Homes will never again be affordable because the system is completely broken (and not broken in the Millhouse expression, but rather in a normal definition). We made housing a commodity rather than a necessity of life and it ended with predictable results.

Now we have the unpleasant decision of diluting the investment of millions of Canadians or continuing to allow millions of Canadians to never own a home.

The referendum on Berlin expropriating 240,000 residential properties from corporate ownership. Something to consider.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/29/berlin-vote-landlords-referendum-corporate

I know the YIMBY movement has been growing tremendously across North America lately, but we still have a long way to go to actually eliminate the core problems manufacturing this housing crisis, e.g., mandatory parking minimums, exclusionary zoning, and rampant NIMBYism.

Housing ought to be a consumer good like any other -- you buy it, use it, and it depreciates with use. Nobody expects a car to increase in value once you drive it off the lot. But somehow with housing, we've all bought into the delusion that housing is an investment. But to be a good investment, it has to appreciate faster than inflation, which means it cannot be affordable!

But this delusion is exactly why we have so much NIMBYism. If you manufacture an artificial scarcity to block out competition, suddenly the class of people who own homes or property can milk it for lots of money, at the expense of the rest of us. And almost all our politicians are homeowners.

Any solution, no matter how perfect, will take years to implement and have a real effect on housing prices.

That said, it's either a half decade form now with a great policy, or several generations from now with bad policies, so don't give up the fight to have good housing within our lifetimes, as it will transcend elections.

It's never coming back down, corporations figured out it was a choice between a finite sum of money through selling, or indefinite income through renting. So they've been buying up property like crazy and outbidding anyone actually trying to live somewhere, of course corporation is gonna have more money and the RoI is virtually infinite no matter the price.

I encourage everyone to check the source cited, it's a PDF with some great extra info that isn't in the BNN article.

So, the big plan is to free up housing supply by making a few million working-class people homeless and doing absolutely nothing to claw back all the homes those “investors” bought up. Fantastic.

Ban corporate ownership. Tax domestic speculators significantly who own 3+ properties, watch the market correct and supply come back.

It’s been rough out there. My wife and I recently moved and purchased a home in Edmonton as it is one of the few “affordable” cities left in Canada.

Toronto and Vancouver will remain very expensive not matter what. Inherit your parents mcmansion or place your bets on some other region that might become prosperous in 3 or 4 decades.