With all due respect, this issue is more a sideshow hyped by an industry disliking the change (Realtors) than anything else. If what Mr. Moffat is implying is that one policy decision is the silver bullet the government will use to address a systemic challenge... well that right there it what we should be focusing on.
Affordable rent vs affordable housing, inventory of both rent units and houses, financial supports and borrowing limits, cost structure of land and inputs, and how the real estate system works all are part of the ecosystem and every side of this must be evaluated and transformed.
We are obsessed with home ownership as also a means of developing personal wealth over time. Maybe culturally we cannot change that, but it is a root cause in North America of quite a bit of headaches.
Bidding transparently clearly helps the seller in a hot market and the buyer in a cooler market but in any event it does allow for people not to second-guess their bid: very much like eBay or an auction, you can see the price level and you can choose to keep bidding or to stop. And if there is one bidder and there is a lowball offer, well the owner does not have to agree to that price.
Lastly, peer-reviewed studies are great but we also deserve to know who funded those studies and how big they were. Better than peer-reviewed stuff are the meta-analysis of reams of data, and we need to control based on policies. For example in the USA you can get a tax credit for the interest you pay on a mortgage... well that makes it very different than here.
Anyway, I hope we can have here a more robust policy discussion that is not just a headline grabber. My apologies for the negative tone of this comment. You can't like them all.
We should just bite the bullet and introduce Australian style home auctions, right on the front lawn of the house on a Saturday morning with half the neighborhood watching. You want transparency, hard to beat that.
Of course our confrontation avoidance obsessed culture would need to start that slowly.
With all due respect, this issue is more a sideshow hyped by an industry disliking the change (Realtors) than anything else. If what Mr. Moffat is implying is that one policy decision is the silver bullet the government will use to address a systemic challenge... well that right there it what we should be focusing on.
Affordable rent vs affordable housing, inventory of both rent units and houses, financial supports and borrowing limits, cost structure of land and inputs, and how the real estate system works all are part of the ecosystem and every side of this must be evaluated and transformed.
We are obsessed with home ownership as also a means of developing personal wealth over time. Maybe culturally we cannot change that, but it is a root cause in North America of quite a bit of headaches.
Bidding transparently clearly helps the seller in a hot market and the buyer in a cooler market but in any event it does allow for people not to second-guess their bid: very much like eBay or an auction, you can see the price level and you can choose to keep bidding or to stop. And if there is one bidder and there is a lowball offer, well the owner does not have to agree to that price.
Lastly, peer-reviewed studies are great but we also deserve to know who funded those studies and how big they were. Better than peer-reviewed stuff are the meta-analysis of reams of data, and we need to control based on policies. For example in the USA you can get a tax credit for the interest you pay on a mortgage... well that makes it very different than here.
Anyway, I hope we can have here a more robust policy discussion that is not just a headline grabber. My apologies for the negative tone of this comment. You can't like them all.
We should just bite the bullet and introduce Australian style home auctions, right on the front lawn of the house on a Saturday morning with half the neighborhood watching. You want transparency, hard to beat that.
Of course our confrontation avoidance obsessed culture would need to start that slowly.