel free to reach out to me at laura.hull@radio-canada.ca. Thank you!

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Bonjour ! Je m’appelle Laura et je suis journaliste à Radio-Canada à Toronto. Je travaille actuellement sur un reportage consacré au nouveau rapport de Statistique Canada, qui révèle qu’un nombre croissant de milléniaux vivent chez leurs parents et ne deviennent pas propriétaires. Un reportage de CTV sur ce même sujet a fait le tour a fait le tour de ce subreddit il y a quelques jours et a suscité beaucoup de réactions ; j’aimerais donc connaître votre avis !

J'aimerais particulièrement discuter avec des milléniaux à Toronto/en Ontario et écouter leurs témoignages, surtout si vous parlez français ! Avez-vous pu acheter une maison ? Comment ? Avez-vous dû mettre vos projets d'acheter en pause, ou y avez-vous complètement renoncé ?

N'hésitez pas à me contacter à l'adresse laura.hull@radio-canada.ca. Merci !

After reviewing personal tax returns every year I'm reminded that there are a ton of "mom and pop" investors that own 20+ investment properties.

They were able to effectively purchase a scarce income producing asset then utilize leverage to keep buying more and more properties during a period of high inflation and growing population to break the system.

These people should be the lowest hanging fruit in efforts to lobby the goverment. The foreign buyers ban, under used housing tax etc. all sounded good on paper but were a nightmare to implement and full of loopholes.

However lobbying for progressive tax burden on individuals (including related corporations, partnership etc.) that own more than one single family home seems like an incredibly simple solution with little to no downsides.

Republicans and Democrats in the House voted Wednesday to pass a bill to address the nation's housing affordability crisis. It encourages homebuilding across the country and would ban corporate landlords from buying up more than 350 houses.

The bill passed 396 to 13.

This is one low-hanging fruit that would be easy for the federal government to harvest, given the consensus is to truly make homes more affordable for everyone.

I am currently in a process to purchase a home for 850k, and the lawyers cannot put in the contract that the purchase price of 13% will be deducted at the end of the closing date (was granted 200 days closing). But credited the amount at the end if it goes through by then. Basically saying I am on the hook of a 850k home if it does not get signed by the crown by then.

I am approved of up to 700k mortgage and can put down about 170k of down payment so I am able to technically pay it. I am wanting to have a 625k MAX mortgage amount.

After the 13% the home should be around 770k.

I don’t know what to do, do I gamble and take the risk or cancel the contract. Why is it taking so long for the 13% to be passed.

just finished building my patio and added some canadian made patio furniture i found online at good prices. hoping it will be great for relaxing outside without breaking the bank or needing constant fixes.

have you used canadian brands for stuff like this and if yes which ones worked well for you? any experiences with durability or quality would help a lot.

Hi everyone. I’m a 22M living in Saskatchewan. I am starting to thinking about buying a house in the near future. I am seeing people’s on people on what I could realistically could afford and see if people want to share there salary to there mortgage. I make 77k a year gross. I have 24k in my FHSA, 44K in TFSA, and 20k in savings, aswell as 17k in my work pension. Any idea what I could roughly afford?

Honestly, this is one of the most frustrating parts of adult life right now. Every time I feel like I’m finally getting ahead financially, rent goes up again and wipes out all the progress. It’s exhausting watching your paycheck grow a little while housing costs explode nonstop.

A few years ago, having a stable full-time job actually felt enough to build a decent life. Now it feels like people are working harder than ever just to survive another lease renewal. I know people who stopped eating out, stopped traveling, and cut every unnecessary expense — yet they’re still anxious every month about rent.

What really hits emotionally is that most people are not chasing luxury anymore. Nobody’s asking for mansions or expensive lifestyles. People just want a small, safe place where they can sleep peacefully without stressing about money 24/7.

I think rent keeps rising faster because demand keeps growing, affordable housing stays limited, and salaries simply can’t keep up with real living costs anymore. Companies talk about raises like they’re life-changing, but then rent increases by hundreds of dollars and suddenly that raise means nothing.

The scary part is seeing hardworking people slowly lose hope. When someone works full-time and still feels one emergency away from financial disaster, something clearly feels broken.

Yesterday downtown Kingston, I witnessed a group of teenagers harassing a homeless man before one of them threw soup at him and punched him in the head. The man retaliated, and while trying to break up the fight, I noticed something disturbing — on a crowded street, not one person stepped in to help.

After separating them, I checked on the homeless man, who was clearly hurt from the fall. When I offered to call an ambulance, he refused, saying that hospital would just throw him back out, I call it anyway. That said, his comment hit hard.

We have a serious issue in our society — one we helped create through neglect, addiction, failed systems, and lack of compassion. What shocked me even more was a telling a roommate afterward and hearing, “You shouldn’t have gotten involved.” What have we become?

If that had been an injured animal, people would’ve rushed over immediately. Are we really at the point where human life means less?

Canadians love to pride themselves on kindness and humanity. I didn’t see much of that in Kingston yesterday. We need to do better.