[manbackharry]

I'd argue the main cause of this is the REALTORs/real estate boards/MLS system that stonewalls any attempts at making real estate information publicly available precisely because the size of their paycheques relies on this information remaining hidden from the public. The conflict of interest beggars belief, but it's allowed to remain, among other reasons, since it also tends to benefit political parties courting votes from homeowners who see their home values continue to rise.

All of this though (ending blind bidding, making buy and sell data publicly available, etc.) is just using a bucket to bail out the Titanic since the system is designed to have prices continuously rise since Canadians are in house debt up to their eyeballs and have no idea how else to actually save for the long term and any party that actually changed this would likely never get voted into power again, if they even continued to exist.

[throwaway894345]

What's stopping Canada from increasing its housing stock? Surely Canada has plenty of space for its 30M citizens, right? (Yes, I understand that much of the territory is uninhabitable, but even still...).

[pseudo0]

38 million, with an annual immigration target of over 400k, plus foreign students, temporary visas, etc. New construction simply isn't keeping up with demand. Politicians have tried to solve this from the supply side for decades, but many of the issues like zoning are in provincial and municipal jurisdiction, where the incentive is to keep prices high and homeowners happy.

So the federal government refuses to address the demand side of the equation (very high immigration rate) while the the provinces and municipalities block increases in supply. The natural result? Runaway price increases, and the rest of Canada's economy becoming uncompetitive because employees can't find a house within a 2 hour commute for under $1MM in the GTA.

[alfor]

Regulations... Most land is off limits. Were I live the land is ’protected’ for agricultural use even though it is marginal at best and most farms doesn’t use the land.

In my case it killed my agribusiness project because the amount of work, the delays and the risks where too much to bear.

We can no longer build what we used to build in the 60’s and 70’s because of the regulations in spite of the technology being much better.

[alex_sf]

There is plenty of housing for plenty of people in most parts of North America. The 'problem' is that what people _want_ is cheap housing in urban centers, a.k.a cool spots. Because that doesn't exist, we claim to have a housing shortage.

[vkou]

The fact that half of those 30M people have 80% of their wealth tied in keeping housing unaffordable.

Between them and the banks that own all of those 30 year mortgages, that's all the political pressure you need.

[Pet_Ant]

Sorry, but if we want to address climate change and protect the environment, then we need to do this without sprawling outwards.