I see a lot of expensive houses being built in my area. A LOT. And the weird thing is that they’re being bought pretty quickly. Are these people just making more money than me? If so, what are they doing for a living? Or are they just living house poor? How exactly are they affording these places?

Edit: For reference, my neighborhood is starting to become popular (because the other popular neighborhoods have priced most people out of affording places there). The normal price of newer homes here is $700k. My home, built in 1965, which is 2500sq ft on a quarter acre of land, is $500k.

  • wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    1 year ago

    All this talk of foreign investors. But the reality is they represent a small proportion of single family homes[1] and residential units. It’s easy to blame foreigners, but the real problem is domestic. It’s corporations. Corporations are buying all the housing[2]. And they don’t mind sitting on their invest, even vacant, for years. So yeah, y’all keep the bigotery going and blame foreing investors, you’re playing right into capitalism’s hand.

    1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/6/why-is-canada-banning-foreign-homebuyers

    Foreign owners only account for a small share of the Canadian real estate market. According to Statistics Canada, a government website, non-residents owned 2.2 percent of residential properties in Ontario and 3.1 percent in British Columbia in 2020. The percentages were 2.7 and 4.2 in the Toronto and Vancouver metropolitan areas, respectively.

    1. https://todayshomeowner.com/blog/guides/are-big-companies-buying-up-single-family-homes/

    According to data reported by the PEW Trust and originally gathered by CoreLogic, as of 2022, investment companies take up about a quarter [25%] of the single-family home market.

    • Retiring@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Whether the investors are foreign or domestic, doesn’t matter, as long as governments allow living space to be gambled with, people like OP (I assume OP is working class) are very unlikely to ever own their house/apartment.