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Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

> My parents purchased a home in Ottawa for ~$250K around 2011 and their neighbor recently sold their house for $1.2M.

Holy crap, I'm speechless. That's some bubble.

Canada never had a housing correction in 2008, despite a similar run up in prices like the US.

If you think the recent US bubble is bad, imagine adding it on top of the 2008 bubble (minus the crash) and you have Canada.

Before the most recent correction in Canada, the average sale price in Canada was double that of the US. Let that sink in. A country with lower wages, higher taxes, no 30 year fixed mortgages had an average sale price of double the US.

its not a bubble if they keep bringing in half a million people per year to keep the pressure on housing and healthcare high. As long as you have desperate people looking for housing there will be pressure to keep the costs up. The government doesn't care because the real estate numbers pump up the GDP numbers as they make life unlivable for middle class and lower, so the numbers look good even if the results are bad.

That type of home appreciation happens in larger US real estate markets as well, assuming you're willing to put a few hundred thousand into renovations. Everything has shot up tremendously post-COVID.

Nothing in the U.S. compares to the Canadian housing bubble

I guess because Canada only has like... 6 large cities? (1 million+ people)[0]

edit: also... not only a matter of size. But a lot of areas in Canada are just way too cold, so ppl just don't want to be there?

I'm in Vancouver, lived in Toronto for a year, but I don't see anywhere else besides Vancouver that I would like as much as here - for the green areas, mountains, ocean, and milder winter and summer. Toronto weather is bad, either too cold, or too hot.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_population...

It's not a function of density, there are plenty of incredibly dense cities in Europe and Asia that don't have anything like the price inflation of Canada. Canada has a) not been building nearly enough housing (same story as the US, UK, Australia, NZ, etc) to keep up with demand and b) their version of fannie mae/freddie mac is fully part of the government instead of a private/public thing. In 2008 the Canadian government just allowed people to borrow more to keep home prices intact instead of the US where there was a big drop as the bottom of the market fell out.

And the Canadian government since has continued letting people leverage themselves harder and harder so the market doesn't dip. That is how modest homes are selling for over a million CAD. The US is in the same trajectory but with higher salaries and the dip in 2008 we are just 5-10 years behind Canada on this.

See also the UK now allowing for mortgages to be passed on to the children of the home buyer, so that the term length can exceed a human lifetime, so as to not explode the monthly payment.

I'm not saying that's all the reason. But the thing - and another commenter mentioned - is that you kinda HAVE to live in one of those few cities if you want to work in a top company, or don't hate your live because of the winter.

Whereas in the US you have way more options.

We are building in Canada, but because of local regulations and just the fact that everybody wants to live in those few 3 or 4 major cities, it's way more difficult. Prices in other cities are WAY more reasonable.

Japan has 3x the population of Canada (125 million vs 38 million). The corridor from Toronto to Quebec is about (eyeballing this) 50% of Japan's land area, with the greater metro areas of Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Calgary probably adding up to another 15-25% of Japan's land area. If you had Japanese style land use you could fit 2-3x more people in the existing large metro areas of Canada

> If you had Japanese style land use you could fit 2-3x more people in the existing large metro areas of Canada

If you built high-rise dorms or tiny apartments, you could probably fit even more.

https://www.designboom.com/design/brownstone-shared-housing-...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/03/business/tiny-apartments-...

> See also the UK now allowing for mortgages to be passed on to the children of the home buyer

Are you sure that's true? I googled it it and it looks like the Johnson Government floated the idea but I can't see anything saying it's now a thing. And we've got two Prime Ministers since then.

Ah sorry, I remembered the news about this plan but the latest is from 2022 so maybe that never got implemented. And ha, I once heard someone refer to 2022 as the year of the three Prime Ministers

> See also the UK now allowing for mortgages to be passed on to the children of the home buyer, so that the term length can exceed a human lifetime, so as to not explode the monthly payment.

This is horrifying that anyone even considered this. That is 100% a straight up return to serfdom. If things get that bad I suggest we take a page out of the French revolutionaries and the IRA on the proper way to respond.

> This is horrifying that anyone even considered this.

The mortgage can be passed on to children, they aren't being forced on them.

My sister got lucky when my dad died that they let her assume the mortgage they took out together on their house. Not having that option would have been difficult for her, because she really wouldn't qualify for one by herself, and the payments on the home were less than it would be to rent something equivalent.

Actually, why not make this an option: children can assume the mortgages of properties they inherit from their parents? Because it isn't automatic right now, even if they are joint on the mortgage already.

This doesn't exist right now, and in the form it did, it's up to the child to take it. A parent can't force debt on you like that.

Honestly, why do you think they could?

>I guess because Canada only has like... 6 large cities? (1 million+ people)

More than that, if you want to get to the top of your industry, all major companies (and their jobs) are based on Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver (plus Edmonton and Calgary for oil/gas). In the US, depending on the industry, it's entirely possible to get to the top of your field while living in (say) Denver, Dallas, Orlando, Charlotte, or Las Vegas.

Natural resource extraction, agriculture, and conservation/forestry aside (because of course those happen outside of the big cities), you have an excellent school in Waterloo for academics at the top of their industry, Ottawa and Victoria (and I'm sure some other cities) for politics, Alberta for a decent film/acting scene, and a few other cities (Gatineau?) for misc government jobs.

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