Support NeoGAF

[AndrewPL]

Yeah I think my parents did get a house around 100k. But why should these well-intentioned immigrants have to pay extra 15% to buy a place to move in? That's why I think some tax on empty homes would make more sense since that targets more of those investor-type people and leave the rest of us alone.

On the other side of it. Why should citizens and residents be paying over inflated house prices so overseas investors (or recent migrants) can own a house? Letting these people buy houses is driving up demand to unsustainable levels. What was happening was that people were being forced to move out to other areas of the country if they wanted to own a house.

Immigrants aren't stopped from owning houses like in many other countries, they can also rent until they are permanent residents and not pay the 15% tax if they choose.

 

[AyaisMUsikWhore]

Hey, colleges do this for out of state students so I guess it could work in the housing market right?

 

[ASilentProtagonist]

Should be higher.

 

[ProfessorMoran]

Yeah I think my parents did get a house around 100k. But why should these well-intentioned immigrants have to pay extra 15% to buy a place to move in? That's why I think some tax on empty homes would make more sense since that targets more of those investor-type people and leave the rest of us alone.

They're not well intentioned, they're not immigrants, they're foreign nationals, they're parking funds from another country which has capital control and have figured a way of circumventing those laws.

Those homes often are not empty, they can send their children here to go to school as international students and house sit, or you can have a situation where refugees take loans from investment clubs and they can rent the house out as a rooming house which happens alot in Chinese neighborhoods where you have a basement with 4 rooms and 4 stoves and none of that is legal and none of the income is reported.

 

[NetMapel]

On the other side of it. Why should citizens and residents be paying over inflated house prices so overseas investors (or recent migrants) can own a house? Letting these people buy houses is driving up demand to unsustainable levels. What was happening was that people were being forced to move out to other areas of the country if they wanted to own a house.

Immigrants aren't stopped from owning houses like in many other countries, they can also rent until they are permanent residents and not pay the 15% tax if they choose.

I totally understand this, but Canada is an immigration country and needs the immigrants to come. Do we really want to discriminate the immigrants then? I don't think it is very nice to just force immigrants to rent for their first few years here before buying. I agree foreign demands needs fixing, but it should be targeting the 1%ers who buy houses with cash, who don't plan to live here, whose child owns a multi million dollar house as a student... etc