[noisy_boy]

Then why doesn't the government put limits on the no. of houses/flats a canadian family can buy? Allowing wealthy individuals to keep buying housing for rent-seeking isn't going to help the problem. Beyond the one for staying, how many more should they be able to own, if any?

From the houseowners' perspective, if they can only own one that they stay in, what alternatives the government needs to structure to balance the restriction, assuming the restriction is put in place? Should everyone put their savings in stock market etc and be subject to losses due to it? Because they too need a stable and inflation pegged income for their retirement.

[swat535]

The thing is even if the government did this, it’s easy to get around it, many landlords simple setup an incorporation or even multiple ones to purchase properties. It’s easy and cheap in Canada.

[rhubarbtree]

> Then why doesn't the government put limits on the no. of houses/flats a canadian family can buy?

Well, mainly the answer to this in public discourse is the same reason people say "we just need to build more flats" --- because people believe in the magical powers of "markets", like there's some natural law that leaving things to the market will lead to desirable outcomes.

But the actual politics of it is that if you did this, then where are you going to get the boomers pensions from? And where is the economic "growth" going to come from? See my other comment.

We're all in a big ponzi scheme because we exported most of our real welath-generating activity.