<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>pseudo0</author><text>38 million, with an annual immigration target of over 400k, plus foreign students, temporary visas, etc. New construction simply isn&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s economy becoming uncompetitive because employees can&amp;#x27;t find a house within a 2 hour commute for under $1MM in the GTA.</text><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway894345</author><text>What&amp;#x27;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...).</text></item><item><author>manbackharry</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d argue the main cause of this is the REALTORs&amp;#x2F;real estate boards&amp;#x2F;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&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item><item><author>bko</author><text>The question is why does something like blind bidding exist in real estate? It could exist in all sorts of places but doesn&amp;#x27;t. Imagine blind bidding when interviewing for a job. Write down the number you&amp;#x27;d be willing to do the job for. Someone came in with a lower number, please resubmit.&lt;p&gt;These weird market distortions in real estate have underlying causes. A lot of them are based off patchwork rules and regulations around real estate. Stuff like who you&amp;#x27;re allowed to sell to, how much you&amp;#x27;re taxed, the paperwork required etc. Putting more patch work on top of a system that&amp;#x27;s obviously broken will probably make things worse in the long run.</text></item><item><author>pards</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a homeowner in Toronto and I don&amp;#x27;t think this will help. They&amp;#x27;ve eliminated a small number of buyers from the market but have added other incentives like a first home buyers tax credit that will only fuel the fire - Australia tried this with tragic results.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt; working with provinces and territories to develop and implement a Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights and bring forward a national plan to end blind bidding.&lt;p&gt;Blind bidding is where multiple parties submit a sealed bid on a property. The realtor and seller review these bids behind close doors and then often request subsequent rounds of bids from the bidders *without telling them the current winning bid, or who&amp;#x27;s bid is winning*. Bidders end up out-bidding themselves.&lt;p&gt;IMHO blind bidding is an unethical practice that should be outlawed regardless of its impact on housing prices.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years</title><url>https://www.axios.com/canada-foreign-home-buyers-ban-589fdf10-844f-4160-afe0-e8452df92fa8.html</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>alex_sf</author><text>There is plenty of housing for plenty of people in most parts of North America.  The &amp;#x27;problem&amp;#x27; is that what people _want_ is cheap housing in urban centers, a.k.a cool spots.  Because that doesn&amp;#x27;t exist, we claim to have a housing shortage.</text><parent_chain><item><author>throwaway894345</author><text>What&amp;#x27;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...).</text></item><item><author>manbackharry</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d argue the main cause of this is the REALTORs&amp;#x2F;real estate boards&amp;#x2F;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&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item><item><author>bko</author><text>The question is why does something like blind bidding exist in real estate? It could exist in all sorts of places but doesn&amp;#x27;t. Imagine blind bidding when interviewing for a job. Write down the number you&amp;#x27;d be willing to do the job for. Someone came in with a lower number, please resubmit.&lt;p&gt;These weird market distortions in real estate have underlying causes. A lot of them are based off patchwork rules and regulations around real estate. Stuff like who you&amp;#x27;re allowed to sell to, how much you&amp;#x27;re taxed, the paperwork required etc. Putting more patch work on top of a system that&amp;#x27;s obviously broken will probably make things worse in the long run.</text></item><item><author>pards</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a homeowner in Toronto and I don&amp;#x27;t think this will help. They&amp;#x27;ve eliminated a small number of buyers from the market but have added other incentives like a first home buyers tax credit that will only fuel the fire - Australia tried this with tragic results.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt; working with provinces and territories to develop and implement a Home Buyers’ Bill of Rights and bring forward a national plan to end blind bidding.&lt;p&gt;Blind bidding is where multiple parties submit a sealed bid on a property. The realtor and seller review these bids behind close doors and then often request subsequent rounds of bids from the bidders *without telling them the current winning bid, or who&amp;#x27;s bid is winning*. Bidders end up out-bidding themselves.&lt;p&gt;IMHO blind bidding is an unethical practice that should be outlawed regardless of its impact on housing prices.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Canada bans foreign home buyers for two years</title><url>https://www.axios.com/canada-foreign-home-buyers-ban-589fdf10-844f-4160-afe0-e8452df92fa8.html</url></story>