In a country with some of the world’s most expensive real estate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government wants housing to become more affordable.
In a country with some of the world’s most expensive real estate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government wants housing to become more affordable.
Canada wants to eat it’s cake while also having it. Something like 60% of Canadians own their home or live in a home their parents own. 40% of a country is more than sufficient to tear the country apart if they lose faith in the society they live in. Allowing housing to become investments has been a mistake that needs to be corrected for the long term stability of the nation.
If government had the power to just snap their fingers and halve the price of all real estate, regular home owners should not be negatively affected.
It’s mostly only the people who own multiple homes as investments, developers, and people who rent out their properties.
If you own a home that you live in, yes it will suck that prices dropped after you signed your mortgage, but you already agreed to pay that before so you should be able to afford those payments wether your house is $1M or $500K.
If you need to move, the house that you need to move to will now be half price so you didn’t lose anything with your own house going half price. If anything you win by not having to pay as much taxes.
This part is incorrect. If you buy a $1MM home with a $200K down payment, then you have a $800K debt. If you sell at $500K, then you still owe $300K and will declare bankruptcy and need to start saving for 7 years (?) for that bankruptcy to fall off your credit history to be able to get a new mortgage again.
This is the problem some people are facing now. They bought at the peak, with a variable rate mortgage, and are now underwater on their house and can’t afford the payments that have literally tripled. This will get worse in the next ~3½ years as fixed rate mortgages signed before/at the peak of the market come due for renewal, if interest rates remain this high.
Housing prices going down absolutely kills people’s wealth. Which is a huge problem since this means half the population is selfishly benefiting from maintaining high real estate prices.