Почему продолжается стремительный рост цен на недвижимость

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The average price of a detached home in Toronto has surpassed $1.5 million, deepening concerns that first-time buyers and young families may be forced out of the market — or pushed into taking on enormous mortgages that would leave them highly vulnerable if interest rates rise.

Sales in Vancouver continued to decline, while prices across the Greater Toronto Area kept rising at a rapid pace. So what does this say about the effectiveness of the stricter mortgage rules introduced by Ottawa in October?

According to Simon Fraser University professor Josh Gordon, it says quite a lot. The fact that tougher mortgage rules have failed to cool prices in Toronto suggests that first-time buyers are not the main force behind the city’s surging housing costs. Instead, Mr. Gordon argues, much of the pressure is coming from wealthy foreign and domestic investors.

Residential real estate sales in February fell by nearly 42% compared with the same month a year earlier, the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reported on March 2. It was the second consecutive month in which that market posted a double-digit monthly decline. In Toronto, however, prices jumped 23.8% in February compared with a year earlier, following a similar increase in January.

The Toronto Real Estate Board, or TREB, has blamed the situation on a lack of market supply. But Gordon and others argue that the shortage is being driven by insatiable demand from wealthy buyers, along with the kind of market psychology that fuels a real estate bubble. No amount of housing supply, Gordon believes, can fully satisfy that kind of demand.

Supporting this view was a recent statement by Scotiabank economist Derek Holt, who noted that new housing units in Canada are being created faster and in greater numbers than they were last year.

Vancouver’s largely flat prices and Toronto’s uncontrolled price growth appear to show that the foreign buyers’ tax in Greater Vancouver is having an effect. The mortgage stress test, meanwhile, appears to be far less effective — at least in the country’s two largest housing markets.

It remains unclear how strongly the new federal mortgage rules have affected the rest of Canada. “The idea was to prevent some borrowers from taking on unsustainable levels of debt to buy a home — and that was a good idea,” Mr. Gordon said.

Canada is not the only country facing rapidly rising real estate prices in major cities. Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Switzerland, and others have encountered similar problems. They, too, have tried to address the issue through new regulations rather than higher interest rates, which would carry serious consequences for the broader economy.

The results have been mixed. However, a recent review of such measures by the Bank for International Settlements found that taxes are the only tool with a significant impact on housing price growth.

In Gordon’s view, solving Toronto’s housing affordability crisis requires local measures, not the broad change to mortgage rules introduced by Ottawa in October.

The city would benefit not only from a tax similar to the one introduced in Vancouver, but also from an additional levy on high-value real estate aimed at buyers who pay little, if any, Canadian income tax. Such a measure, which Gordon says would also be useful in Vancouver, would affect both those purchasing expensive homes with foreign income and local investors who are “aggressively avoiding taxes.” “The additional tax would not discriminate by country of residence or any other such category. Instead, the idea is that property ownership by those earning income in the Canadian labour market and paying taxes in Canada is welcome, while property ownership based on foreign wealth or illegal income is discouraged — or subjected to higher taxes or even penalties,” Mr. Gordon’s report stated.

Finance Minister Charles Sousa has promised that his spring budget will include measures to help make houses and condominiums more affordable for residents.

Disappointed by the federal budget tabled last week, which did not include urgent measures to cool the overheated Greater Toronto housing market, Mr. Sousa said on Monday that Ontario would act on its own to address fierce bidding wars, rapidly rising home prices, and escalating rents.

Although much of the discussion has focused on a foreign buyers’ tax, Mr. Sousa said that any measures must avoid “unintended consequences” that could slow real estate markets outside the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area, where sales activity is not as intense. “The cause may be speculation, foreigners, or the many people now moving to Ontario and increasing demand,” he added.

The discussion of a possible foreign buyers’ tax has met with strong opposition from TREB. The board argues that concerns about the influence of foreign capital on Toronto’s housing market are exaggerated and overblown.

According to research firm Urbanation, foreign buyers account for only 5% of total demand for new condominiums in the Greater Toronto Area. Ontario, however, does not collect information on the nationality or citizenship of real estate buyers, unlike British Columbia, which introduced such data collection last summer. Its figures showed that foreign buyers were involved in approximately 11% of Vancouver real estate transactions between June 10 and July 14. In nearby Burnaby and Richmond, the share of foreign buyers was 18%. Those numbers declined after the foreign buyers’ tax was introduced, although they now appear to be rising again gradually.

Mr. Gordon argues that, in order to accurately assess the influence of foreign capital on the Vancouver and Toronto markets, the government needs to match land-title data with tax records. The first would show who made the purchase; the second would show whether the buyer pays enough tax to support that purchase.

Foreign buyers can avoid taxes aimed specifically at them by routing money through Canadian residents. According to Gordon, matching purchase records with tax information would help clarify the origin of the capital and also identify those evading taxes.

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