There are much more money available to speculate than available surface area.
Leverage was cheap (through housing) so everyone played that asset class on margin here. Now that the interest rates are going up, it will sort itself out.
I didn't take the time to find numbers that are perfectly apples-to-apples, but it definitely doesn't seem like Toronto's median income is materially lower than Chicago's.
[0] https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/8f41-2016-...
[1] https://data.oecd.org/conversion/purchasing-power-parities-p...
[2] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/chicagocityilli...
Doubtful, some of the biggest cities on earth have tiny geographic areas.
Build more and let them keep buying, a clear government policy that targets rezoning to keep price rises in-step with inflation would certainly make empty home investors think twice.
Real estate speculation is a gamble that governments won't accommodate growing populations and politically benefit from rising house prices. In many places on Earth they are likely right.
In my city in Australia it’s common to see a single elderly retiree living in a rundown home on a large block, where the land alone could be worth close to a million dollars. When the property is sold it can often be split into two, and house two families in detached homes.
It feels cold hearted to say elderly should be pushed out of homes they have lived in for 50 years. But it does make it harder for cities to grow - the carrot of higher prices doesn’t seem to work for people who just want to live out their days in the community and home they know.
The same sized property next door has a full sized home and three townhomes. So potentially one person living in the same space that is housing a dozen next door.
More or less cold hearted than forcing three new dads to spend 15% of their waking hours getting back and forth to work, which means they only sees their kids when they are sleeping?