this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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Ottawa faces growing pressure to loosen foreign homebuying ban (archive.is)
submitted 1 week ago by sbv@sh.itjust.works to c/canada@lemmy.ca
10 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I dunno. It's like Carney's "we're gonna build 500k houses a year without a plan trust me bro just elect me bro" strategy is not effective.

But on the plus side, it looks like existing homeowners won't have to worry about the price of houses going down. /s

The federal government is under pressure to relax the foreign homebuyer ban, as builders deal with one of the worst real estate slowdowns in decades.

...

At the time, the federal government said it would help stabilize housing and ensure Canadians had more access to purchasing homes. The policy prevents foreigners from buying existing and preconstruction homes.

But as borrowing costs increased in 2022 and 2023, the real estate market slumped, and demand dried up for preconstruction homes. Sales have dropped significantly in the regions of Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa. And over the past few years, developers have postponed and canceled projects because they are unable to sell the minimum amount needed to obtain construction financing from lenders.

Okay, at least one of the other recommendations is good:

The alliance is also recommending that the federal government expand and speed up the approval process of its $55-billion apartment construction loan program. It provides cheap loans to developers to build rental-only housing as long as specific affordability requirements are met.

...

The letter also urges Ottawa to provide the GST waiver on new rental-only buildings for projects currently under construction. The tax break, which was announced in September, 2023, does not apply to projects that started prior to that date.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-foreign-homebuying-ban-ottawa-pressure/

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[–] Canconda@lemmy.ca 10 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Of course they are. The entire world is cashing in on our real estate market and leaving Canadians out in the cold.

I used to be a mortgage broker. There are Chinese monoline lenders that exclusively lend to students/immigrants; and do not require income verification. Meanwhile down payment verification (making sure the $ wasn't illegal etc) is ridiculously easy to get around. So that means when it comes time to debt service the mortgage, Canadians are at a huge dis-advantage because foreign buyers using those lenders can essentially bypass debt servicing entirely.

If those foreign buyers default than the property belongs to the bank, aka the chinese government.

I've got nothing against people moving to Canada to become Canadian. But foreign governments are using Canadian real estate to park their money and it's hurting Canadians; including immigrants.

[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This is another one of those posts that's getting downvotes without an explanation.

Did I hit a nerve bashing Carney's housing strategy? Does Gregor Robertson browse c/canada and not appreciate my trolling? Do Lemmites dislike the content of the article?

I'll never know.

[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

For what seems like controversial posts, I seriously hope people would at least state why they downvoted something instead of just downvoting and leaving. If it’s straight up bad, we all know why, but this seems to invite debate more than just stating a bad take (for the record, I don’t think this is bad).

[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Agreed. I'm trying to improve Lemmy by adding interesting posts, and some users respond with this kind of drive-by crap. I get that downvotes are a Redditism that users like, but they make it easy to crap on a Lemmite's effort without conversation, which is the entire point of the platform.

I think some users see a headline they don't like (the foreign buyer's ban may be lifted) and downvote based on the subject, rather than the content.

I'd really like to see platform-level fixes for this. Like, users only get x downvotes a day, or they need to provide a downvote reason, etc.

[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

I think we could start with just encouraging people to provide reasons when downvoting posts, by just showing a small box for comment for example. If we see improvements on engagement and that it ends up encouraging good conversations, then we’re all good. Otherwise, we can then get feedback on how people feel about that addition, or just observe from anonymized data, eg “How often does someone make a comment after downvoting?”

I think going straight to harder requirements might backfire in this particular case; I can see a lot of people to just stop downvoting things because they’re too lazy to provide a reason.

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

All layers of government abandoned building new social housing, thus we have a housing crisis and a homelessness epidemic.

Free market fundamentalism kills. It's murder in the name of a false religion.

[–] apprehensively_human@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 days ago

Build Canada Homes needs to have a program to help fund non-market and co-operative housing startups. Most property owners currently view real estate as an investment that makes them more money, but non-market housing discourages this mindset by keeping costs (and profitability) low in the name of affordability.

Cooperative housing isn't even run by the government, it's in the name; the housing is owned and controlled by all the residents collectively. The big problem is getting off the ground from nothing to purchase the land, potentially demolishing existing structures, and then building a multifamily complex.

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

If they comport with affordabillity conditions then might be good. That thing is very different from the other (begging to gut restrictions on foreign home buyers)

Also no arguing we cant make a profit if we dont get everything we want and not have to end up actually building affordable rent-only housing

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

It's interesting looking at the housing targets the Ontario government set for its largest municipalities and how many are reaching them. Oakville was the largest place to exceed its target in 2024 (123%). North Bay hit a whopping 277%, but has one of the smaller targets to begin with. Toronto did okay (about 77%), but Ottawa didn't quite make half its target, and Missisauga only managed about a third.

There is no guarantee that any of this is affordable or geared-to-income housing.

data here

[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 days ago

There is no guarantee that any of this is affordable or geared-to-income housing.

That is a huge part of the problem. The housing affordability crisis is one of the causes of the homelessness and addiction.