Housing Bubble II: The Quest To Build Enough Homes Where People Actually Need Them

[whatnext]

New Liberal leader but same old sell-Canadians-out policies.

Canada Weighs Opening Its Housing Market to More Foreign Capital
By Laura Dhillon Kane
December 22, 2025 at 5:15 AM PST

Canada is considering changes to its ban on foreign home buyers starting in 2027, its housing minister said, as the government looks for ways to increase the supply of affordable places to live.

Gregor Robertson said the government will maintain a previous administration’s decision to extend the prohibition on foreign buyers through 2026. But over the next year it will review what’s worked in similar countries, particularly Australia.

“We need to figure out the best role for offshore capital to play in the housing market,” the former Vancouver mayor said in an interview with Bloomberg News...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...?sref=x4rjnz06

Gregor the Dim aka Gregor Robertson is the last person Canada needs to make decisions on foreign buyers, given his gleeful presiding over the selling out of Vancouver to money from China.

[ssiguy]

Talk about putting the rat in charge of the cheese.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Talk about putting the rat in charge of the cheese.

Yep. You have to wonder how on Earth Carney was convinced to make Robertson minister of anything, let alone housing.

[Coldrsx]

[elly63]

It drives me nuts that we have zillions of good ideas and prototypes that never see the light of production. Whether this is one of them I don't know but I always go back to the great monologue Frank McGee made about the expense of going to the moon instead of taking care of the poor.

Basically what it comes down to, we have the ability to do it, but do we have the will to do it?

• Video Link

[MonkeyRonin]

Well this'll be sure to help out with the costs of building more housing.

'An egregious joke:' Metro Vancouver's record on trial as developers balk at 200% fee hike

Metro Vancouver is coming under growing scrutiny, as more developers come forward to oppose the regional authority’s plan to jack up fees on new home construction
Article content

This week, at least seven local developers, including major players like Polygon, Anthem, and Wesgroup, sent separate letters to Metro urging reconsideration of the plan to increase development charges by more than 200 per cent over three years.

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-...t-220-fee-hike

[whatnext]

Apparently people don't actually need homes to be built in in Toronto:

GTA New Home Sales Hit Historic Lows, Capping Off Worst Year On Record: Report
According to the Building Industry and Land Development Association and Altus Group, December sales capped off the worst year on record for new home sales in the GTA, raising alarms about future housing supply, job losses, and the region’s broader economic health.
STOREYS Editorial Team
January 22, 2026

December didn’t just close out 2025 — it underlined just how historic the year was for the GTA’s new home market.

According to the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD), December sales capped off the worst year on record for new home sales in the GTA, raising alarms about future housing supply, job losses, and the region’s broader economic health...

... “Never in the 45 years that new home sales data have been collected for the GTA have we seen just 5,300 sales for an entire year,” said Edward Jegg, Research Manager at Altus Group. Indeed, total sales for 2025 came in at 5,314: officially the lowest annual total on record.... (bold mine)

https://storeys.com/gta-sales-bild-altus-2025/

[someone123]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Well this'll be sure to help out with the costs of building more housing.

I'm pretty skeptical of this argument that this is about new development paying its way and removing an unfair burden on homeowners. I think it's a line of reasoning that sounds good at a very high level but probably falls apart with scrutiny. Aren't owners of new developments some of the highest and most cost-efficient ratepayers as the properties tend to be higher density with higher assessments? Then there's the question of what the real costs are and who is actually paying them. The BC home owners grant costs around $1B annually.

[GenWhy?]

Toronto news from the latest CMHC Report (Fall 2025 Housing Supply Report)
https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professi...-supply-report

"Rental apartment starts fared better Relative to condominium apartments, rental apartment starts decreased by only 8% in the first half of 2025 remaining well above their 10-year average. Favourable financial viability and optimism among developers (PDF) regarding the region’s long-term rental fundamentals reduced the decline for rental apartments. Viability has been supported by government financing incentives and lower land prices:

- 84% of respondents to the 2025 Rental Housing Development Study (PDF) who primarily operated in the Greater Toronto Area, utilized CMHC financing tools; and
land prices were down 30% from their 2021 peak in early 2025, according to Altus Group data
- Seeing better prospects, some condominium developers switched to rental construction with 9 projects converted since 2024, according to Urbanation.

The downturn in condominium construction, which has supplied much of the region’s rental housing in recent decades, makes it vital to maintain a steady and growing stream of rental construction. To do so, it would be important to ensure consistent access to capital, mitigate cost volatility from municipal fees and tariffs and address regulatory hurdles in the management of housing supply."

[casper]

Originally Posted by someone123

I'm pretty skeptical of this argument that this is about new development paying its way and removing an unfair burden on homeowners. I think it's a line of reasoning that sounds good at a very high level but probably falls apart with scrutiny. Aren't owners of new developments some of the highest and most cost-efficient ratepayers as the properties tend to be higher density with higher assessments? Then there's the question of what the real costs are and who is actually paying them. The BC home owners grant costs around $1B annually.

BC Home owners grant is basically a silly way of handling education.

We would be better off not having school taxes on property and instead the province fully funds K-12 schools. It can then get rid of the home owners grant.

Owners of new developments are a mixed bag. If it is a new subdivision, all the infrastructure is new. It is going to be decades before the city needs to replace water pipes, redo roadways, repair sidewalks etc.

[someone123]

This is a bit older and I'm not sure if it's been posted before but here's a Canadian Home Builders' Association report with some benchmarks:

https://www.chba.ca/assets/pdf/CHBA+...24_compressed/

Figure 13 shows approval times and these correlate closely with housing affordability (and to some degree recent population growth rates). For example, some of the fastest approvals are in Moncton, Saskatoon, and Edmonton. The slowest are in Ontario. I don't think these are the only constraints leading to high housing prices, but they are one constraint, and they can on their own artificially spike prices in cities that otherwise shouldn't have any real housing shortage.

This article talks about the Halifax numbers specifically. It had the worst deterioration in affordability and had very long approval times which are starting to come down: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/comm...collapsed-2014

Because the approval system in Halifax was so inefficient, it was very hard for supply to keep up with demand. There aren't really land constraints, at least for suburban housing.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by Globe and Mail

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/inve...income-prices/

Hanif Bayat attributes unaffordability to a combination of population growth (thanks Justin!), cheap money (thanks Mark!), zoning restrictions and land use restrictions.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by theman23

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/inve...income-prices/

Hanif Bayat attributes unaffordability to a combination of population growth (thanks Justin!), cheap money (thanks Mark!), zoning restrictions and land use restrictions.

Shocking when you see it graphed like that.

[someone123]

A lot of policies that were marketed politically as affordability measures really just enabled people to spend more of their money on housing, which didn't help them in the long run because supply is relatively inelastic, but did drive up prices and make existing property owners richer.

It sucks too because you are bidding against the least sane borrowers out there. I'm often floored by how much debt people take on.

[casper]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Shocking when you see it graphed like that.

When you look at that chart it is clear, population growth is not a major factor for US cities. Many of the US cities expanded more than Toronto and Vancouver.

Even Montreal experienced reasonable population growth while maintaining prices in check.

I think that said, the conditions that caused unaffordability are more local in nature and not national.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by casper

When you look at that chart it is clear, population growth is not a major factor for US cities. Many of the US cities expanded more than Toronto and Vancouver.

Even Montreal experienced reasonable population growth while maintaining prices in check.

I think that said, the conditions that caused unaffordability are more local in nature and not national.

Are you looking at the same graph? Montreal showed the fifth highest growth in unaffordability on the continent.

[someone123]

Analyzing the table requires at least econ 101 level theory. If you have new housing supply you can have population growth with flat housing prices (sunbelt). If you have no supply and no population growth you can have flat prices (Japan). If you have population growth and no supply, prices spike (Canada).

There are some subtler impacts too like questions around inflation. If other costs go up, it is harder to afford housing with the same income ratio. Taxes are another question. In Canada, you often pay pretty punishing taxes when you're at only a middle class income level, while the wealthy may pay little to nothing. In the US, they're writing off their mortgage interest, and it is typically fixed.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by someone123

Analyzing the table requires at least econ 101 level theory. If you have new housing supply you can have population growth with flat housing prices (sunbelt). If you have no supply and no population growth you can have flat prices (Japan). If you have population growth and no supply, prices spike (Canada).

There are some subtler impacts too like questions around inflation. If other costs go up, it is harder to afford housing with the same income ratio. Taxes are another question. In Canada, you often pay pretty punishing taxes when you're at only a middle class income level, while the wealthy may pay little to nothing. In the US, they're writing off their mortgage interest, and it is typically fixed.

Toronto and Vancouver are the perfect storm example, with constrained land use, bad zoning policies, rapid population growth, and cheap money. Montreal may have done the zoning piece a bit better, which is why it ended up 5th last and not not dead last but hardly a shining example. Large parts of the country were affected by 4/4 factors, with every part of the country being affected by at least 2/4. The chart only displays large cities- if it was expanded to include mid and small sized cities, I have no doubt it would be dominated by Canada.

The income tax bit is important too, and not just because we don't tax wealth. The income tax brackets are tied to CPI, which is a tool designed to base monetary policy on. With the post GFC money printing tear we've been on, it's been a terrible approximation of cost of living for the past two decades. If it were to actually be indexed to the cost of living, the government would be forced to make some tough decisions about reigning in spending or appropriate levels of taxation. This isn't a Canada specific problem, but it seems to have affected us more due to the reasons already mentioned.

[casper]

Originally Posted by theman23

Are you looking at the same graph? Montreal showed the fifth highest growth in unaffordability on the continent.

Income to Home price ratio may be high but not out of the norm for a major city in North America. Vancouver and Toronto are the problems.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by casper

Income to Home price ratio may be high but not out of the norm for a major city in North America. Vancouver and Toronto are the problems.

Hmmm, now how could it be possible that home prices are so out of whack with reported local incomes.....?