scrubbedexpat091

Housing costs seem to be an issue in more of the country by the year.

Housing costs keeping people one paycheck from the street it seems.




House poor: Canadians who earn the least pay the most for a home - National | Globalnews.ca

magnumpi

How is the mobile home search going JS ? :@)

scrubbedexpat091

Finding is the easy part. Lol... Financing is the hard part and not looking too great. Neither credit union or the mortgage broker have high hopes.

Still waiting for final decision.

paw339

What annoys me about high housing costs in most of Canada is the high costs are often simply the result of local municipalities restricting the supply of building land. Calgary is a classic example with effectively an unlimited land supply, yet undeveloped building land is massively more expensive than agricultural land next door.

Aviator

Much like Britain and the rest of the developed world then then.

And this is puzzling for what reason? Ag land is cheaper than building land everywhere in the developed world. If Ag land cost the same, you would not be able to afford to eat. If building land cost the same as Ag land, developers would make more, houses would cost the same. Municipalities would make less and tax payers would pay more to make up the difference.

Shakyuk

I'm glad urban sprawl is being restricted. A modest productive population is far nicer to live in than massive urban sprawl with all the complexities and frustrations large populations bring.

I think redistribution of wealth is the main problem, like the rest of the world, the financial crisis caused the poor to the poorer and the rich to get richer.

scrubbedexpat091

Too many restrictions though make housing unaffordable and ina country with very limited social housing, housing is a big issue in more then one part of Canada.

If we use the 30% rule finacial advisors say housing should not exceed, our rent shouldnt exceed 600 a month which isnt going to get you much if anything around here.

paw339

I'm talking about Canada but just to compare to the UK it is estimated if the UK build on 2-3 % more of the land it would solve the UK housing crisis (which is worse than Canada's) and bring prices down to affordable levels. With half the population and being 40 times larger you're probably only talking about building on way less than 0.1% Canada's land to make sure enough building land is available.

Building land (undeveloped) is only a lot more expensive (10000%+) than agricultural land when there is a shortage of building land. A developer who buys cheap readily available land (a few thousand dollars a plot) would have to compete with developers who also have access to development land at a cheap price as would individuals. If you overpriced your properties they wouldn't sell as people would have a choice. Municipalities would still be able to charge a reasonable fee for infrastructure cost.

Municipalities would also still be able to set the rules over development all they have to do is make enough land available rather not quite enough.

paw339

You can still control urban sprawl without creating a building land shortage. At the end of the day you have to build houses for people to live in.

I agree about "modest productive population is far nicer to live in than massive urban sprawl". A slowing down of the immigration rate might take some of the housing/environmental pressure off.

paw339

A friend of mine who lives in rural Alberta (no shortage of land) build last year a 2 bedroom bungalow for $85k (services were already available). Housing doesn't have to be expensive.

dbd33

Or Canada and the UK could simply focus on getting Japanese immigrants as they're physically small and sleep in those pod thingies. A country can fit more Japanese people per developed square mile.

Moses2013

True that you could build more houses in the UK to solve the so called housing crisis there, but you eventually end up with the same problems if more people produce babies again.






Canada is a different story, but without a job even the cheapest house will not seem cheap, so people always end up in urban areas.

Aviator

However you still miss the point that if ag land is used for development, there is less productive land to feed a rising global population. In addition, if ag land could be used for development, the cost of ag land would increase, making food more expensive and less affordable for low income.

Additionally, falling house prices will hurt those with equity in their homes. Seniors looking to retire, who will rely on home equity for retirement as they down size, could well become significantly worse off and eventually poverty stricken into old age, dependent on state aid, increasing the burden on tax payers.

The only way to solve the problem is to legislate percentages of new developments be social housing. Which will increase the cost of those sold at market price to pay for it, or to fund social housing with tax payer money, which will increase taxes, one way or another.

Any way you slice it, it will cost tax payers and consumers more.

Are we willing to pay for it?

paw339

For the UK and Canada immigration not natural population growth is driving housing needs. Without immigration both countries would eventually have a gently falling population and no need to build on more land.

dbd33

One might think that an aging population would fall harder, rather than more gently, and so individuals would be prone to breaking bones. I expect they'd like those broken bits looked at, perhaps by those immigrants who staff hospitals.