Why are Property Prices High.
A Canadian Perspective.
Things were not always like this... Housing prices used to reflect the "utility value" of the building and property. In that free market system "supply and demand" kept housing mostly in line with the cost of construction and the scarcity of the land.
A few things have all contributed to the issue, ranked in the order I believe they contribute.
1) MONEY PRINTING
Prices go up and down for various reasons, certain sectors of prices going up isn't inflation. (War in Ukraine, scarcity of fuel/wheat, prices go up, not inflation) Inflation is when ALL your prices go up across the board. The ONLY cause of that type of inflation is the central bank creating more money and the government injecting it into the market in their budget items. This tactic, makes all the money in the market less valuable by a small percent. It's a hidden, unaccounted for tax on everyone who holds government "fiat" money. Every government that issues fiat has done this, since the invention of fiat, going back thousands of years. This means, that hard assets (real estate, precious metals, a pile of gravel etc) need cost more and more fiat currency, as the fiat currency is worth less and less every time the central bank prints more it dilutes the value. So if your stock portfolio goes up by 5%, but inflation was 8%, you've actually lost 3% of your purchasing power. However, if you have a rental property, that rental property, will always hold the same "utility value", it can still keep the occupants warm and dry. So it may not track inflation precisely, but over the decades, it protects against the erosion of the dollar. Saving dollars makes you poor, buy hard assets in an inflationary environment. (Consequently this acts as a wealth transfer tax from the poors without assets to the wealthy with assets.)
2) ZONING LAWS
The people in politics, both at federal and provincial levels, but also all the way down to the municipalities, and the (generally older) citizens that are meaningfully active in politics ALL are massively and disproportionately made up of people who own at least one, if not multiple properties. For most of those people, property makes up the majority of their portfolio.
Consequently, they are systemically bent to protecting the value of their properties. You see this in the NIMBY movements, and puplic hearing on zonings and such. The result is that municipalities artificially limit the number and types of buildings that they approve, no one wants a big "affordable housing" complex built in their nice neighborhood. This creates artificial scarcity and keeps prices high, because builders can't make all the cheap housing that the market demands. This will not change, because as by the time someone gets there life in order enough to influence politics, they have their financial affairs in order and benefit from it.
3) BUILDING CODES
Progressives in the past 3-4 decades have been aghast at the conditions some people lived in, packing into a rooming house with shared washrooms for instance. So in cities across north America, they have changed building codes to ensure that new builds have certain minimums, like bedrooms must have a window and a closet, each suite needs to have it's own washroom etc. These restrictions, don't improve peoples living conditions, they remove peoples free choices. Some of the people that would be ok in these conditions needs to rent an apartment and are financially stressed by it, some of them go homeless, despite having modest employment. Removing choices, doesn't magically change the economics of it.
4) CHINESE MONEY
Specific to the Lower Mainland in British Columbia. The Chinese underground banks are taking advantage of Canada's lax financial laws to circumvent the Chinese limits on exporting money outside of China. By getting street cash from the fentanyl crisis addicts, and then washing it through BC casinos, and then using the "winnings" to buy property in Canada. This is all documented in great detail in Sam Coopers book "wilful blindness"
WestleBittle
npub1fm…dd68n
2024-03-06 17:05:18
Author Public Key
npub1fmcnvrf7kf6jupqljvajwwssfvmlredp3hfa6g7gmanyggzrgczsvdd68nPublished at
2024-03-06 17:05:18Event JSON
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"content": "Why are Property Prices High.\nA Canadian Perspective.\n\nThings were not always like this... Housing prices used to reflect the \"utility value\" of the building and property. In that free market system \"supply and demand\" kept housing mostly in line with the cost of construction and the scarcity of the land.\n\nA few things have all contributed to the issue, ranked in the order I believe they contribute.\n\n1) MONEY PRINTING\nPrices go up and down for various reasons, certain sectors of prices going up isn't inflation. (War in Ukraine, scarcity of fuel/wheat, prices go up, not inflation) Inflation is when ALL your prices go up across the board. The ONLY cause of that type of inflation is the central bank creating more money and the government injecting it into the market in their budget items. This tactic, makes all the money in the market less valuable by a small percent. It's a hidden, unaccounted for tax on everyone who holds government \"fiat\" money. Every government that issues fiat has done this, since the invention of fiat, going back thousands of years. This means, that hard assets (real estate, precious metals, a pile of gravel etc) need cost more and more fiat currency, as the fiat currency is worth less and less every time the central bank prints more it dilutes the value. So if your stock portfolio goes up by 5%, but inflation was 8%, you've actually lost 3% of your purchasing power. However, if you have a rental property, that rental property, will always hold the same \"utility value\", it can still keep the occupants warm and dry. So it may not track inflation precisely, but over the decades, it protects against the erosion of the dollar. Saving dollars makes you poor, buy hard assets in an inflationary environment. (Consequently this acts as a wealth transfer tax from the poors without assets to the wealthy with assets.)\n\n2) ZONING LAWS\nThe people in politics, both at federal and provincial levels, but also all the way down to the municipalities, and the (generally older) citizens that are meaningfully active in politics ALL are massively and disproportionately made up of people who own at least one, if not multiple properties. For most of those people, property makes up the majority of their portfolio.\nConsequently, they are systemically bent to protecting the value of their properties. You see this in the NIMBY movements, and puplic hearing on zonings and such. The result is that municipalities artificially limit the number and types of buildings that they approve, no one wants a big \"affordable housing\" complex built in their nice neighborhood. This creates artificial scarcity and keeps prices high, because builders can't make all the cheap housing that the market demands. This will not change, because as by the time someone gets there life in order enough to influence politics, they have their financial affairs in order and benefit from it.\n\n3) BUILDING CODES\nProgressives in the past 3-4 decades have been aghast at the conditions some people lived in, packing into a rooming house with shared washrooms for instance. So in cities across north America, they have changed building codes to ensure that new builds have certain minimums, like bedrooms must have a window and a closet, each suite needs to have it's own washroom etc. These restrictions, don't improve peoples living conditions, they remove peoples free choices. Some of the people that would be ok in these conditions needs to rent an apartment and are financially stressed by it, some of them go homeless, despite having modest employment. Removing choices, doesn't magically change the economics of it.\n\n4) CHINESE MONEY\nSpecific to the Lower Mainland in British Columbia. The Chinese underground banks are taking advantage of Canada's lax financial laws to circumvent the Chinese limits on exporting money outside of China. By getting street cash from the fentanyl crisis addicts, and then washing it through BC casinos, and then using the \"winnings\" to buy property in Canada. This is all documented in great detail in Sam Coopers book \"wilful blindness\"",
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