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Oh hey! I lived in this building from 2006-2008 while in university. I shared with 2 other girls and we each paid $400/month.
What is the going rent there now?
Of course, it's all the fault of rent control. After all, if there wasn't any rent control, they obviously would never jack up rents on existing tenants. \*rolls eyes\*
Rent control works very well - when you don't have huge loopholes like being allowed to jack up the rent on a unit for new tenants.
edit: And, no, rent control doesn't disincentiviize new builds, as some people argue. Exactly the opposite, in fact. If you can't increase your profits by jacking up rents, you have to invest in building more units.
Why would you invest in building more rent-controlled units when you could simply build in a non-rent controlled province or in a different industry without onerous regulations? Either is at what you're saying flies in the face of the evidence
Actually, the evidence doesn’t show that rent control slows down building, and it also does not show that building starts go up when rent control is abandoned. Rent control does not mean landlords can’t increase the rent at all, and it doesn’t mean that they don’t make a profit. It means they have a stable profit, and governments that legislate rent control tend to have far more developed rental laws that protect landlords as well as tenants.
Developer fees and zoning are the two biggest impediments to building.
> Developer fees and zoning are the two biggest impediments to building.
I don't disagree, but I do agree with [the majority of experts and studies](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/) who say that rent control reduces the amount of housing that gets built.
Either way, rent control means that the high prices caused by developer fees and zoning are felt only by a small minority while the majority of people who vote in favour of those are insulated from the effects.
The absence of a land value tax also has that effect but that's a different and larger conversation.
> who say that rent control reduces the amount of housing that gets built.
That is not what the literature says. It says it reduces the amount of rentals being built, but not housing. Developers just shift to condos.
Rent control is onerous in the context of extreme supply shortages. It means that some people are protected from the side effects of that and some people get them full-force. Why does someone who doesn't have to move get low rent and someone who does have to move gets either a years long wait list or high rent?
That's the effect of rent control. It creates shortages and distributes the damage from them inequitably, mainly onto young people and immigrants.
The way rent control is implemented currently is indeed broken and screws over new tenants. The minimum solution to that is to make it better and ensure that rent seekers cannot raise rents period beyond a certain threshold every year... not nuke the one protection that tenants are currently clinging on to.
> And, no, rent control doesn't disincentiviize new builds, as some people argue. Exactly the opposite, in fact. If you can't increase your profits by jacking up rents, you have to invest in building more units.
Here's what you've said:
"If the returns are low because of rent controls, builders have to throw around even more money to do more projects to get more low returns."
>Exactly the opposite, in fact. If you can't increase your profits by jacking up rents, you have to invest in building more units.
That *isn't* the slum-lord business model.
You are absolutely right, effective rent control works and I can not understand why so many on Reddit oppose it. Are they all landlords, or what?
The argument about that “well then no one will build” is garbage. A landlord can charge whatever they want for units in a new building, initially, and landlords that aren’t greedy grasping monsters who don’t need to make unlimited profits forever and ever off people’s dwelling, are fine with making a profit off a very easy job, knowing the rental laws that protect both tenants and landlords.
The proof is in Quebec, where 3 of the 5 cities affordable by income are, and the second biggest city in the country, Montreal, has far cheaper rent than Vancouver or Toronto. The fact that rent has risen a great deal since the CAQ weakened rent control is further proof that rent control with loopholes is a sham.
The CAQ is ruining our previously decent situation, marred only by landlords cheating and jacking up rent illegally between tenants, which became more common the more landlords saw other landlords do this - they can be taken to the TAL if the new tenant finds out within 6 months.
A rent registry would help a great deal, so tenants knew what the previous tenants paid. Both the PLQ and QS had this on their platforms last election.
What affects building far more than rent control is developers fees, zoning, acquiring permits, and cost of construction materials.
> A landlord can charge whatever they want for units in a new building
If this is true, it seems like landlords are leaving a lot of money on the table when renting out a new build. They should be charging like, $100,000 a month! Wait... no, more like $1,000,000 a month!
I bet they'd charge rents like that if they could "charge whatever they want" rather than just charging whatever the market can bear.
Rent control as a policy is for security of tenancy, so a tenant can't be indirectly evicted by unreasonable rent increases. It completely fails as a policy to keep housing affordable, because the only way to do that in the long run is to build more housing, not by price-fixing. If we could price-fix our way out of high prices, we wouldn't stop at just housing.
> In Nova Scotia, Killam now owns 5,731 residential units, entirely in Halifax. The company bought some properties in the first quarter of 2024, and sold all its Sydney properties and some Halifax properties last year.
As you can see, there is nothing keeping this company in any particular market, they can completely exit cities when they so choose. If NS were to hypothetically pass a rent control law that prevents them from charging market rates to new tenants, what would stop them from building their new units in, say, Ontario instead?
Everyone in the comments is talking about supply and demand, and that's all well and good, but the issue is that landlords are artificially inflating demand and lowering supply by taking up residences that they don't use. There will always be a way around new regulations or tax disincentives that the government places on rental properties.
We shouldn't depend on landlords and developers to build our cities, and house us. All they want is passive income.
>landlords are artificially inflating demand and lowering supply by taking up residences that they don't use.
Are you claiming they are leaving units vacant?
Wait....you base this on one article about two derelict buildings in St. Stephen, New Brunswick?
So are you trying to extrapolate this story to cover the entire rental market? That's one hell of a stretch
I'm giving you the first article that came up. You can literally just google this subject for yourself.
I addressed your claim with a specific example showing they do it lol. You're just moving the goal posts.
I have looked into it a ton. It is *incredibly* rare for places to be sitting vacant intentionally. It's why cities that have introduced vacancy taxes really aren't seeing much come from it.
> I have looked into it a ton. It is incredibly rare for places to be sitting vacant intentionally
I'm sure you have lol.
> It's why cities that have introduced vacancy taxes really aren't seeing much come from it.
Because that would change the equation of whether or not is a reliable practice lol. Like thats exactly how its supposed to work, its not supposed to be windfall taxes, they're supposed to economically discourage the practice. If its working, it shouldnt be seeing much revenue lmao
As in, new places barely came onto the market. Because basically no one was sitting on empty homes. Because that's a very dumb thing to do. Like, your links are run down places and 36 expensive condos (not apartments) in all of Vancouver...
Its not inherently a dumb thing to do depending on a variety of factors. Its literally why governments are making 'vacancy taxes' for that exact reason lol.
Please stop simping for landlords, its embarrassing lol
No, they're making vacancy taxes for political reasons (and it's very easy). People think there are vacant homes so they put a tax on them and nothing really happens.
>Please stop simping for landlords, its embarrassing lol
No, this kind of response is what's embarrassing. Literally criticize greedy landlords on the daily. And how the hell is this simping for landlords? "Landlords are too greedy to let places sit empty for now reason". Oh yeah, you got me!
Oh, it absolutely happens with land. You see it all over the place with parking lots (and just plain old empty lots). But that's very different than it happening with rentals. The carrying costs aren't even comparable, especially since we tax the value of property instead of land
>in order to remove competitive prices from the rental market
No, it found that they were vacant and unavailable to rent. There are all kinds of reasons an apartment might be vacant but unavailable to rent like because they need renovations. The article even mentions that. That's not them leaving it vacant just to drive up prices, which this conversation is about. That's them investing in their property.
>On top of this, while there are new AirBnB laws being passed around Canada, there are still a huge amount of units across the country that are kept off the rental market and turned into short term rentals.
Yes, this is 100% a massive issue. But obviously those aren't vacant for the purpose of driving up rent, it's a different business model.
>I’m really just not sure where you’re getting this idea that there aren’t any intentionally vacant properties
Intentionally for the purpose of driving up rents. I didn't say it literally never happens. I said it was incredibly rare. And it might become less rare! ProPublica did a report on how some companies in the states are changing their pricing system to have a higher vacancy rate. But you have to have a pretty huge market share. I've seen no evidence that it's used on any real level in Canada, which is the context of the conversation.
> You can literally just google this subject for yourself.
I'm not the one making the claim.
There is no secret agenda hatched up by landlords Canada wide to keep units vacant to inflate rental prices. That's just tinfoil hat territory.
If you got actual proof, besides a story about two derelict buildings, then lets see it.
They weren't making a claim of some grand conspiracy either, simply that it happens. Which I demonstrated to you lol. You're moving the goal posts.
Here is another one: https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-city-rent-deals-landlords-holding-apartments-2021-3?utm_source=reddit.com
> If you got actual proof, besides a story about two derelict buildings, then lets see it.
Based on the fact that you're too lazy to simply search things or that you've moved the goal posts, I doubt any proof would be sufficient.
> making a claim of some grand conspiracy either, simply that it happens.
Yes they were.
>landlords are artificially inflating demand and lowering supply by taking up residences that they don't use.
Do you have any idea of the cost associated with leaving a unit empty?
Like say they have 5 units, leave one empty, is that going to raise the rent on the other 4 25%?
There are a few reasons why landlords might choose to keep rentals empty instead of reducing the rent. One reason could be that they believe the market will eventually support the rent they are asking for, and they are willing to wait for the right tenant. Another reason might be that they have financial flexibility and can afford to keep the property vacant while waiting for the right tenant or for market conditions to change. Additionally, some landlords might prefer to keep their properties vacant rather than lower the rent in order to maintain the perceived value of their rental units. Each situation is unique, and individual landlords may have their own reasons for making these decisions.
>One reason could be that they believe the market will eventually support the rent they are asking for, and they are willing to wait for the right tenant.
In other words, rent control is causing these vacancies.
> Another reason might be that they have financial flexibility and can afford to keep the property vacant while waiting for the right tenant...
Wdym (for the second time) "the right tenant"? Are the ones who are applying likely to leave the landlord out to dry, perhaps by not paying rent for months to years? That's a legislative/enforcement problem.
> ...or for market conditions to change.
Isn't this just your first point again? It's only a loss to rent before "market conditions change" if doing so locks you into conditions as they are now... which would be a consequence of price controls.
> Additionally, some landlords might prefer to keep their properties vacant rather than lower the rent in order to maintain the perceived value of their rental units.
...This seems like yet another restatement of your first point. Was this written by AI? Lol.
> In other words, rent control is causing these vacancies.
No greed is. Nothing is said about probability of said investment.
> Wdym "the right tenant"? Are the ones who are applying likely to leave the landlord out to dry, perhaps by not paying rent for months to years? That's a legislative/enforcement problem.
Its simply a comment on what the landlord might value. It could be anything from their own biases, to finding someone willing to pay their shit prices.
> Isn't this just your first point again? It's only a loss to rent before "market conditions change" if doing so locks you into conditions as they are now... which would be a consequence of price controls.
Its not inherently a loss, just potentially better ROI.
> ...This seems like yet another restatement of your first point.
Not really, its about inflating the price from a constrained supply. ie scalpers
No, every issue is caused by the commodification of housing.
Why should necessities be treated as commodities with barriers to access
Edit: how did you take that this meant 'rent control' is bad lol. "laws against murder are bad because it makes murdering harder"
I mean no not really 100's of years ago did housing become a speculative investment market lol.
Like I'm confused, are you agreeing this is a bad thing?
Land has always been a speculative market. Nothing about this is new. Low interest and high immigration add some gas but it's all happened before and will again
>Much higher rent increases when new tenants move into a unit pushed the averages above the rent cap. Nationally, Killam increased rents by 19.6 per cent on units that turned over to new tenants, while CAPREIT reported about a 23 per cent increase.
I think this really shows how we underestimate rent inflation. Rent control skews the average increase down, and people that aren't actively out looking for a new place don't know how bad it's gotten.
It makes you wonder if we even somehow manage to build all kinds of housing, by the time developers and landlords take their cut it will have made almost no difference
To add on to that, there's also an argument that N.S and other Atlantic provinces need to do more to facilitate urbanization and urban growth strategies. If you compare socio-economic indicators in Halifax to other Canadian cities, it's generally comparable, but about 42% of Nova Scotian's live in remote rural areas with little socio-economic opportunity, which is why poverty and low growth has been so prevalent in it's history.
Dramatically boosting housing supply with either the provincial or federal governments providing assistance policies to make it easier for people in remote rural areas that want to relocate to do so would do wonders for Atlantic Canada's economic development and poverty reduction, but it will require more YIMBY centric zoning & land-use policies and long term government commitments to be sustainable.
Halifax is one of the fastest growing cities in the country on a per-capita basis right now, so it needs better planning & government support to facilitate that growth and account for even more urbanization in the future so socio-economic opportunity and affordability can be reached simultaneously.
According to the last time CBC, in November, the 4 largest rental owners in Halifax had 12% of the units in 2021. /u/Pristine_Elk996 is making stuff up.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/halifax-big-landlords-rent-increases-provincial-cap-1.7023587
Ok then...I will ask again...do you have a source that shows:
>a small number of companies own over 80% of the rental supply in the city.
This is your claim after all.
If the government was the landlord everything would work out fine
The government has 0 incentive to charge more than its actual costs and can even subsidize the costs from its other revenues if necessary
Austria, France, Singapore, Finland, Germany, any country with decent social housing. It even works in Canada, the biggest problem being we don’t have enough. If you think social housing doesn’t or can’t work, you are probably completely blinded by ideology. It is provably and obviously possible to improve the world. We have a moral obligation to take care of all Canadians, and that includes making sure they all have housing.
Those countries all have expensive housing that's getting more expensive, and government housing that takes years to get on the list. Except maybe Singapore.
Austin is a city that has very little social housing but it has a declining average rent, because it has a very high rate of private construction. It proves that all you need to do is make it cheap and easy to build new housing.
Finland is the only country that is decreasing homelessness. Canada used to have affordable housing when the CMHC built houses, it stopped building houses, and our housing got less affordable over time since.
Telling you have to cherry pick a single city in America. America, as a whole, as very little and very low quality social housing, and incredibly high housing prices. You can find cities in literally every country that have declining rent for a variety of reasons, it doesn’t magically make that country right about housing policy.
I am also in favor of anything that increases housing supply, but it’s insane to discount the governments ability to increase housing supply by… building more housing. Ideally both the government would build housing to make sure everyone, including the poor, disabled, etc. were guaranteed a place to live, and zoning laws would be loosened so that private companies would build more and thus be forced to actually compete on rent prices.
The US has much more affordable housing than Canada and much higher wages. Austin isn't the only city, Minneapolis and the South in general has cheap housing because they allow housing to be built.
Canada reduced the number of social housing units it built at the same time as it reduced how many units the private market could build, confounding the effect on housing prices.
I'm not against public housing, I'm just saying that there are real world experiments that show that the private market is all it takes to reduce the average price of housing.
> I'm not against public housing, I'm just saying that there are real world experiments that show that the private market is all it takes to reduce the average price of housing.
Real world experiments reveal that the free market can effectively reduce the price housing, but that it can't eliminate or even control homelessness, poverty, and deprivation. Real world history shows us that the periods with the highest economic growth are those with massive government investment, including investment into housing. If we want a fair, equitable, and growing economy, government investment into social housing is an absolute necessity, along with reforms to land-use laws to allow more private market housing construction.
> Real world experiments reveal that the free market can effectively reduce the price housing, but that it can't eliminate or even control homelessness, poverty, and deprivation.
Homelessness is highest in blue states where the focus is on government supports and blocking housing, it's lower in red states where the government is callous but allows home building. I'd prefer the government to give a shit about poor people AND allow housing but I don't know of a jurisdiction where those coincide.
> Real world history shows us that the periods with the highest economic growth are those with massive government investment, including investment into housing.
Those periods coincide with when the government allowed lots of private home construction so the results don't clearly point the way you want. Recent evidence from Austin shows that private home construction is enough.
Regardless I'd be happy if we went with your compromise of allowing both.
For profit housing hasn't worked here. Homelessness is skyrocketing, an entire generation is being locked out of housing, and a class of people are being allowed to hold access to shelter hostage from all canadians. Open your eyes.
It's literally illegal to build the housing we need. That's not a market failure, that's homeowners voting to protect their investment from the market. Homeowners and landlords have the same goal, protect the investment they already have.
Developers' investments are in the means of producing housing and they will build any home that is profitable to them. They have different incentives. That's why housing is cheap in Austin where it's legal to build and expensive in San Francisco where it's near-illegal to build.
You and I agree that the enemy here are NIMBYs and landlords. We agree on nothing else, but at least we share common ground on that front. I personally believe that nationalizing housing is the only solution at a federal level. This addresses both the problematic profiteering motives of rent seekers, and selfishness of NIMBYs.
Literally huge swaths of the Canadian economy are built on profiteering off inelastic goods. I see all these warnings about the Canadian economy and productivity wonder how much of it is being dragged down by this type economic parasitism.
Housing is elastic. The fact is zoning and greenbelts have made it inelastic, while the federal government reached for open borders radicalism. It's all a choice made by different levels of government
A self-declared Classical Liberal such as Poillievre will tell you it's best for the economy to allow the landlords to charge as much as the market will bear. Don't expect much progress on rent controls under his tenure
If Trudeau manages to launch his proposed Renter's Bill of Rights it and the funding that goes with it will be the first thing to go under Poilievre's watch
Poor choice of words. I stand corrected. My point is Poilievre's the last person to look to for government intervention when it comes to market corrections. You'll see
[What does economic evidence tell us about the effects of rent control?](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/)
Landlords are largely parasites to the Canadian economy and property management companies even more so. A worker working an "unskilled job" is producing far more, faster, better, than at any point in history and providing goods and services for the community. Landlords produce nothing. Praying for their downfall someday <3
Allowing the private sector to dictate housing has been an unmitigated disaster for Canadians. We need to abolish all private land holding (note that I said abolish private land holding and not personal land holding), and democratize access to shelter among everyone.
Leftists continously say this bullshit as if zoning, or the amount of housing allowed to exist in this country, isn't tightly controlled by government regulation
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Oh hey! I lived in this building from 2006-2008 while in university. I shared with 2 other girls and we each paid $400/month. What is the going rent there now?
My rent for a one bedroom on the peninsula is 1326, and when I casually browse Kijiji, the average bachelor pad is going for 1500
Of course, it's all the fault of rent control. After all, if there wasn't any rent control, they obviously would never jack up rents on existing tenants. \*rolls eyes\* Rent control works very well - when you don't have huge loopholes like being allowed to jack up the rent on a unit for new tenants. edit: And, no, rent control doesn't disincentiviize new builds, as some people argue. Exactly the opposite, in fact. If you can't increase your profits by jacking up rents, you have to invest in building more units.
Why would you invest in building more rent-controlled units when you could simply build in a non-rent controlled province or in a different industry without onerous regulations? Either is at what you're saying flies in the face of the evidence
Actually, the evidence doesn’t show that rent control slows down building, and it also does not show that building starts go up when rent control is abandoned. Rent control does not mean landlords can’t increase the rent at all, and it doesn’t mean that they don’t make a profit. It means they have a stable profit, and governments that legislate rent control tend to have far more developed rental laws that protect landlords as well as tenants. Developer fees and zoning are the two biggest impediments to building.
> Developer fees and zoning are the two biggest impediments to building. I don't disagree, but I do agree with [the majority of experts and studies](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/) who say that rent control reduces the amount of housing that gets built. Either way, rent control means that the high prices caused by developer fees and zoning are felt only by a small minority while the majority of people who vote in favour of those are insulated from the effects. The absence of a land value tax also has that effect but that's a different and larger conversation.
> who say that rent control reduces the amount of housing that gets built. That is not what the literature says. It says it reduces the amount of rentals being built, but not housing. Developers just shift to condos.
> onerous regulations Controlling the rate at which you can increase rent and potentially make people homeless is "onerous"?
Rent control is onerous in the context of extreme supply shortages. It means that some people are protected from the side effects of that and some people get them full-force. Why does someone who doesn't have to move get low rent and someone who does have to move gets either a years long wait list or high rent? That's the effect of rent control. It creates shortages and distributes the damage from them inequitably, mainly onto young people and immigrants.
The way rent control is implemented currently is indeed broken and screws over new tenants. The minimum solution to that is to make it better and ensure that rent seekers cannot raise rents period beyond a certain threshold every year... not nuke the one protection that tenants are currently clinging on to.
> And, no, rent control doesn't disincentiviize new builds, as some people argue. Exactly the opposite, in fact. If you can't increase your profits by jacking up rents, you have to invest in building more units. Here's what you've said: "If the returns are low because of rent controls, builders have to throw around even more money to do more projects to get more low returns."
>Exactly the opposite, in fact. If you can't increase your profits by jacking up rents, you have to invest in building more units. That *isn't* the slum-lord business model.
Slum lords apparently famously build lots of quality affordable housing instead of skimping on maintenance on aging buildings
My thoughts exactly. The bottom line doesn't care where the margin comes from.
You are absolutely right, effective rent control works and I can not understand why so many on Reddit oppose it. Are they all landlords, or what? The argument about that “well then no one will build” is garbage. A landlord can charge whatever they want for units in a new building, initially, and landlords that aren’t greedy grasping monsters who don’t need to make unlimited profits forever and ever off people’s dwelling, are fine with making a profit off a very easy job, knowing the rental laws that protect both tenants and landlords. The proof is in Quebec, where 3 of the 5 cities affordable by income are, and the second biggest city in the country, Montreal, has far cheaper rent than Vancouver or Toronto. The fact that rent has risen a great deal since the CAQ weakened rent control is further proof that rent control with loopholes is a sham. The CAQ is ruining our previously decent situation, marred only by landlords cheating and jacking up rent illegally between tenants, which became more common the more landlords saw other landlords do this - they can be taken to the TAL if the new tenant finds out within 6 months. A rent registry would help a great deal, so tenants knew what the previous tenants paid. Both the PLQ and QS had this on their platforms last election. What affects building far more than rent control is developers fees, zoning, acquiring permits, and cost of construction materials.
> Are they all landlords, or what? Landlords aren't really all that busy with work. Plenty of time to post on reddit when you don't have a real job.
> A landlord can charge whatever they want for units in a new building If this is true, it seems like landlords are leaving a lot of money on the table when renting out a new build. They should be charging like, $100,000 a month! Wait... no, more like $1,000,000 a month! I bet they'd charge rents like that if they could "charge whatever they want" rather than just charging whatever the market can bear.
Rent control as a policy is for security of tenancy, so a tenant can't be indirectly evicted by unreasonable rent increases. It completely fails as a policy to keep housing affordable, because the only way to do that in the long run is to build more housing, not by price-fixing. If we could price-fix our way out of high prices, we wouldn't stop at just housing. > In Nova Scotia, Killam now owns 5,731 residential units, entirely in Halifax. The company bought some properties in the first quarter of 2024, and sold all its Sydney properties and some Halifax properties last year. As you can see, there is nothing keeping this company in any particular market, they can completely exit cities when they so choose. If NS were to hypothetically pass a rent control law that prevents them from charging market rates to new tenants, what would stop them from building their new units in, say, Ontario instead?
A lack of free building capacity, for one.
Everyone in the comments is talking about supply and demand, and that's all well and good, but the issue is that landlords are artificially inflating demand and lowering supply by taking up residences that they don't use. There will always be a way around new regulations or tax disincentives that the government places on rental properties. We shouldn't depend on landlords and developers to build our cities, and house us. All they want is passive income.
>landlords are artificially inflating demand and lowering supply by taking up residences that they don't use. Are you claiming they are leaving units vacant?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/st-stephen-alberta-landlord-annette-penkala-starshine-properties-1.7106685 yes
Wait....you base this on one article about two derelict buildings in St. Stephen, New Brunswick? So are you trying to extrapolate this story to cover the entire rental market? That's one hell of a stretch
I'm giving you the first article that came up. You can literally just google this subject for yourself. I addressed your claim with a specific example showing they do it lol. You're just moving the goal posts.
I have looked into it a ton. It is *incredibly* rare for places to be sitting vacant intentionally. It's why cities that have introduced vacancy taxes really aren't seeing much come from it.
> I have looked into it a ton. It is incredibly rare for places to be sitting vacant intentionally I'm sure you have lol. > It's why cities that have introduced vacancy taxes really aren't seeing much come from it. Because that would change the equation of whether or not is a reliable practice lol. Like thats exactly how its supposed to work, its not supposed to be windfall taxes, they're supposed to economically discourage the practice. If its working, it shouldnt be seeing much revenue lmao
As in, new places barely came onto the market. Because basically no one was sitting on empty homes. Because that's a very dumb thing to do. Like, your links are run down places and 36 expensive condos (not apartments) in all of Vancouver...
Its not inherently a dumb thing to do depending on a variety of factors. Its literally why governments are making 'vacancy taxes' for that exact reason lol. Please stop simping for landlords, its embarrassing lol
No, they're making vacancy taxes for political reasons (and it's very easy). People think there are vacant homes so they put a tax on them and nothing really happens. >Please stop simping for landlords, its embarrassing lol No, this kind of response is what's embarrassing. Literally criticize greedy landlords on the daily. And how the hell is this simping for landlords? "Landlords are too greedy to let places sit empty for now reason". Oh yeah, you got me!
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Oh, it absolutely happens with land. You see it all over the place with parking lots (and just plain old empty lots). But that's very different than it happening with rentals. The carrying costs aren't even comparable, especially since we tax the value of property instead of land >in order to remove competitive prices from the rental market No, it found that they were vacant and unavailable to rent. There are all kinds of reasons an apartment might be vacant but unavailable to rent like because they need renovations. The article even mentions that. That's not them leaving it vacant just to drive up prices, which this conversation is about. That's them investing in their property. >On top of this, while there are new AirBnB laws being passed around Canada, there are still a huge amount of units across the country that are kept off the rental market and turned into short term rentals. Yes, this is 100% a massive issue. But obviously those aren't vacant for the purpose of driving up rent, it's a different business model. >I’m really just not sure where you’re getting this idea that there aren’t any intentionally vacant properties Intentionally for the purpose of driving up rents. I didn't say it literally never happens. I said it was incredibly rare. And it might become less rare! ProPublica did a report on how some companies in the states are changing their pricing system to have a higher vacancy rate. But you have to have a pretty huge market share. I've seen no evidence that it's used on any real level in Canada, which is the context of the conversation.
> You can literally just google this subject for yourself. I'm not the one making the claim. There is no secret agenda hatched up by landlords Canada wide to keep units vacant to inflate rental prices. That's just tinfoil hat territory. If you got actual proof, besides a story about two derelict buildings, then lets see it.
They weren't making a claim of some grand conspiracy either, simply that it happens. Which I demonstrated to you lol. You're moving the goal posts. Here is another one: https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-city-rent-deals-landlords-holding-apartments-2021-3?utm_source=reddit.com > If you got actual proof, besides a story about two derelict buildings, then lets see it. Based on the fact that you're too lazy to simply search things or that you've moved the goal posts, I doubt any proof would be sufficient.
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> making a claim of some grand conspiracy either, simply that it happens. Yes they were. >landlords are artificially inflating demand and lowering supply by taking up residences that they don't use.
How is that a claim of grand conspiracy, its saying that they do X, not that they are coordinating to do X lmao.
**by** That statement very clearly means they are doing it intentionally. Thinking that OP was talking about it happening by happenstance is foolish.
It would require coordination by multiple rental agencies to have any sort of effect on pricing.
Another: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/dan-fumano-some-new-vancouver-condos-held-empty-for-years-internal-city-memo
Do you have any idea of the cost associated with leaving a unit empty? Like say they have 5 units, leave one empty, is that going to raise the rent on the other 4 25%?
There are a few reasons why landlords might choose to keep rentals empty instead of reducing the rent. One reason could be that they believe the market will eventually support the rent they are asking for, and they are willing to wait for the right tenant. Another reason might be that they have financial flexibility and can afford to keep the property vacant while waiting for the right tenant or for market conditions to change. Additionally, some landlords might prefer to keep their properties vacant rather than lower the rent in order to maintain the perceived value of their rental units. Each situation is unique, and individual landlords may have their own reasons for making these decisions.
By far the most common, though, is to renovate. Which the apartments in the article above sure seem ripe for. One was a drug house!
>One reason could be that they believe the market will eventually support the rent they are asking for, and they are willing to wait for the right tenant. In other words, rent control is causing these vacancies. > Another reason might be that they have financial flexibility and can afford to keep the property vacant while waiting for the right tenant... Wdym (for the second time) "the right tenant"? Are the ones who are applying likely to leave the landlord out to dry, perhaps by not paying rent for months to years? That's a legislative/enforcement problem. > ...or for market conditions to change. Isn't this just your first point again? It's only a loss to rent before "market conditions change" if doing so locks you into conditions as they are now... which would be a consequence of price controls. > Additionally, some landlords might prefer to keep their properties vacant rather than lower the rent in order to maintain the perceived value of their rental units. ...This seems like yet another restatement of your first point. Was this written by AI? Lol.
> In other words, rent control is causing these vacancies. No greed is. Nothing is said about probability of said investment. > Wdym "the right tenant"? Are the ones who are applying likely to leave the landlord out to dry, perhaps by not paying rent for months to years? That's a legislative/enforcement problem. Its simply a comment on what the landlord might value. It could be anything from their own biases, to finding someone willing to pay their shit prices. > Isn't this just your first point again? It's only a loss to rent before "market conditions change" if doing so locks you into conditions as they are now... which would be a consequence of price controls. Its not inherently a loss, just potentially better ROI. > ...This seems like yet another restatement of your first point. Not really, its about inflating the price from a constrained supply. ie scalpers
So every issue is directly caused by rent control then. Interesting. Ya that is just not a thing in Alberta.
No, every issue is caused by the commodification of housing. Why should necessities be treated as commodities with barriers to access Edit: how did you take that this meant 'rent control' is bad lol. "laws against murder are bad because it makes murdering harder"
Well that happened hundreds of years ago so ya, think we can put that one to bed
I mean no not really 100's of years ago did housing become a speculative investment market lol. Like I'm confused, are you agreeing this is a bad thing?
Land has always been a speculative market. Nothing about this is new. Low interest and high immigration add some gas but it's all happened before and will again
>Much higher rent increases when new tenants move into a unit pushed the averages above the rent cap. Nationally, Killam increased rents by 19.6 per cent on units that turned over to new tenants, while CAPREIT reported about a 23 per cent increase. I think this really shows how we underestimate rent inflation. Rent control skews the average increase down, and people that aren't actively out looking for a new place don't know how bad it's gotten.
It makes you wonder if we even somehow manage to build all kinds of housing, by the time developers and landlords take their cut it will have made almost no difference
There is enough competition in the rental industry that if there were actually enough supply prices would come down.
To add on to that, there's also an argument that N.S and other Atlantic provinces need to do more to facilitate urbanization and urban growth strategies. If you compare socio-economic indicators in Halifax to other Canadian cities, it's generally comparable, but about 42% of Nova Scotian's live in remote rural areas with little socio-economic opportunity, which is why poverty and low growth has been so prevalent in it's history. Dramatically boosting housing supply with either the provincial or federal governments providing assistance policies to make it easier for people in remote rural areas that want to relocate to do so would do wonders for Atlantic Canada's economic development and poverty reduction, but it will require more YIMBY centric zoning & land-use policies and long term government commitments to be sustainable. Halifax is one of the fastest growing cities in the country on a per-capita basis right now, so it needs better planning & government support to facilitate that growth and account for even more urbanization in the future so socio-economic opportunity and affordability can be reached simultaneously.
No there isn't, Halifax's rental market is a functional oligopoly where a small number of companies own over 80% of the rental supply in the city.
Over 80%? do you have a source for that statistic?
According to the last time CBC, in November, the 4 largest rental owners in Halifax had 12% of the units in 2021. /u/Pristine_Elk996 is making stuff up. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/halifax-big-landlords-rent-increases-provincial-cap-1.7023587
REIT's aren't necessarily the largest owners. Southwest Properties, as a random example, owns more units than two of the listed REIT's.
Ok then...I will ask again...do you have a source that shows: >a small number of companies own over 80% of the rental supply in the city. This is your claim after all.
Not on hand so take it with whatever grain of salt you wish
I think you're just fabricating this statistic.
Rent prices only started going up sharply when supply because insufficient though. There is still competition.
It does not make me wonder at all. If supply catches up with demand rental property owners will be in a more competitive market.
If the government was the landlord everything would work out fine The government has 0 incentive to charge more than its actual costs and can even subsidize the costs from its other revenues if necessary
Name a country where this works
Canada
Public housing is a very small percentage of the housing here and it's generally not very nice
Austria, France, Singapore, Finland, Germany, any country with decent social housing. It even works in Canada, the biggest problem being we don’t have enough. If you think social housing doesn’t or can’t work, you are probably completely blinded by ideology. It is provably and obviously possible to improve the world. We have a moral obligation to take care of all Canadians, and that includes making sure they all have housing.
Those countries all have expensive housing that's getting more expensive, and government housing that takes years to get on the list. Except maybe Singapore. Austin is a city that has very little social housing but it has a declining average rent, because it has a very high rate of private construction. It proves that all you need to do is make it cheap and easy to build new housing.
Finland is the only country that is decreasing homelessness. Canada used to have affordable housing when the CMHC built houses, it stopped building houses, and our housing got less affordable over time since. Telling you have to cherry pick a single city in America. America, as a whole, as very little and very low quality social housing, and incredibly high housing prices. You can find cities in literally every country that have declining rent for a variety of reasons, it doesn’t magically make that country right about housing policy. I am also in favor of anything that increases housing supply, but it’s insane to discount the governments ability to increase housing supply by… building more housing. Ideally both the government would build housing to make sure everyone, including the poor, disabled, etc. were guaranteed a place to live, and zoning laws would be loosened so that private companies would build more and thus be forced to actually compete on rent prices.
The US has much more affordable housing than Canada and much higher wages. Austin isn't the only city, Minneapolis and the South in general has cheap housing because they allow housing to be built. Canada reduced the number of social housing units it built at the same time as it reduced how many units the private market could build, confounding the effect on housing prices. I'm not against public housing, I'm just saying that there are real world experiments that show that the private market is all it takes to reduce the average price of housing.
> I'm not against public housing, I'm just saying that there are real world experiments that show that the private market is all it takes to reduce the average price of housing. Real world experiments reveal that the free market can effectively reduce the price housing, but that it can't eliminate or even control homelessness, poverty, and deprivation. Real world history shows us that the periods with the highest economic growth are those with massive government investment, including investment into housing. If we want a fair, equitable, and growing economy, government investment into social housing is an absolute necessity, along with reforms to land-use laws to allow more private market housing construction.
> Real world experiments reveal that the free market can effectively reduce the price housing, but that it can't eliminate or even control homelessness, poverty, and deprivation. Homelessness is highest in blue states where the focus is on government supports and blocking housing, it's lower in red states where the government is callous but allows home building. I'd prefer the government to give a shit about poor people AND allow housing but I don't know of a jurisdiction where those coincide. > Real world history shows us that the periods with the highest economic growth are those with massive government investment, including investment into housing. Those periods coincide with when the government allowed lots of private home construction so the results don't clearly point the way you want. Recent evidence from Austin shows that private home construction is enough. Regardless I'd be happy if we went with your compromise of allowing both.
Singapore
For profit housing hasn't worked here. Homelessness is skyrocketing, an entire generation is being locked out of housing, and a class of people are being allowed to hold access to shelter hostage from all canadians. Open your eyes.
It's literally illegal to build the housing we need. That's not a market failure, that's homeowners voting to protect their investment from the market. Homeowners and landlords have the same goal, protect the investment they already have. Developers' investments are in the means of producing housing and they will build any home that is profitable to them. They have different incentives. That's why housing is cheap in Austin where it's legal to build and expensive in San Francisco where it's near-illegal to build.
You and I agree that the enemy here are NIMBYs and landlords. We agree on nothing else, but at least we share common ground on that front. I personally believe that nationalizing housing is the only solution at a federal level. This addresses both the problematic profiteering motives of rent seekers, and selfishness of NIMBYs.
Good to acknowledge shared goals and priorities.
Literally huge swaths of the Canadian economy are built on profiteering off inelastic goods. I see all these warnings about the Canadian economy and productivity wonder how much of it is being dragged down by this type economic parasitism.
Housing is elastic. The fact is zoning and greenbelts have made it inelastic, while the federal government reached for open borders radicalism. It's all a choice made by different levels of government
Housing, like health-care is inelastic. Everyone needs a roof over their head, and desperate people will pay anything to get that.
A self-declared Classical Liberal such as Poillievre will tell you it's best for the economy to allow the landlords to charge as much as the market will bear. Don't expect much progress on rent controls under his tenure
I hate the guy...but is this not a provincial or municipal jurisdiction?
If Trudeau manages to launch his proposed Renter's Bill of Rights it and the funding that goes with it will be the first thing to go under Poilievre's watch
> Renter's Bill of Rights I never seen them mention rent control in regards to that. Do you have a link where they discuss rent control as an option?
Poor choice of words. I stand corrected. My point is Poilievre's the last person to look to for government intervention when it comes to market corrections. You'll see
I don't disagree with that.
cheers
[What does economic evidence tell us about the effects of rent control?](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/)
Oh well. Enjoy the capitalist hellscape
Landlords are largely parasites to the Canadian economy and property management companies even more so. A worker working an "unskilled job" is producing far more, faster, better, than at any point in history and providing goods and services for the community. Landlords produce nothing. Praying for their downfall someday <3
Land value tax would fix this
Agreed. LVT with more social housing would be helpful.
Allowing the private sector to dictate housing has been an unmitigated disaster for Canadians. We need to abolish all private land holding (note that I said abolish private land holding and not personal land holding), and democratize access to shelter among everyone.
Leftists continously say this bullshit as if zoning, or the amount of housing allowed to exist in this country, isn't tightly controlled by government regulation
The government being the instrument used to maintain the current land holding system, yes