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Trudeau says housing needs to retain its value
(www.theglobeandmail.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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The fundamental issue with housing as an investment is that it is a monolithic and non-fluid vehicle, which makes it worse when leverage comes into play. Whereas stocks can be purchased/sold at any time in an instant and have fractional costs (sometimes as cheap as 10$ per stock), houses are not, and fast fluctuations in prices could heavily impact your ability to realize your gains. So it is, on that aspect, a terrible investment.
For large companies owning thousands of units, this is not an issue since they are spreading the risks across the units (by buying diversely located units of all types). They can also quickly execute purchases and sales since they are in that exact business.
So the argument that houses are ways to pass down wealth is misguided: they are terrible ways to pass down wealth, and parents should leave a trust fund or safe investments rather than a house if their goal is to build generational wealth - housing should be passed down for personal reasons.
I'm not smart enough regarding macroeconomics to know the right answer, but I feel like there has to be a solution that makes home ownership affordable for new entrants into the market without causing the value of existing homes to tank so hard and fast that we end up with a 2008-style crash again. I'm pretty confident that getting large-scale corporate investment out of the picture is part of the solution, and I don't care if the method involved there hurts the corpos pretty bad. Maybe an oppressive rent-control scheme that makes keeping the properties untenable for corporate owners, forcing them to want to sell as fast (and therefore as cheaply) as they can. I don't know what zoning laws are like in Canada (compared to here in the US), but I think merging zoning for low- and mid-density residential such that suburban NIMBYs can't block multi-family units from being build is another necessary step. As far as everyday folks who bought into the housing system, I'd like to see them as protected from the fallout as possible, especially since (at least the US) government has been all-too-happy to let home ownership replace pensions as the primary way people are "supposed" to retire.
I think a rent cap could be a good way. It could be raised wrt to inflation. Then, government housing, better loan systems for non profit and maximize density to allow building taller rather than wider (making land cost minimal), but not tall enough that would create increased cost (elevators are expensive to maintain for example). A lot of initiatives need to be put in place, but one that could be effective is to lower costs of construction and find ways to increase productivity by improving resource management
The thought of an across-the-board regulation based rent cap never crossed my mind, but that actually could be effective and fair. If there was some kind of easy to understand formula based on the unit, potential landlords would easily be able to calculate whether it makes financial sense instead of simply cutting costs and squeezing as much rent out as possible. There wouldn't be an incentive to kick people out (can't jack the rent) but there would be one to keep it maintained/updated since they'd be competing on everything but price. Honestly, I wouldn't mind if my rent went up a bit if it meant my unit would be properly maintained or I had the freedom to move somewhere similar without doubling my rent.
Edit: you could make it more enticing to the current landlords by easing some renter protections, like making it much easier to remove problem tenants
Yeah problematic tenants are an issue, especially when the landlords are elderly folks whose alternative would be to seek professional management or sell it to REITs, both of which exacerbate the issue of rent price.