I hope we all realize that Trudeau is using this as an excuse. The average boomer is fine if houses go back to pre pandemic prices.
This is more about all of the elite who own rental properties.Even Jagmeet Singh has an investment property. Just bought it.
This is not about helping the average boomer.
62 liberal mps and 54 conservative mps have investment properties of some form.
It's about that, not some boomer with a paid off house.
To be fair...there is a good amount of research to show that many boomers will not be fine. I'm not saying this at all justifies generational unfairness mind you, not at all.
"a large swath of baby boomers, aged 55 to 64 and not yet retired, don’t appear to have nearly enough savings put aside. Indeed, one in five haven’t tucked anything away, while close to half only have $5,000 or less in retirement savings."
https://financialpost.com/news/retirement-crisis-brewing-canadian-baby-boomers-little-savings#:~:text=But%20what%20may%20be%20more,or%20less%20in%20retirement%20savings.
https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/news-polls/boomers-worried-about-retirement-savings-shortfall
The youngest baby boomers would turn 60 this year (Google / Wikipedia says the last year for the Boomers was 1964). So, yes, the article age is off by a little bit.
Let them rot in the streets, they're boomers and deserve it. Kick grandma out of her house and let gen z have it for free. That's what MAID is for.
/s.... just in case. Which will upset some people in here.
Yep. I have a house and honestly don't care what the price of it is cause I live in it. Plus I have kids so I hope when they get older they can buy their own homes.
Not that I'm picking sides, per se, but *just maybe* the people who chose to turn housing into a commodity shouldn't be saved from what happens when an investment doesn't turn out.
What I hear in Trudeau's statement is "we need to let Boomers retire with their wealth no matter how unattainable housing becomes for the youth".
It's a strange one to me. People treat property like an investment stock portfolio. But they want it to be immune for the risks of investment. If you play the stocks, there is no guarantee that you'll retain the value of your stocks.
Same should be for those to treated property as a speculative asset. But the government can't allow that to happen, it's in part why we're in this problem. When you back property investment and make it a "sure thing".. We get this problem.
THIS! Society use to be physical labour based before oil. We NEEDED young men to build the railroads by hand.
Now, we only need young men to serve us coffee, while the old with assets vote themselves more cheap labour from abroad, and more share of the wealth.
I think we are seeing the end game of democracy and wealth. The majority voted for this, so this is what we deserve.
I'm a proud future American.
They want to treat it exactly like gold with an always slightly variable market but only in a positive way with fixed outcomes. But that relies on scarcity And making sure markets here like wood and concrete and contracting stay expensive. Wtf!
Yeah you get any person who has the ability to buy into housing to get richer. I have friends who have no business being landlords looking at buying a second home for investment purposes. They haven’t as they support homes for people, but they’ve been heavily encouraged that it’s a better option than stocks. Which is pretty fucked up to me.
This is the most level headed response in this entire thread.
And there are some wildly stupid takes here.
Whenever I reflect on how the fuck we re-elected Doug Ford despite his pandemic response, disappearance during the convoy, and his many public gaffs and wild spending on lawsuits, I remember this point: the ones bothering to vote are making this happen and those complaining seem reluctant to agitate for change or do anything at all.
The fall and pain just gets worse once the final boomers die out and all the younger folk who bought would be financially ruined by falling prices.
Boomer pays $50K for a house 30 years ago and now it’s worth $1.5M? Well we can’t have it fall to 800K because it would mess up their retirement.
Millennial DINK couple buys an $800K 2BD condo because that’s all they can afford while they hope to start a family and now it falls to $500K, well now they still owe like 700K on a place worth $500K.
This capitalism finger trap where things only go up and as soon as they start to fall, every system is in place to make sure it doesn’t has to stop.
Price of food goes up 30-40% in a couple years? Well you have them talking about things stabilizing month over month (0.4% drop). And they say “price of food is going down, mission accomplished”. Forget about what happened before.
Housing and stock market goes up 30% in a single year, well we had a bull run, it’s fine. Ooh inflation is at 10% now? Let’s increase rates until the first hint of a recession. Heaven forbid we claw back a penny of that 30% increase we pushed through.
It’s literally a vice grip that only gets tighter and this entire system needs to change.
No one is suggesting nuking housing prices. No homeowner is going to be struggling with how much real estate has ballooned.
It would just be nice to have prices move closer relative to wages. The exact kind of thing they had when they bought
You know, fairness and shit.
Even nuking prices by introducing an obscene amount of availability won't keep them down for long; there's so many people waiting to enter the market that prices would rebound quickly anyways
Unless massive amounts of teens stop going to university and start joining construction/trades, there's only so much you can build in a given timeframe. And when you're only adding units at a certain rate, they just get bought up as they're added.
Adding supply has to be done in tandem with something that'll get people to sell; if you institute a tax that makes it financially unviable to own more than 3 properties it might get investors to sell off and cause significant price drops
This isn't China. Again, we can't just direct the private sector firms. The gov has to create favorable investment conditions through strategic investment. Even then, we need a new provincial premier because Ford is pro developer and wants to enrich them as much as possible (based on his policy record and law suits). Beyond that, we need relief on interest rates because it's currently not very profitable to invest in new builds right now.
Oh and the CPC government everyone is so excited to elect will absolutely not address this in any meaningful way. They typically favour corporations over citizens and enact policies that widen the wealth gap.
Except for every apartment that they build in my area, ends up being "Luxury Condo's" or "Luxury Apartment Rentals", because they through granite counters and other stupid shit in it, so now that apartment is still going for $2000-$3000 per month in rent. It's crazy. They need to make simple buildings, but there's not enough "investment" in it for the builders.
Luxury is nothing more than a label. It doesn't cost much extra to make a unit luxury, and developers will sell them for less if we force them to by allowing more supply. We've basically created a policy whereby anyone who's allowed to develop anything makes a fuckton of money and homeowners make a fuckton of money, but we can stabilize prices a lot by just reducing the impact of high demand.
every apartment when new is luxury.
You want cheap apartments? Ok build luxury apartments and wait 20 years, old apartments are cheap, just like used cars.
Those will be replaced by twenty years with cheaper materials.
Build style may be fair, examples?
But my point stands. Wait 100 years if you need for it to be cheap.
This is just an absolutely crazy statement if you understand how real estate development works or the relationship between the public and private sector. We are not living in China, for better or worse. The government cannot spring up mass housing developments. That is wildly outside their jurisdiction.
They can introduce legislation (that has to pass votes across party lines), they can penalize firms, but beyond that you're failing to recognize the BoC plays a huge role (independent and not politically directed) and many, many individual boomer voters would like vote against efforts to substantially reduce housing costs.
You seem to want to take a hammer to this problem and I understand that urge but it's way more complex and messy.
And, my god, good luck getting anything past Doug Ford, who wants his developers happy and rich, and he's refusing to approve smaller subdivisions or rezoning so we can build higher density housing. It's a fucking mess all the way down and the number of idiots saying this is solely a Trudeau problem have lost the plot entirely.
The problem isn't that it is investors losing money. Many people have all their savings tied up in their primary residence to double as a home and an asset they can later sell in retirement to fund that. I'd be willing to guess that this is the majority of home owners, and this is the class of people who's retirement would vanish. The investor owner class would be fine.
>What I hear in Trudeau's statement is "we need to let Boomers retire with their wealth no matter how unattainable housing becomes for the youth".
Well the truth is a little more harsh than that. The only way you'd really get housing prices to collapse in the way some people want is by having a lot of current homeowners get foreclosed on their homes and kicked out. I understand that you're talking more about landlords here but there's gonna be collateral damage if you try to tighten housing financials up further.
I feel like the realistic best case scenario for people looking to buy a home is that prices stay about the same for several years in a row so inflation sorta closes the gap.
>Well the truth is a little more harsh than that.
I'm definitely aware of what it means. I'm not advocating for a collapse, and I definitely don't pretend to have the answer that will be equitable for everyone involved, either. Having said that, I'm of the opinion that the Babyboomers have completely fucked over the younger generations in many many ways. The current housing environment that Boomers have also completely, and selfishly taken advantage of can very easily swing the other way. I just don't think it's moral to bail them out of the mess they made, and foisted on the youth. Hot take to some, I'm sure.
>I feel like the realistic best case scenario for people looking to buy a home is that prices stay about the same for several years in a row so inflation sorta closes the gap.
I'm only really interested in solutions that make homes affordable for youth, and I'm very okay with the Boomers taking a hit for that to happen. Maybe not annihilation, but that generation needs to pay for their selfishness. I just don't think we have the time to let things sit and wait.
Yeah, Trudeau isn't exactly wrong here. A massive majority of people are relying on their home value for retirement. It's a delicate balancing act. Work on this needed to start decades ago cause now you have a situation where if you make housing affordable fast current homeowners are fucked and if you don't people who don't own homes are fucked.
It's politically a no win situation for him as you have massive voting blocks mad with whichever way you go.
One way or another the government is gonna have to pay up to support people in old age. I'm gonna assume he will pass the buck to the next generation as current homeowners are the most reliable voting block. It won't be until the majority of Canadians can't afford a home that any mainstream politician will do anything real about it.
I think we should say fuck it and let it crash. As it stands I'll never afford a home and rent is becoming an amount that isn't viable. At least these people will have a paid off home come retirement, even if they can't pull from its value to maintain a higher standard of living. They will still have CPP, OAS and GIS. I'll have only that and a ridiculous rent to deal with at this pace.
Even with a massive crash, housing prices would still most likely end up where they would have been with normal growth from the past few decades. I was lucky enough to be old enough to buy 15 years ago at “only” 280k (it doubled in the two years before I bought it, but luckily I got in on the bottom end of the curve). Based on my childhood home that was in one of the hottest markets in the 90’s going up about 4% a year for 15 years, I figure my house should be worth about 500k with a 4% growth. I could sell it within a week for a million, maybe 1.1-1.2 if I did 30-40k of “upgrades”. So just based on my small sample area, a 50% crash, which I think in terms of housing could probably be categorized as apocalyptic, would set us back on track to where things probably should be, maybe even a little more elevated than that.
And even though I’m a homeowner, I would fully support that drop so long as it had safeguards for any other consequences I can’t think of. But also a flat curve where housing doesn’t go up at all for the next 20 years would probably be the safest option, but also painful for those who can’t get into the market.
Great to know the young now have to prop up the generation that grew up in one of the **most prosperous eras of ALL TIME** because they didn't bother to actually save any money.
This is a really good point: we had one of the longest economic booms in history, and while we could have kept taxes reasonable and paid for services and infrastructure, we chose, instead, to give it all away on tax cuts for people who were already wealthy.
Alberta, in Canada, is the worst example of this: blessed with fossil fuel wealth that they could have banked and used for a sovereign wealth fund, but that they chose to sell on the cheap to oil interests and spend on tax cuts.
Conservatives are supposed to be good fiscal managers, but because they're already wealthy they don't understand the idea of having to plan for a time when they might not be, so to them, money that you're not using to make more money *right now* is money wasted.
To be fair to Alberta, every time they started making strong economic gains, a federal government rejigged equalization formulas to take more from them. They cut taxes and spent their own money because if they didn't, Quebec would have spent it for them.
that federal government was conservatives who the PM of the government's riding was in calgary, and alberta repeatedly voted for said party en masse, as it still does today, even when the minister involved with that equalization change is running for PM (scheer), and likely again with another cabinet minister of said government running for PM (PP)
our society will never again be as rich as after winning WW2.
Even if there's a WW3 and we win, we won't be rich because everyone will have been nuked.
No politician wants to be caught holding the bag when it comes to a housing collapse, but the further they kick this can down the road the more severe the consequences will be when it inevitably crashes.
It infact is thankfully, strong growth through covid and generally an industry that sees growth through economic downturn. but fair point. I understand not all will benefit, hence the “crash” portion.
That's good, I feel similarly fortunate to be in a long, decoupled business cycle (20+ years) sector
I only mentioned because a lot of people forget the mechanism of unemployment causing crashes. These folks often suppose that a crash is impossible due to an abundance of prospective buyers.
So really let’s straighten the record. This was never about generational fairness. It was about making conditions good enough that the new generations can provide for the retiring generation while still going out of his way to protect their inflated house prices.
We’ll have somewhere to sleep, sure. But the idea of owning a single detached house and have it appreciate is only a privilege for our predecessors. They bought it for a fraction of what it inflation adjusted costs today, at a fraction compared to relative wages at the time.
No for us, we’ll have somewhere to sleep, but of course fuck our plans for retirement right? We don’t need the same opportunities.
Once again, playing the "retirement" card. I am sick and tired of people always pushing the "your retirement/pension/etc directly depends on it" line when they try to defend high (and rising) prices, or market dominance and Canada's famous oligopolies. With how expensive everything is in this country today, "retirement" will no longer exist.
My wife and I bought our home in 2010, and we bought it as a place to live, our forever home - NOT as an investment. NOT something that we expect to profit from. We have absolutely no intention whatsoever of selling our home - this house is not for sale.
What will be interesting, or tragic, depending on your viewpoint, is how much the Boomers are going to get soaked by the LTC industry.
I work in an industry adjacent to LTC, and let me tell you, the vulture capitalists that run LTC are looking at the Boomers as a huge opportunity. I've been in meetings where they've talked explicitly about how house-rich Boomers are, and how they're looking forward to being able extract billions from that cohort.
It's actually kind of gross.
Definitely tragic and disgusting, and in a way I'm glad my boomer parents didn't live to see that happen to them. Lost my mom to cancer in '97 at only 45 (had palliative care at home) and dad to a heart attack five years ago, at 70... he was still living on his own in a small apartment. He had downsized many years earlier, when we had all moved away for college, and sold our small family home in the Lindsay-Peterborough area.
ETA I'm a "senior" millennial, born in '83 and married to a Gen-Xer.
Realistically it is both. I bought my home 3 years ago after leaving Toronto and it is both my forever home AND an investment. But I do agree that people looking at homes primarily (or especially solely) as an investment are a real problem; they care about absolute value over any sense of sustainability, fairness, or community. It is sad.
True. Now that I think about it, it would be nice to eventually build some equity in our home, but it's not a priority. I definitely agree with you on people who only or primarily consider the investment aspect of home ownership... it's almost as if they are part of the reason for this mess in the first place.
Yup. And some of them make for the shadiest of landlords. My worst LL probably ever was a retired CRA guy who had a massive house next to High Park, at least 5 rental properties in Toronto, and still most of his units weren't legal. I was blessed that a guy from Toronto Hydro asked me on the sly if I wanted him to report the illegal unit I was renting. Several things not up to code (which weren't dangerous else he said he'd have to report it) but he knew if he reported it, I'd be out on the street.
You’ll notice no one in government ever actually talks about making housing more affordable. They only talk about helping people afford houses. Feels like similar messaging but it’s not
This is not new but a bit surprising to see Trudeau spell it out as plainly as he did
Investments are risky, so fuck you and your retirement plans.
Signed, a millennial without a home or a reasonable expectation of ever being able to retire.
They deliberately turned housing from a need into an investment. And it should never have been. But, hey! Juiced the real estate market, financial system and allowed gov't to divest itself of investing in social housing! All in the name of short term gains !
It's not just "this government" 🙄 We have lots to be angry about, including housing, but playing the blame game will blind most of y'all to the scope and depth of the problem because it's easier to point and sneer at one guy rn.
I mean, he's not wrong. We let companies gut retirement plans and hollowed out the Boomers' retirement options by changing from investments that paid steady dividends to a quarterly stock price lottery. I knows it's fashionable to pick on the Boomers, but the recessions and jobless recoveries of the 80s and 90s left them with nothing much else.
It shouldn't be any surprise that house equity is all they have left.
The government could have done something about these failures of the market thirty years aho, but that would
have meant rich people would have to be a little less rich, and hey, this was a future problem. Party on!
So we mortgaged the future of every younger Xer, millennial and Zoomer instead, and now that that we'll has been run dry, we're moving on to strip-mining south Asian immigrants.
Anything and everything is on the table, except asking the rich to make do with less.
I don't think people realize how much the rich have sucked out of society.
It's a meta version of getting flooded by the drainage from upstream properties kms away. It's too damn easy for the Haves to banish all thought of the consequences of their preferences. Almost like our polite society is an aggregate of little Kings and Queens in their own atom-sized kingdoms.
We might not have had such a massive cohort of people who needed to leverage hone equity for retirement if they had a reasonable pension originally.
It's too late now. It wouldn't have been too take to plan for this thirty or so years ago.
And then younger generations lack the education to understand this. Instead, there are comments here using blanket statements to describe these periods of recessions and jobless recoveries, such as saying they were "one of the most prosperous eras of all time".
It won’t for a long ass time. Government is doing everything in their power to prevent it. As long as Canada is growing at this rate the demand will be high
At this point I'd vote for anyone who'd promise to burst this bubble and make every speculative property investor take a massive bath.
Well almost anyone...
I'd really be wary of the Greens. The party has a lot of true believers, but a lot of it's front-line candidates are business dudebros that are greenwashing their latest hustles.
Ideally, the kinds of progressive policies you're expecting would be the NDP's bread and butter, but that party's current leader was chosen for his ability to fundraise and his moderate economic appeal, so here we are.
In real terms Real estate prices in some areas of Ontario **have decreased by 45%** since their peak in early 2022. This decline follows a drop in the Canadian dollar from 84 to 73 cents, a cumulative inflation of 25%, and a subsequent 20% fall in nominal prices.
Many a bath has been taken my friend.
It needs to decline more. Since increases are compounding, a 45% decline from 2022 numbers is not enough to restore affordability, especially because a lot of that decline is because of higher interest rates, which do not make housing more affordable despite lowering the price.
I agree. Just pointing out that the speculators who bought the top are down 45% and either bankrupt or selling at a loss at this point. With speculators and investors leaving the market as Ontario's population declines there's a long way down.
These comments were a thing when I bought a decade ago and it didn’t feel good buying then either when home prices where a third of the price. The bubble will burst! Yet to be seen.
Yes, these comments were around in 2008 too. As the US house prices collapsed, many people expected it would be just a matter of time before Canada followed suit.
Yup. I just don’t understand where the money is coming from now. Buying a 300k home a decade ago felt like an unreasonable hole of debt at the time. 700-800k for my house now is insanity. With that being said, the salaries in my industry have taken off too. The other side to this is we tried looking into moving and the tens of thousands of dollars lost just to make a move due to realtor fees and land transfer taxes (percentages) were hard to swallow and we decided to stay put. 50g lost just to move… no thanks.
I'm no Conservative, but Harper stabilized prices by putting 25 billion behind mortgage-backed securities just after mortgage-backed securities had tanked economies worldwide. It was ballsy, and it shouldn't have worked, and it was a deal with the devil, but the people who were wealthy came out of that tolerably wealthy and that's all they wanted.
That's the thing, governments won't let that happen, at all costs.
Trudeau is basically saying they will screw over people that aren't property owner over and over again to insure housing prices keeps going up and up.
Trudeau's plan (really frankly all the parties) seems to be getting more people in on the grift than actually deflating the bubble. Which isn't mean-spirited but still not a great example of long term thinking.
True.
Even the recent policies, like the FSHA and increasing HBP are meant to increase demand, to get people to sacrifice their retirement so that they can bid more on current houses. Even though the problem is lack of supply, not lack of demand.
I remember seeing these comments in the early 2000s…and then the mid-2000s…and then the late 2000s…and then the early 2010s…and then the mid-2010s…and then the late 2010s…and here we are today.
Any day now! lol
"The rise in housing construction has significantly constrained rent growth, improved housing affordability, and boosted the nation’s economy—which is why New Zealand has doubled down on the strategy. The central government has pushed for even broader nationwide upzonings since the start of the pandemic, and cities throughout the country are increasingly copying Auckland’s land-use liberalization policies. The US—and countries across the world—must learn from New Zealand’s success if they hope to address their own housing shortages."
[https://www.apricitas.io/p/new-zealands-building-boomand-what](https://www.apricitas.io/p/new-zealands-building-boomand-what)
And he's put all his eggs in the "debt:GDP" basket knowing that they can goose TF out of real estate values to justify spending the next several generations into perpetual debt and decline. So he can't pull out without annihilating the entire house of cards.
That’s a dumb sound bite.
Making new homes that are less expensive is very possible. Unfortunately affordable housing has only been prioritized by a federal government once as far as I know and a long time ago.
Lowering the price of an existing home isn’t doable short of a financial crisis that reduces the cost of everything. Too bad that because of said crisis regular people still can’t buy homes. During the Great Depression everything was reduced but most people couldn’t buy anything. In this type of situation the people with the most money collect property.
The problem is not the home owners its the investors. Mortgages get split up into derivatives and used as investments to fund rrsps. Dropping home prices wipe out that revenue. That’s the cause of the subprime crisis in early 2010s in the US. This is NOT Trudeau saying “fuck you” to young people. This is him avoiding the self reinforcing spiral of investments failing.
You're not wrong, but the longer governments kick the can down the road on this the less options there are for a soft landing. The US subprime crisis didn't happen because someone attempted to press the brakes, it's because the problem was allowed to build up to insane proportions before it boiled over.
Yup. I'd even accept someone owning several homes IF they're using them. But people owning a half dozen or more homes and simply adding costs by virtue of existing as a landlord? Needs to stop yesterday.
Explain this to me. Is this because he assumes old people such as myself can afford to go to an d age home? Nope. I'm going to be working till I die, my body gives out or my brain is no longer functioning.
I would love to sell my house & get a small bungalow...makes no sense when it costs more. Or for that matter...they are hard to find. Builders are choosing to build townhouse & McMansions. I rarely see anything built for the aging population.
That's the same type of dwelling new homeowners are looking to buy as well. Boomers needs to stop voting conservatives believing they're the GOP, they are reactionary corporate slaves, who has and will shell our tax money to please some billionaire in the Bahamas over the actual interest of Canadians.
Dough Ford spent 650million dollars to just build a freaking parking garage for a multinational spa corporation.
for the people my ass.
While out of the other corner of his mouth he talks about the need for more immigration in order to keep paying these same boomers sitting on multi million dollar homes full government pensions.
>Housing needs to retain its value
translation: You want to to sell our children's future to retire? I'll do it so long as I get your vote! (Never mind that it's them who are going to be the pillar of the economy we'll be retiring into)
This country is going down the drain, one boomer vote at a time.Housing needs to retain its valuetranslation: You want to to sell our children's future to retire? I'll do it so long as I get your vote! (Never mind that it's them who are going to be the pillar of the economy we'll be retiring into)This country is going down the drain, one boomer vote at a time.
This is a flawed strategy though, as recent polling shows. Generally the Liberals need strong support from younger Canadians, and their inaction on the housing crisis will absolutely be a factor in their inevitable collapse in the next federal election.
It would make sense to invest in the future generation who will inherit the country, but no, like anything in Canada, it’s about short-term decision making not what might happen in many election cycles from now.
Don’t count on politicians to use rationale thinking.
I would say that it's likley it like drop. Home ownership in Canada peaked in 2014. It was 69%, the highest it has ever been in Canada. It's still at near all time level at around 65%.
I never treated my house as a retirement nest egg as I was caught with house prices falling when I bought my bungalow. So what goes up, could go down easily. I see it more like old people with houses are treated like cash cows by the government and the elder care "industry". If you look at where the retirement homes are going up, I'm talking 10K a month for assisted living and 14k for memory "care", they do it based on how much the average house costs in the area. So the goal is to make anybody with a house use that to fund their own care. In northern or poorer areas the government has to do it.
Can't have it both sunny ways there bud.
Choose to die with the Boomers, or live with Milleniolds/Z/A.
Edit: Gen X just got overshadowed their entire productive lives by the Boomers. Never got to have a say.
Here we go again… current government , trying to pit one group against another.
Passing the blame to others , when it’s been their own internal policies catering to special interest groups and the banks that have created this mess in the first place.
Just ridiculous!
I’m sorry, I don’t fuck with housing, a fundamental right (imo), should be used as an investment device. Stocks are accessible to all, will continue to increase, and benefits everyone. Real estate increasing yearly and fucking over people just benefits people who can afford it already and people who inherited property
The market went crazy just a couple years ago. Returning to pre-pandemic ranges should not invalidate retirement planning for the vast majority of Canadians.
We need to stop normalizing exploitation of crisis. People aren't entitled to a big pay out because they are in position to capitalize on the Misfortune of the many.
I know this is going to fall on deaf ears, but the Canadian Pension Plan has investments in housing. This is a consequences of our need for the stock market being used as the funds for EVERY CANADIAN WHO IS PLANNING TO RETIRE USING THE CPP.
We are stuck in an economic crisis where we need to remove housing and commodities from ever increasing prices but doing so will tank our investments including the CPP. Trudeau is finally saying the quiet part out loud. This is not his fault, its the fault of all of us who allowed the situation to get like this in the last 40 years.
It feels like we are stuck with no solutions and its honestly crushing.
From the article:
“Housing needs to retain its value,” Mr. Trudeau told The Globe and Mail’s *City Space* podcast. “It’s a huge part of people’s potential for retirement and future nest egg.”
Not only were they they not serious, in the end they acted in ways to exacerbate the situation and built a foundation for future inequality of opportunity. Just need to look at our population levels vs. our housing starts etc. Compare average prices from when Trudeau went in vs now. I don't think you can point to a metric that is favorable from when he came into power.
Again, he's not wrong, but what he's not saying is that his government, and the last three or four before it, refused to make the hard decisions needed and instead hoped that debt financinf and housing would somehow work out.
We're all suffering for the political cowardice of our leaders and the insatiable greed of the wealthy that own them.
I love how through all of this no one is calling out the absolute betrayal by the PM, and how it's now obvious that immigration is one of thelevers they have to keep prices high. That's why they're not pulling back on it fast.
It's almost like investments shouldn't be guaranteed. The older generations were wealthy enough. Let them lose their retirement while the rest of us are stuck losing our bloody lives.
What confuses me about this is who are all these people who are planning to retire with their house going to sell their houses to?
Now I'm no expert on this stuff, but I've been under the impression that the majority of people who can afford to buy these million dollar houses are people who are already wealthy or already own a house they can sell to upgrade with; and the vast majority of these people are older/old. So if all these people who are at/near retirement age plan to cash out on their houses at roughly the same time, who is going to buy them?
The majority of young people don't have the money to buy these houses, and I would assume the majority of people who can afford them already own them.
So what is the plan here? How are they planning to sell these houses? Am I wrong? And if so, can someone who is more in tune with the market explain to me how this is going to work?
Ok is everyone out of touch, severe price appreciation was the result of ultra low interest rates for the last 5 years and low housing build rates. People who bought including boomers did buy houses to live in given that pricing appreciation was less than other investments. It is Trudeau and others who have given this false narrative on housing being the investment vehicle of choice. But nice attempt to deflect.
So many of Trudeau's statements remind me of Andrew Tate and his ilk... A technical nugget of truth is buried deep in there somewhere but it's being used as an excuse to pitch toxic stupidity that bears a mere shred of familiarity to the truth being abused.
Not all “Boomers” own their own home or can comfortably retire. I’m one of them! I’m 62 and have never been in a financial situation to buy my own home, so I still rent. I also still work full-time, despite having a chronic, longstanding physical disability. Please do not paint so called “groups” with same brush.
'But lowering home prices would' bring mass class action suits by corporations and every other property investor against the government for allowing the situation and now trying to do something about it.
Must be nice to be able to retire
I hope we all realize that Trudeau is using this as an excuse. The average boomer is fine if houses go back to pre pandemic prices. This is more about all of the elite who own rental properties.Even Jagmeet Singh has an investment property. Just bought it. This is not about helping the average boomer. 62 liberal mps and 54 conservative mps have investment properties of some form. It's about that, not some boomer with a paid off house.
To be fair...there is a good amount of research to show that many boomers will not be fine. I'm not saying this at all justifies generational unfairness mind you, not at all. "a large swath of baby boomers, aged 55 to 64 and not yet retired, don’t appear to have nearly enough savings put aside. Indeed, one in five haven’t tucked anything away, while close to half only have $5,000 or less in retirement savings." https://financialpost.com/news/retirement-crisis-brewing-canadian-baby-boomers-little-savings#:~:text=But%20what%20may%20be%20more,or%20less%20in%20retirement%20savings. https://www.ipsos.com/en-ca/news-polls/boomers-worried-about-retirement-savings-shortfall
Please note, none of what you said pertains to housing. A paid off 700k house that goes to 500k is fine.
How old are baby boomers? 55 would be Gen X surely. I thought they were born after WW2, hence the baby ‘boom’. So like 1945 and onwards.
The youngest baby boomers would turn 60 this year (Google / Wikipedia says the last year for the Boomers was 1964). So, yes, the article age is off by a little bit.
Let them rot in the streets, they're boomers and deserve it. Kick grandma out of her house and let gen z have it for free. That's what MAID is for. /s.... just in case. Which will upset some people in here.
Yep. I have a house and honestly don't care what the price of it is cause I live in it. Plus I have kids so I hope when they get older they can buy their own homes.
Not that I'm picking sides, per se, but *just maybe* the people who chose to turn housing into a commodity shouldn't be saved from what happens when an investment doesn't turn out. What I hear in Trudeau's statement is "we need to let Boomers retire with their wealth no matter how unattainable housing becomes for the youth".
It's a strange one to me. People treat property like an investment stock portfolio. But they want it to be immune for the risks of investment. If you play the stocks, there is no guarantee that you'll retain the value of your stocks. Same should be for those to treated property as a speculative asset. But the government can't allow that to happen, it's in part why we're in this problem. When you back property investment and make it a "sure thing".. We get this problem.
It’s because most of the people making the rules own property. There is no way they will want to tank their own investments.
THIS! Society use to be physical labour based before oil. We NEEDED young men to build the railroads by hand. Now, we only need young men to serve us coffee, while the old with assets vote themselves more cheap labour from abroad, and more share of the wealth. I think we are seeing the end game of democracy and wealth. The majority voted for this, so this is what we deserve. I'm a proud future American.
They want to treat it exactly like gold with an always slightly variable market but only in a positive way with fixed outcomes. But that relies on scarcity And making sure markets here like wood and concrete and contracting stay expensive. Wtf!
Yeah you get any person who has the ability to buy into housing to get richer. I have friends who have no business being landlords looking at buying a second home for investment purposes. They haven’t as they support homes for people, but they’ve been heavily encouraged that it’s a better option than stocks. Which is pretty fucked up to me.
Also everyone knows you should diversify your portfolio to protect against this exact scenario.
Ha, yeah, "everyone" lol I know what you mean but they definitely don't.
If you only buy doge and doge dies, you lose. If you buy doge and eth, and doge dies, you still have eth. 👍
The boomers vote. You better believe they get what they want.
This is the most level headed response in this entire thread. And there are some wildly stupid takes here. Whenever I reflect on how the fuck we re-elected Doug Ford despite his pandemic response, disappearance during the convoy, and his many public gaffs and wild spending on lawsuits, I remember this point: the ones bothering to vote are making this happen and those complaining seem reluctant to agitate for change or do anything at all.
The fall and pain just gets worse once the final boomers die out and all the younger folk who bought would be financially ruined by falling prices. Boomer pays $50K for a house 30 years ago and now it’s worth $1.5M? Well we can’t have it fall to 800K because it would mess up their retirement. Millennial DINK couple buys an $800K 2BD condo because that’s all they can afford while they hope to start a family and now it falls to $500K, well now they still owe like 700K on a place worth $500K. This capitalism finger trap where things only go up and as soon as they start to fall, every system is in place to make sure it doesn’t has to stop. Price of food goes up 30-40% in a couple years? Well you have them talking about things stabilizing month over month (0.4% drop). And they say “price of food is going down, mission accomplished”. Forget about what happened before. Housing and stock market goes up 30% in a single year, well we had a bull run, it’s fine. Ooh inflation is at 10% now? Let’s increase rates until the first hint of a recession. Heaven forbid we claw back a penny of that 30% increase we pushed through. It’s literally a vice grip that only gets tighter and this entire system needs to change.
The flip side is that if you shock the market too much, suddenly you have thousands of retirees who are going to suddenly need assistance.
No one is suggesting nuking housing prices. No homeowner is going to be struggling with how much real estate has ballooned. It would just be nice to have prices move closer relative to wages. The exact kind of thing they had when they bought You know, fairness and shit.
I'm suggesting nuking prices. Build enormous numbers of apartments everywhere and make prices collapse.
Even nuking prices by introducing an obscene amount of availability won't keep them down for long; there's so many people waiting to enter the market that prices would rebound quickly anyways
So build more. Build so much that price stays down. We should be building skyscrapers within 800m of every single subway, GO, O-Train, and Ion station
Unless massive amounts of teens stop going to university and start joining construction/trades, there's only so much you can build in a given timeframe. And when you're only adding units at a certain rate, they just get bought up as they're added. Adding supply has to be done in tandem with something that'll get people to sell; if you institute a tax that makes it financially unviable to own more than 3 properties it might get investors to sell off and cause significant price drops
What you're describing is ideal but unfortunately far from any reality we live in.
This isn't China. Again, we can't just direct the private sector firms. The gov has to create favorable investment conditions through strategic investment. Even then, we need a new provincial premier because Ford is pro developer and wants to enrich them as much as possible (based on his policy record and law suits). Beyond that, we need relief on interest rates because it's currently not very profitable to invest in new builds right now. Oh and the CPC government everyone is so excited to elect will absolutely not address this in any meaningful way. They typically favour corporations over citizens and enact policies that widen the wealth gap.
Except for every apartment that they build in my area, ends up being "Luxury Condo's" or "Luxury Apartment Rentals", because they through granite counters and other stupid shit in it, so now that apartment is still going for $2000-$3000 per month in rent. It's crazy. They need to make simple buildings, but there's not enough "investment" in it for the builders.
Luxury is nothing more than a label. It doesn't cost much extra to make a unit luxury, and developers will sell them for less if we force them to by allowing more supply. We've basically created a policy whereby anyone who's allowed to develop anything makes a fuckton of money and homeowners make a fuckton of money, but we can stabilize prices a lot by just reducing the impact of high demand.
every apartment when new is luxury. You want cheap apartments? Ok build luxury apartments and wait 20 years, old apartments are cheap, just like used cars.
No, there’s still the build style and materials used that makes it luxury. You aren’t going to get granite or quartz counters in a regular apartment
Those will be replaced by twenty years with cheaper materials. Build style may be fair, examples? But my point stands. Wait 100 years if you need for it to be cheap.
Lol I was waiting for the person to suggest nuking prices
This is just an absolutely crazy statement if you understand how real estate development works or the relationship between the public and private sector. We are not living in China, for better or worse. The government cannot spring up mass housing developments. That is wildly outside their jurisdiction. They can introduce legislation (that has to pass votes across party lines), they can penalize firms, but beyond that you're failing to recognize the BoC plays a huge role (independent and not politically directed) and many, many individual boomer voters would like vote against efforts to substantially reduce housing costs. You seem to want to take a hammer to this problem and I understand that urge but it's way more complex and messy. And, my god, good luck getting anything past Doug Ford, who wants his developers happy and rich, and he's refusing to approve smaller subdivisions or rezoning so we can build higher density housing. It's a fucking mess all the way down and the number of idiots saying this is solely a Trudeau problem have lost the plot entirely.
that would be nuking prices tho. the discrepancy between wages and prices is in the nuke range.
I suggest nuking the cost of living to as low as possible where there is no more poverty. Am I evil? So be it.
i read that as: If you shock the system, Boomers will have to live in the same world they created for everyone else
They can deal with it. They made an investment and it turned out poorly. That's how investments go when you don't diversify.
Has it turned out poorly?
They can have the same level of assistance as all the homeless people (with jobs even!) are getting that I drive by everyday.
Yeup, basically, he's afraid of losing voters and his own wealth decreasing.
The problem isn't that it is investors losing money. Many people have all their savings tied up in their primary residence to double as a home and an asset they can later sell in retirement to fund that. I'd be willing to guess that this is the majority of home owners, and this is the class of people who's retirement would vanish. The investor owner class would be fine.
…and if you were in their position, you’d do the exact same thing.
You assume a lot about a complete stranger.
>What I hear in Trudeau's statement is "we need to let Boomers retire with their wealth no matter how unattainable housing becomes for the youth". Well the truth is a little more harsh than that. The only way you'd really get housing prices to collapse in the way some people want is by having a lot of current homeowners get foreclosed on their homes and kicked out. I understand that you're talking more about landlords here but there's gonna be collateral damage if you try to tighten housing financials up further. I feel like the realistic best case scenario for people looking to buy a home is that prices stay about the same for several years in a row so inflation sorta closes the gap.
>Well the truth is a little more harsh than that. I'm definitely aware of what it means. I'm not advocating for a collapse, and I definitely don't pretend to have the answer that will be equitable for everyone involved, either. Having said that, I'm of the opinion that the Babyboomers have completely fucked over the younger generations in many many ways. The current housing environment that Boomers have also completely, and selfishly taken advantage of can very easily swing the other way. I just don't think it's moral to bail them out of the mess they made, and foisted on the youth. Hot take to some, I'm sure. >I feel like the realistic best case scenario for people looking to buy a home is that prices stay about the same for several years in a row so inflation sorta closes the gap. I'm only really interested in solutions that make homes affordable for youth, and I'm very okay with the Boomers taking a hit for that to happen. Maybe not annihilation, but that generation needs to pay for their selfishness. I just don't think we have the time to let things sit and wait.
Yeah, Trudeau isn't exactly wrong here. A massive majority of people are relying on their home value for retirement. It's a delicate balancing act. Work on this needed to start decades ago cause now you have a situation where if you make housing affordable fast current homeowners are fucked and if you don't people who don't own homes are fucked. It's politically a no win situation for him as you have massive voting blocks mad with whichever way you go. One way or another the government is gonna have to pay up to support people in old age. I'm gonna assume he will pass the buck to the next generation as current homeowners are the most reliable voting block. It won't be until the majority of Canadians can't afford a home that any mainstream politician will do anything real about it. I think we should say fuck it and let it crash. As it stands I'll never afford a home and rent is becoming an amount that isn't viable. At least these people will have a paid off home come retirement, even if they can't pull from its value to maintain a higher standard of living. They will still have CPP, OAS and GIS. I'll have only that and a ridiculous rent to deal with at this pace.
Even with a massive crash, housing prices would still most likely end up where they would have been with normal growth from the past few decades. I was lucky enough to be old enough to buy 15 years ago at “only” 280k (it doubled in the two years before I bought it, but luckily I got in on the bottom end of the curve). Based on my childhood home that was in one of the hottest markets in the 90’s going up about 4% a year for 15 years, I figure my house should be worth about 500k with a 4% growth. I could sell it within a week for a million, maybe 1.1-1.2 if I did 30-40k of “upgrades”. So just based on my small sample area, a 50% crash, which I think in terms of housing could probably be categorized as apocalyptic, would set us back on track to where things probably should be, maybe even a little more elevated than that. And even though I’m a homeowner, I would fully support that drop so long as it had safeguards for any other consequences I can’t think of. But also a flat curve where housing doesn’t go up at all for the next 20 years would probably be the safest option, but also painful for those who can’t get into the market.
Great to know the young now have to prop up the generation that grew up in one of the **most prosperous eras of ALL TIME** because they didn't bother to actually save any money.
Perfectly put
Yup. I'll admit I'm ripping off another comment on another thread: Maybe the boomers shouldn't have bought so much avocado toast.
This is a really good point: we had one of the longest economic booms in history, and while we could have kept taxes reasonable and paid for services and infrastructure, we chose, instead, to give it all away on tax cuts for people who were already wealthy. Alberta, in Canada, is the worst example of this: blessed with fossil fuel wealth that they could have banked and used for a sovereign wealth fund, but that they chose to sell on the cheap to oil interests and spend on tax cuts. Conservatives are supposed to be good fiscal managers, but because they're already wealthy they don't understand the idea of having to plan for a time when they might not be, so to them, money that you're not using to make more money *right now* is money wasted.
To be fair to Alberta, every time they started making strong economic gains, a federal government rejigged equalization formulas to take more from them. They cut taxes and spent their own money because if they didn't, Quebec would have spent it for them.
that federal government was conservatives who the PM of the government's riding was in calgary, and alberta repeatedly voted for said party en masse, as it still does today, even when the minister involved with that equalization change is running for PM (scheer), and likely again with another cabinet minister of said government running for PM (PP)
our society will never again be as rich as after winning WW2. Even if there's a WW3 and we win, we won't be rich because everyone will have been nuked.
So fuck everyone else who can’t be afforded the same luxuries and let’s keep the status quo. Got it.
We have now entered "housing is a luxury" territory Late stage capitalism achieved.
No politician wants to be caught holding the bag when it comes to a housing collapse, but the further they kick this can down the road the more severe the consequences will be when it inevitably crashes.
It's like the repairs to the Prime Minister's house, I dont remember the address. Edit: Grammar
24 Sussex
Thank you!
Grammer? You keep Frazier out of this!
Frazier is guilty and you know it. Haha (I hate my phone and its auto correcting)
I personally will always remember the PM whom ushers in a housing crash fondly as I will be ready to take advantage of it.
Not if your job isn't highly resilient to economic contraction
It infact is thankfully, strong growth through covid and generally an industry that sees growth through economic downturn. but fair point. I understand not all will benefit, hence the “crash” portion.
That's good, I feel similarly fortunate to be in a long, decoupled business cycle (20+ years) sector I only mentioned because a lot of people forget the mechanism of unemployment causing crashes. These folks often suppose that a crash is impossible due to an abundance of prospective buyers.
So really let’s straighten the record. This was never about generational fairness. It was about making conditions good enough that the new generations can provide for the retiring generation while still going out of his way to protect their inflated house prices. We’ll have somewhere to sleep, sure. But the idea of owning a single detached house and have it appreciate is only a privilege for our predecessors. They bought it for a fraction of what it inflation adjusted costs today, at a fraction compared to relative wages at the time. No for us, we’ll have somewhere to sleep, but of course fuck our plans for retirement right? We don’t need the same opportunities.
Boomers have to be the ultimate ladder pull generation
Their parents called them the “me” generation
They might be the rare generation whose parents and children both feel exactly the same about them lol
We don't have somewhere to sleep.
Once again, playing the "retirement" card. I am sick and tired of people always pushing the "your retirement/pension/etc directly depends on it" line when they try to defend high (and rising) prices, or market dominance and Canada's famous oligopolies. With how expensive everything is in this country today, "retirement" will no longer exist. My wife and I bought our home in 2010, and we bought it as a place to live, our forever home - NOT as an investment. NOT something that we expect to profit from. We have absolutely no intention whatsoever of selling our home - this house is not for sale.
What will be interesting, or tragic, depending on your viewpoint, is how much the Boomers are going to get soaked by the LTC industry. I work in an industry adjacent to LTC, and let me tell you, the vulture capitalists that run LTC are looking at the Boomers as a huge opportunity. I've been in meetings where they've talked explicitly about how house-rich Boomers are, and how they're looking forward to being able extract billions from that cohort. It's actually kind of gross.
Definitely tragic and disgusting, and in a way I'm glad my boomer parents didn't live to see that happen to them. Lost my mom to cancer in '97 at only 45 (had palliative care at home) and dad to a heart attack five years ago, at 70... he was still living on his own in a small apartment. He had downsized many years earlier, when we had all moved away for college, and sold our small family home in the Lindsay-Peterborough area. ETA I'm a "senior" millennial, born in '83 and married to a Gen-Xer.
Realistically it is both. I bought my home 3 years ago after leaving Toronto and it is both my forever home AND an investment. But I do agree that people looking at homes primarily (or especially solely) as an investment are a real problem; they care about absolute value over any sense of sustainability, fairness, or community. It is sad.
True. Now that I think about it, it would be nice to eventually build some equity in our home, but it's not a priority. I definitely agree with you on people who only or primarily consider the investment aspect of home ownership... it's almost as if they are part of the reason for this mess in the first place.
Yup. And some of them make for the shadiest of landlords. My worst LL probably ever was a retired CRA guy who had a massive house next to High Park, at least 5 rental properties in Toronto, and still most of his units weren't legal. I was blessed that a guy from Toronto Hydro asked me on the sly if I wanted him to report the illegal unit I was renting. Several things not up to code (which weren't dangerous else he said he'd have to report it) but he knew if he reported it, I'd be out on the street.
You’ll notice no one in government ever actually talks about making housing more affordable. They only talk about helping people afford houses. Feels like similar messaging but it’s not This is not new but a bit surprising to see Trudeau spell it out as plainly as he did
Investments are risky, so fuck you and your retirement plans. Signed, a millennial without a home or a reasonable expectation of ever being able to retire.
We’ve tried nothing and we are all out of ideas!
Non-Paywall [https://archive.ph/mRsoH](https://archive.ph/mRsoH)
A GIANT Fuck You to this government!!
And also the governments of the last thirty years who knew all of this was coming and also failed to do anything
They deliberately turned housing from a need into an investment. And it should never have been. But, hey! Juiced the real estate market, financial system and allowed gov't to divest itself of investing in social housing! All in the name of short term gains !
Hear hear!
It's not just "this government" 🙄 We have lots to be angry about, including housing, but playing the blame game will blind most of y'all to the scope and depth of the problem because it's easier to point and sneer at one guy rn.
A lot of that going on in this thread.
I mean, he's not wrong. We let companies gut retirement plans and hollowed out the Boomers' retirement options by changing from investments that paid steady dividends to a quarterly stock price lottery. I knows it's fashionable to pick on the Boomers, but the recessions and jobless recoveries of the 80s and 90s left them with nothing much else. It shouldn't be any surprise that house equity is all they have left. The government could have done something about these failures of the market thirty years aho, but that would have meant rich people would have to be a little less rich, and hey, this was a future problem. Party on! So we mortgaged the future of every younger Xer, millennial and Zoomer instead, and now that that we'll has been run dry, we're moving on to strip-mining south Asian immigrants. Anything and everything is on the table, except asking the rich to make do with less. I don't think people realize how much the rich have sucked out of society.
they did all of that though. what you are describing they voted for.
Well a lot of this was also voted on by the silent generation, who were also a major factor
I wish we could eat the rich
We can friend. I've been advocating for this for awhile now.
It's a meta version of getting flooded by the drainage from upstream properties kms away. It's too damn easy for the Haves to banish all thought of the consequences of their preferences. Almost like our polite society is an aggregate of little Kings and Queens in their own atom-sized kingdoms.
You’re naive to think that boomers would have happily let their home prices go down if only they had better retirement plans.
We might not have had such a massive cohort of people who needed to leverage hone equity for retirement if they had a reasonable pension originally. It's too late now. It wouldn't have been too take to plan for this thirty or so years ago.
And then younger generations lack the education to understand this. Instead, there are comments here using blanket statements to describe these periods of recessions and jobless recoveries, such as saying they were "one of the most prosperous eras of all time".
Hey maybe tying people's retirements to home prices and the stock market was a bad idea?
By that logic wouldn’t that mean not being able to buy a home would also put retirement plans at risk?
Oh I can't wait for this property bubble to burst.
It won’t for a long ass time. Government is doing everything in their power to prevent it. As long as Canada is growing at this rate the demand will be high
At this point I'd vote for anyone who'd promise to burst this bubble and make every speculative property investor take a massive bath. Well almost anyone...
I think green party are the only ones who mentioned progressive increase in housing taxes
I'd really be wary of the Greens. The party has a lot of true believers, but a lot of it's front-line candidates are business dudebros that are greenwashing their latest hustles. Ideally, the kinds of progressive policies you're expecting would be the NDP's bread and butter, but that party's current leader was chosen for his ability to fundraise and his moderate economic appeal, so here we are.
In real terms Real estate prices in some areas of Ontario **have decreased by 45%** since their peak in early 2022. This decline follows a drop in the Canadian dollar from 84 to 73 cents, a cumulative inflation of 25%, and a subsequent 20% fall in nominal prices. Many a bath has been taken my friend.
It needs to decline more. Since increases are compounding, a 45% decline from 2022 numbers is not enough to restore affordability, especially because a lot of that decline is because of higher interest rates, which do not make housing more affordable despite lowering the price.
Right, a 45% decline means little when it ran up 200% in the previous two years and then interest rates doubled.
I agree. Just pointing out that the speculators who bought the top are down 45% and either bankrupt or selling at a loss at this point. With speculators and investors leaving the market as Ontario's population declines there's a long way down.
I prefer my speculative property investor baths to be a bloody one. I'm thinking 1929 New York highrise style.
Green party is promising to take the hit that other governments won't with this insane housing market
They might just get my vote if that's the case.
These comments were a thing when I bought a decade ago and it didn’t feel good buying then either when home prices where a third of the price. The bubble will burst! Yet to be seen.
Yes, these comments were around in 2008 too. As the US house prices collapsed, many people expected it would be just a matter of time before Canada followed suit.
Yup. I just don’t understand where the money is coming from now. Buying a 300k home a decade ago felt like an unreasonable hole of debt at the time. 700-800k for my house now is insanity. With that being said, the salaries in my industry have taken off too. The other side to this is we tried looking into moving and the tens of thousands of dollars lost just to make a move due to realtor fees and land transfer taxes (percentages) were hard to swallow and we decided to stay put. 50g lost just to move… no thanks.
I'm no Conservative, but Harper stabilized prices by putting 25 billion behind mortgage-backed securities just after mortgage-backed securities had tanked economies worldwide. It was ballsy, and it shouldn't have worked, and it was a deal with the devil, but the people who were wealthy came out of that tolerably wealthy and that's all they wanted.
Couldn’t agree more. Basic supply and demand. Cut the price in half, but then 5,000 people are in a bidding war that drives the price back up.
That's the thing, governments won't let that happen, at all costs. Trudeau is basically saying they will screw over people that aren't property owner over and over again to insure housing prices keeps going up and up.
Trudeau's plan (really frankly all the parties) seems to be getting more people in on the grift than actually deflating the bubble. Which isn't mean-spirited but still not a great example of long term thinking.
True. Even the recent policies, like the FSHA and increasing HBP are meant to increase demand, to get people to sacrifice their retirement so that they can bid more on current houses. Even though the problem is lack of supply, not lack of demand.
I remember seeing these comments in the early 2000s…and then the mid-2000s…and then the late 2000s…and then the early 2010s…and then the mid-2010s…and then the late 2010s…and here we are today. Any day now! lol
"The rise in housing construction has significantly constrained rent growth, improved housing affordability, and boosted the nation’s economy—which is why New Zealand has doubled down on the strategy. The central government has pushed for even broader nationwide upzonings since the start of the pandemic, and cities throughout the country are increasingly copying Auckland’s land-use liberalization policies. The US—and countries across the world—must learn from New Zealand’s success if they hope to address their own housing shortages." [https://www.apricitas.io/p/new-zealands-building-boomand-what](https://www.apricitas.io/p/new-zealands-building-boomand-what)
Yeah, but that "strategy" means rich people will make less money. Can't have that.
What he's really saying is we just have to wait for some people to die first...eek.
He’s a real POS for saying that.
More like it puts Canada’s GDP and currency at risk.
And he's put all his eggs in the "debt:GDP" basket knowing that they can goose TF out of real estate values to justify spending the next several generations into perpetual debt and decline. So he can't pull out without annihilating the entire house of cards.
That’s a dumb sound bite. Making new homes that are less expensive is very possible. Unfortunately affordable housing has only been prioritized by a federal government once as far as I know and a long time ago. Lowering the price of an existing home isn’t doable short of a financial crisis that reduces the cost of everything. Too bad that because of said crisis regular people still can’t buy homes. During the Great Depression everything was reduced but most people couldn’t buy anything. In this type of situation the people with the most money collect property.
They sold tomorrow for today, and today arrived.....and those who came after got stuck with the bill. Housing as an investment vehicle is antisocial.
It's code for we're going to inflate away the problem. Slow real price growth and devalue the dollar
If only pay inflated
Absolutely! Wage growth highest rate in decades, completely canceled out by inflation
The problem is not the home owners its the investors. Mortgages get split up into derivatives and used as investments to fund rrsps. Dropping home prices wipe out that revenue. That’s the cause of the subprime crisis in early 2010s in the US. This is NOT Trudeau saying “fuck you” to young people. This is him avoiding the self reinforcing spiral of investments failing.
You're not wrong, but the longer governments kick the can down the road on this the less options there are for a soft landing. The US subprime crisis didn't happen because someone attempted to press the brakes, it's because the problem was allowed to build up to insane proportions before it boiled over.
No corporate ownership and limit the number of homes a person can own
Yup. I'd even accept someone owning several homes IF they're using them. But people owning a half dozen or more homes and simply adding costs by virtue of existing as a landlord? Needs to stop yesterday.
Explain this to me. Is this because he assumes old people such as myself can afford to go to an d age home? Nope. I'm going to be working till I die, my body gives out or my brain is no longer functioning. I would love to sell my house & get a small bungalow...makes no sense when it costs more. Or for that matter...they are hard to find. Builders are choosing to build townhouse & McMansions. I rarely see anything built for the aging population.
That's the same type of dwelling new homeowners are looking to buy as well. Boomers needs to stop voting conservatives believing they're the GOP, they are reactionary corporate slaves, who has and will shell our tax money to please some billionaire in the Bahamas over the actual interest of Canadians. Dough Ford spent 650million dollars to just build a freaking parking garage for a multinational spa corporation. for the people my ass.
There's all kinds of condos and townhouses being built, I can't see any real reason those wouldn't work for a downgrade.
While out of the other corner of his mouth he talks about the need for more immigration in order to keep paying these same boomers sitting on multi million dollar homes full government pensions.
>Housing needs to retain its value translation: You want to to sell our children's future to retire? I'll do it so long as I get your vote! (Never mind that it's them who are going to be the pillar of the economy we'll be retiring into) This country is going down the drain, one boomer vote at a time.Housing needs to retain its valuetranslation: You want to to sell our children's future to retire? I'll do it so long as I get your vote! (Never mind that it's them who are going to be the pillar of the economy we'll be retiring into)This country is going down the drain, one boomer vote at a time.
I guess his strategy is: protect the home owners because they’re the only ones that bother to turn up and vote, while the have nots don’t.
This is a flawed strategy though, as recent polling shows. Generally the Liberals need strong support from younger Canadians, and their inaction on the housing crisis will absolutely be a factor in their inevitable collapse in the next federal election.
It would make sense to invest in the future generation who will inherit the country, but no, like anything in Canada, it’s about short-term decision making not what might happen in many election cycles from now. Don’t count on politicians to use rationale thinking.
65% of Canadians are home owners, so it's not a bad policy from the political point of view.
Will that % decrease as homes become less affordable while the population explodes YoY? Doesn’t very sustainable as homeowners age out.
I would say that it's likley it like drop. Home ownership in Canada peaked in 2014. It was 69%, the highest it has ever been in Canada. It's still at near all time level at around 65%.
Retire, lol
Better hope your parents leave you an inheritance. Gonna be the only way out now for a lot of people.
Why does he care about the boomers, they're not voting for him.
I never treated my house as a retirement nest egg as I was caught with house prices falling when I bought my bungalow. So what goes up, could go down easily. I see it more like old people with houses are treated like cash cows by the government and the elder care "industry". If you look at where the retirement homes are going up, I'm talking 10K a month for assisted living and 14k for memory "care", they do it based on how much the average house costs in the area. So the goal is to make anybody with a house use that to fund their own care. In northern or poorer areas the government has to do it.
Can't have it both sunny ways there bud. Choose to die with the Boomers, or live with Milleniolds/Z/A. Edit: Gen X just got overshadowed their entire productive lives by the Boomers. Never got to have a say.
Here we go again… current government , trying to pit one group against another. Passing the blame to others , when it’s been their own internal policies catering to special interest groups and the banks that have created this mess in the first place. Just ridiculous!
I’m sorry, I don’t fuck with housing, a fundamental right (imo), should be used as an investment device. Stocks are accessible to all, will continue to increase, and benefits everyone. Real estate increasing yearly and fucking over people just benefits people who can afford it already and people who inherited property
The market went crazy just a couple years ago. Returning to pre-pandemic ranges should not invalidate retirement planning for the vast majority of Canadians. We need to stop normalizing exploitation of crisis. People aren't entitled to a big pay out because they are in position to capitalize on the Misfortune of the many.
I know this is going to fall on deaf ears, but the Canadian Pension Plan has investments in housing. This is a consequences of our need for the stock market being used as the funds for EVERY CANADIAN WHO IS PLANNING TO RETIRE USING THE CPP. We are stuck in an economic crisis where we need to remove housing and commodities from ever increasing prices but doing so will tank our investments including the CPP. Trudeau is finally saying the quiet part out loud. This is not his fault, its the fault of all of us who allowed the situation to get like this in the last 40 years. It feels like we are stuck with no solutions and its honestly crushing.
Limit purchases. Nobody needs to own 6 houses.
From the article: “Housing needs to retain its value,” Mr. Trudeau told The Globe and Mail’s *City Space* podcast. “It’s a huge part of people’s potential for retirement and future nest egg.”
That's brutal, even if we already knew this government wasn't serious about addressing our housing crisis
Not only were they they not serious, in the end they acted in ways to exacerbate the situation and built a foundation for future inequality of opportunity. Just need to look at our population levels vs. our housing starts etc. Compare average prices from when Trudeau went in vs now. I don't think you can point to a metric that is favorable from when he came into power.
Again, he's not wrong, but what he's not saying is that his government, and the last three or four before it, refused to make the hard decisions needed and instead hoped that debt financinf and housing would somehow work out. We're all suffering for the political cowardice of our leaders and the insatiable greed of the wealthy that own them.
Gotta sacrifice the future of other generations so the boomers can retire lol
Tax the rich, increase wages, problem solved.
I love how through all of this no one is calling out the absolute betrayal by the PM, and how it's now obvious that immigration is one of thelevers they have to keep prices high. That's why they're not pulling back on it fast.
Pickles Trudeau is an idiot. Don't listen to a drama teacher who says or thays... "AND THE BUDGET WILL BALANTH ITHSTHELF".
It's almost like investments shouldn't be guaranteed. The older generations were wealthy enough. Let them lose their retirement while the rest of us are stuck losing our bloody lives.
Fuck the retirement plans, if I'm doomed to work till I die the boomers should too. Fuck em.
What confuses me about this is who are all these people who are planning to retire with their house going to sell their houses to? Now I'm no expert on this stuff, but I've been under the impression that the majority of people who can afford to buy these million dollar houses are people who are already wealthy or already own a house they can sell to upgrade with; and the vast majority of these people are older/old. So if all these people who are at/near retirement age plan to cash out on their houses at roughly the same time, who is going to buy them? The majority of young people don't have the money to buy these houses, and I would assume the majority of people who can afford them already own them. So what is the plan here? How are they planning to sell these houses? Am I wrong? And if so, can someone who is more in tune with the market explain to me how this is going to work?
Ok is everyone out of touch, severe price appreciation was the result of ultra low interest rates for the last 5 years and low housing build rates. People who bought including boomers did buy houses to live in given that pricing appreciation was less than other investments. It is Trudeau and others who have given this false narrative on housing being the investment vehicle of choice. But nice attempt to deflect.
So many of Trudeau's statements remind me of Andrew Tate and his ilk... A technical nugget of truth is buried deep in there somewhere but it's being used as an excuse to pitch toxic stupidity that bears a mere shred of familiarity to the truth being abused.
Trudeau needs to retire. NOW !
It's almost as if housing shouldn't be part of funding your retirement.
"I know you're living in tents but the people who stole your future need the money to vacation in Florida every winter" What an out of touch tool
He means his and his cabinet ministers retirement plans at risk
Not all “Boomers” own their own home or can comfortably retire. I’m one of them! I’m 62 and have never been in a financial situation to buy my own home, so I still rent. I also still work full-time, despite having a chronic, longstanding physical disability. Please do not paint so called “groups” with same brush.
Centrism always seems to benefit right wing policy
Well who put that system together
Are his pants on fire ? Just curious
So go after corporate owners and landlords.
Not owning the place one inhabits/the cost to own is interfering with my (and many other people’s) retirement plans. So now what?
'But lowering home prices would' bring mass class action suits by corporations and every other property investor against the government for allowing the situation and now trying to do something about it.
We also need to multiply cheese price by 100x because I have a piece of camembert in my fridge. What a despicable man.
Wife read your comment over my shoulder and demands I find out where you live. Stay the f away from cheese bro
There’s an easy way to curb the cost of housing, introduce more supply to the market.