[LimaBearz]

Is it so far fetched to assume some realtors may be juicing the bidding to increase their own commission and to make their firm more uhh "prestigious" by being able to drive up the price for their own marketing purposes further down the line.

Likewise if you dont know who you're bidding against, how do you even know the bidder is even real (foreign or not)? Transparency is good thing.

While there may be some "scarcity" not having full transparency and realtors not in alignment with their own clients needs is a step in the right direction.

(I use scare quotes here because while I know we're not building enough but the current market has a fair share of retail speculation, institutional investors inflating prices, and homes held as purely places to mark money(non-owner occupied). Scarcity is real and building does need to happen, but thats slow and expensive. Millions of homes are kept empty or as poor speculative investments and thats a problem)

[CountSessine]

Is it so far fetched to assume some realtors may be juicing the bidding to...

Of course not, and I didn't say that I'm completely against reforming the real estate industry and the bidding process. But it won't fix expensive housing.

It's all bullsh*t if it doesn't address scarcity. In 2016 we had had 10 years of 2% population growth in Vancouver and 1.2% housing stock growth and we wanted to blame foreign investors, so we enacted the foreign-buyers tax. That was going to fix high housing prices.

In 2017 we all got angry about dirty money and our casinos being used as money-laundromats so we commissioned the German report to detail what was going on and surely that would show that real estate was expensive because of money-laundering. It said prices might have gone up by 6% because of money-laundering. So that's 6% of 400%.

In 2021 we started talking about investors driving up the cost of housing, ignoring the fact that investors typically become landlords and in cities with rental vacancy rates hovering around 1% (Vancouver's was 0.4% in 2017!!!), that sounds like a good thing.

It's all bullsh*t and it's all a distraction that let's us ignore scarcity. I've decided that no matter how justified that housing reform is (ie open-bidding), I refuse to support it before we deal with scarcity because we'll deal with open-bidding and then say, "Ok ... let's see where we are in 3 years time now that we've fixed that!"

Deal with scarcity or f*ck off with talk about housing prices. Don't expect me to validate your cognitive dissonance.

[standeven]

I agree that scarcity is the main issue, but how do you address it in a city like Vancouver? There’s no more land and downtown is dense. Make artificial islands? Deforest the mountainsides and build on 40 degree slopes? Replace local farms with subdivisions?

[LimaBearz]

Well I share your feelings toward the whole situation for sure but I'm not sure that just building more will do much of anything. As long as we have folks buying with the intention of parking money or using homes as an "investment" you're going to have competition with much deeper pockets.

This outside competition detaches local prices from the local economy. Likewise the speculation sets an anchor(comp) for neighboring homes when they go to sell. One investor overpaying by say 100K.. well now next month if Average Joe wants to sell he can now ask the same or more. Rinse and repeat just a few times and you get to where we are today.

[voisin]

Jack up interest rates (or qualifying rates) and demand plummets, particularly among multi unit investors. That should help scarcity.

[FerociousTimes]

To summarize, you argue that it's a supply-side problem and not a demand-side one.

[hello_popppet]

The people writing the laws are all about the scarcity, and they aren’t on HN and you can’t take any shots at them or tell them to f*ck off. They’ve gotten this far by diligently min maxing and if you think they are going to have a change of heart, you’re way off base.

[AzzieElbab]

Lets see. Assume I am a realtor, I earn outrageous commissions of 2.5%. Does it make sense for me to jack up price of 1M condo by say 15% above the market and spend a month trying to sell it or to lower the price by 10% below and possibly sell two similar properties in the same month?

[Valgrim]

But every house that is on the market IS being sold, even at outrageous price, because buyers don't believe the price hike will slow down anytime soon (why would they? this segment of the market is guaranteed to be protected by any government who wishes to get re-elected)

So you, the realtor, will sell every house you got anyway, so why not bump the price while you're at it?

[Alan_Dillman]

Yes, it does. Because you don't know if it will take a month, and if you have any confidence (maybe too much) in your abilities, you will likely assume you will sell it quickly. And a second one too.

Its a poor sales person that thinks, "I might not sell one this month..." Not with that attitude.