this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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The housing crisis is not just a supply issue. Here are two solutions to fix demand (www.theglobeandmail.com)
submitted 1 year ago by sbv to c/[email protected]
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

People are finally talking about shifting income tax to take some of the money out of the housing market:

First:

a lifetime cap of $1-million on the personal residence capital gain exemption [...] would limit unproductive investment in the real estate sector by discouraging retirement strategies based on the gains made from selling a house. It would also stop the investment strategy of buying a house, renovating, living in it the minimum amount of time to claim the tax credit and then flipping it for a tax-free gain.

They note that the lifetime cap wouldn't hit most Canadians in lower-cost communities. It should mostly hit higher end houses and higher income taxpayers.

Second:

a limit applied to the amount of interest that can be recorded as a business expense for single-family residences let as rental properties

They're suggesting these changes because

investors are the fastest growing mortgage segment with a 30-per-cent share of mortgaged home purchases nationally in the first part of this year, up from 19.6 per cent in 2020. They are now a bigger segment than repeat homebuyers and, over the past few years, have taken 6 per cent of market share from first-time buyers

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

not. going. to. happen. Whatever government will be elected next will be guarding interests of people with (more) money. I.e. landlords and house owners. Unfortunately all we can hope for are band-aids while everything crumbles.

To remove resistance there are multiple possibilities, but most of them involve compensating property owners at fair market value today and disincentivese them from holding on to additional properties moving forward, guaranteeing citizens affordable housing into perpetuity and regulating the heck out of real estate market. This way existing property owners are less likely to stage a coup, and future generations are guaranteed to have roof over their head making real estate market unattractive to investors.

But since we are governed by laws of capitalism and not socialism (no, not the idiotic eastern block interpretation of communism) money loss is vewed as a big no-no (instead of seeing human dignity as a prime goal) - none of the above will happen as parties want to get re-elected and they need money for that... well you get the picture.

Whack-a-mole'ing it with micky-mouse measures will prolong the agony but will not end suffering.

TLDR; solution is to change political system first, otherwise there's no hope for a real solution to any of this.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Member when political parties were getting funded on the number of votes they got?

I member.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Oh man can you imagine a system that actually decided budget by number of voting citizens. That would be wild. Could really incentivize cities, but I could see necessary rural communities being fucked a bit but still something like that would push for higher voter turnout and popular ideology in the governing members