Experts said that wealthy investors with second or third properties are pricing out first-time homebuyers and reducing the overall housing supply in the real estate market.
I feel like I’m missing something. Don’t we have a housing shortage, not merely an “owner-occupied” home shortage or a “rental” home shortage? Somebody please tell me what I’m missing.
If too many homes were owned by investors and rented out, why aren’t rented homes more affordable? If you say, “greedy landlords,” are you suggesting that the roughly 1.4 million landlords in Canada (source) are all effectively colluding? I find that highly implausible.
If we had sufficient housing supply for the demand in general, wouldn’t that result in lower prices to both rent and own, depending on what’s right for each individual?
When investors buy properties and set higher rent prices, non-investor landlords raise their rent prices to whatever the artificially-inflated market rate is for the area. Not all 1.4 million landlords have to be actively working on fucking the populace, but they all end up participating in it because no one is going to charge lower rent out of the goodness of their heart.
And when the “non-investor” landlords raise their prices high enough, they quickly find they have enough money to consider investing in a second rental property, out bidding people who have trouble saving after paying artificially inflated rent.
Did you know that the original version of Monopoly was called “The Landlord’s Game”, and was used as a teaching aid to teach the poor about the inherent immorality and inevitable loss of freedom and equality land ownership entails? Then a capitalist came along, stole the whole thing, rebranded it Monopoly, and made a shitload of money.
AirBnB’s a significant part of the issue. Short term rentals don’t provide a place for people to actually live, while often providing a higher return over the short term than a long term rental unit.
Real estate speculators, too, add extra pressure to the housing market. Speculators often don’t rent the property out at all, and attempt to treat housing as a raw commodity, buying up homes and just waiting for real estate prices to increase as the bubble continues to grow.
There may be real housing constraints in the country, but they’re severely exacerbated by the view of housing as capital, rather than as homes.
I feel like I’m missing something. Don’t we have a housing shortage, not merely an “owner-occupied” home shortage or a “rental” home shortage? Somebody please tell me what I’m missing.
If too many homes were owned by investors and rented out, why aren’t rented homes more affordable? If you say, “greedy landlords,” are you suggesting that the roughly 1.4 million landlords in Canada (source) are all effectively colluding? I find that highly implausible.
If we had sufficient housing supply for the demand in general, wouldn’t that result in lower prices to both rent and own, depending on what’s right for each individual?
When investors buy properties and set higher rent prices, non-investor landlords raise their rent prices to whatever the artificially-inflated market rate is for the area. Not all 1.4 million landlords have to be actively working on fucking the populace, but they all end up participating in it because no one is going to charge lower rent out of the goodness of their heart.
And when the “non-investor” landlords raise their prices high enough, they quickly find they have enough money to consider investing in a second rental property, out bidding people who have trouble saving after paying artificially inflated rent.
Did you know that the original version of Monopoly was called “The Landlord’s Game”, and was used as a teaching aid to teach the poor about the inherent immorality and inevitable loss of freedom and equality land ownership entails? Then a capitalist came along, stole the whole thing, rebranded it Monopoly, and made a shitload of money.
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/The_Landlord’s_Game
AirBnB’s a significant part of the issue. Short term rentals don’t provide a place for people to actually live, while often providing a higher return over the short term than a long term rental unit.
Real estate speculators, too, add extra pressure to the housing market. Speculators often don’t rent the property out at all, and attempt to treat housing as a raw commodity, buying up homes and just waiting for real estate prices to increase as the bubble continues to grow.
There may be real housing constraints in the country, but they’re severely exacerbated by the view of housing as capital, rather than as homes.
I don’t know about Canada, but in the U.S., yes, that’s happening