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by epa 1737 days ago
It has been an issue in the Canadian market for 20 years now and has had a material impact on housing prices in certain big markets.
1 comments

I understand that this is the narrative, but show me what markets specifically. Even if ownership is 10%. That means 90% of homes that are bought and sold are NOT to foreigners.

The fact is that inflation has eroded away the value of $$ and houses that should cost $50,000 now cost $700k.

> The fact is that inflation has eroded away the value of $$ and houses that should cost $50,000 now cost $700k.

There's a particular problem with that hypothesis:

> Over the past 5 years, single-family home prices are up 150% in London-St. Thomas [Ontario], but down in Regina. They've barely budged in Edmonton. Monetary policy provides no explanation for that phenomenon.

* https://twitter.com/MikePMoffatt/status/1430892821968392198

Meanwhile, when you increase the population, but do not have a corresponding increase in supply:

* https://mikepmoffatt.medium.com/ontarians-on-the-move-2021-e...

There's no need to get into hard money, gold bug tropes about asset prices when supply and demand effects can explain regional price rises.

>There's a particular problem with that hypothesis: >> Over the past 5 years, single-family home prices are up 150% in London-St. Thomas [Ontario], but down in Regina. They've barely budged in Edmonton. Monetary policy provides no explanation for that phenomenon.

In the short term effects other than those caused by monetary policy can be overwhelming (e.g., London-St.Thomas, has had a huge influx of people from Toronto over the last 5 years that would have driven up prices regardless of whatever the monetary policy may be). But this doesn't change the fact that the dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power and that the average house price in the 1930s used to be 1X the average yearly salary, whereas now it's 12x.

When supply isn't moving much, a 10% increase in quantity demanded is a lot. That would make a big difference in a market.