I'm going to be more sympathetic for the developers which is that they likely spent a ton of money for the land already when prices were high and after expensive building costs they're struggling to not lose money.

If you guys are a stupid as us, your southern neighbors, whipsawing through the economy will mean that 1. this loophole closes and two more open so there will be future whipsawings 2. no wealthy people will be taxed, they will be given loans and handouts and 3. you will elect more dimwits from the same party whose shitty legislation caused the problems in the first place.

My hope is that this whipsaws through the economy and hurts so many people so badly that a) we learn to never let it happen again, and b) that it emboldens governments to finally tax the shit out of the rich.

I’m so glad some people realize this: we are past the point of wishing things just get slowly better. History has taught me that in this world, when people are so apathetic to important issues, things need to get so bad sometimes so everyone gets a wake up call.

a) covid has showed us people dont just learn, especially when theres a lot of propaganda around it

b) wont happen meaningfully while rich people still own the government

Luxury needs some heavy sneer quotes. They are all made of low quality materials and then they put a stainless steel fridge in there and some quartz counters and call it luxury.

Have they tried building average, affordable condos instead of luxury condos?

They don't want to, because that would mean less money. If they slap some cheap faux marble and an extra sink in the bathroom, they can charge tens of thousands of dollars more for the same space.

The rich will not accept making the same or less money for a year or so. They have to have more. A lot more.

None of that is luxury, it's overpriced garbage for morons who destroy every neighborhood they move into.

Condos need to be built for families, give me more three or four bedrooms in the city, and make it more affordable.

Condo developers can't build these affordable three or four bedrooms though, because on average these layouts are about 20% larger in size to their comparable European unit layout. This is all to due to building code, and something called "point access layout" vs "common corridor layout".

If we could get more families in the city buy making costs comparable in sq/ft to a single family home in the suburb we could make cities more enjoyable and give people a better sense of belonging, as opposed to just commuting in for a few hours.

That because they aren't primarily meant for people who buy them to live in, they're just suppose to be flipped after a few years by investors or rented out.

Half of BC's New Condos Apartments Are Investor Owned

In the US, and I'm guessing most everywhere else, developers are part of the problem. They buy properties that may currently have affordable housing on them and redevelop to more expensive units. They're also responsible for the disappearance of ownable housing - over there past decades, they've been buying houses that have come on the market and turned them into rentals, or torn them down and put in denser rental units. They're responsible for urban sprawl, turning farmland into suburbs.

Some of this is supply and demand, but don't discount marketing and encouraging growth in demand for suburb housing over more sustainable urban housing.

Finally, when articles like this talk about "developers," they don't mean the people who know how to build buildings: they mean the mega corporations who are purchasing property to own indefinitely, removing properties from ever being able to be purchased by families. Even in cases as in the article, "condos" are just fancy rentals. You "buy" it, but the developer (who is also usually the ultimate property manager) gets maintenance and other fees - they're for-profit HOAs.

"Developers" provide little benefit, and such is vastly outweighed by the damage they've caused in contributing to the current housing crisis: the inability of younger generations to afford to buy houses, or afford rent, and the increase in homelessness in western countries.

One of the larger Nordic cities - Stockholm, Helsinki, something like that - passed laws a few years ago to restrict property developers in order to preserve affordable housing and prevent gentrification.

Property developers are not our friends.

they are the ones that know how to do it.

Once upon a time, but most of their work (in Ontario) was put onto the Municipalities to make things cheaper, in exchange there were development charges put in place to offset some of the cost. Now they removed those but kept the municipalities doing the work. Developers serve no purpose anymore

Nah. We can hate both. They both deserve it.

I suspect developers are gonna stop developing.

That's what happened here in Australia and homes and condos (apartments) have gone from horrendously expensive to ridiculously horrendous expensive.

We don't build homes to house people either. Unlike say these guys

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/jan/10/the-social-housing-secret-how-vienna-became-the-worlds-most-livable-city

Even just helping the private sector; the provinces told the Federal Government they aren’t allowed to help

Isn't it inelastic (D changes at a less than proportional rate to price) or have I got it mixed up?