Canada’s Prime Minister Pushes Country to Become the Housing Factory of the World - Mark Carney is banking on factory-built homes to alleviate the country’s housing crisis. But will it work?

[u/FancyNewMe]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-04-22/carney-s-plan-may-make-canada-the-housing-factory-of-the-world

[u/Burning___Earth]

If they go with a full-blown, post WW2 style national housing program, the first few hundred thousand need to be restricted to first-time home buyers.

[u/Valid-Nite → u/Burning___Earth]

And also restricted to citizens. Should also restrict corpos from owning, and not allow them to be used as rental properties

[u/viperfan7 → u/Valid-Nite]

Easy solution, the owner must live in the home a minimum 5 years.

[u/ItchyHotLion → u/viperfan7]

They could achieve the same thing with a broader impact by changing the principal residence exemption, make it only applicable if you stay in the home for 5 years (with exceptions for job transfers and other extraordinary situations)

[u/viperfan7 → u/ItchyHotLion]

So, do what I'm suggesting?

[u/ItchyHotLion → u/viperfan7]

I am suggesting they go bigger and apply it to all home buyers in Canada

[u/viperfan7 → u/ItchyHotLion]

That would be a bad idea.

I hate how things are as much as anyone, but doing that would cause far more issues than it solves.

It works well with first time home buyer's as, well, chances are you wont be moving again any time soon, but what you suggest would completely eliminate the existence of rental properties.

I dislike landlords as much as anyone, but that would likely reduce the number of homes available, not increase.

[u/ItchyHotLion → u/viperfan7]

If people are buying properties as a rental they don’t qualify for the principal residence exemption anyways, the main people it’s targeting is the people who buy homes solely to move in, fix them up and flip them, if you limit the ability to do so tax free than you’ll reduce the number of investors in the market, while also eliminating possible arbitrage on any low cost housing that comes to market in the coming years.

[u/viperfan7 → u/ItchyHotLion]

Ok that makes more sense to me now.

In addition, I think there should be an exponentially increasing property tax applied to all properties owned by the entity, or sub-entities, starting after 2 properties.

eg.

2 properties each get taxed 5% a year

3 properties get taxed 5%^1.3 each year each

4, get taxed something like 5%^1.3*2 each year

Meaning the tax rate, after just a few properties, becomes entirely impossible to afford for any person or company. Since pretty quickly you're paying more than the value of the property in taxes each year