Carney's condo bailout, the truth and the fiction...
The bailout is outrageous, but so are some of the false claims being made about the plan.
I always tell politicians and fellow journalists, stick to the facts, there is enough to be upset about.
Mark Carney’s condo bailout is a very bad deal in my view. I’m hardly alone in that, but the fact is, some people are making false claims.
Yes, Carney plans to buy 2,200 condos in Vancouver’s slumping market, but as I explain in my column for the Toronto Sun and in the video below, the price tag isn’t $3.2 billion. That’s what the government will spend on issues such as bringing down development charges in British Columbia.
That said, we don’t know what the price tag is for the condo bailout and that is a problem.
In the end, it might be as bad the $3.2 billion, but the simple fact is, we don’t know.
I do have to ask though, why is the economic genius, the business magnate, the central banker, deciding that markets don’t work and he has to bail out developers in B.C.
The way the housing market works is that when supply is tight and demand is high, prices go up. Right now demand is soft and supply is plentiful, and now the government is going to buy the condos to turn them into affordable housing spaces.
Start questioning whether Mark Carney actually believes in markets.
Lets stick to facts.THE GOVT IS SPENDING $3.5BILLIon to bail out BC condos;it doesnt matter whether part goes to developers and part to subsidize developers;the fact is our tax dollars are spent foolishly instead of letting the market forces rectify the oversupply of condos in a corrupt Vancouver market where demand has dried up
Pro tip for Mark: if nobody will buy the inventory, the problem isn't a lack of government money. It's the price.
Even a toddler eventually figures out that when nobody wants the cookie, you lower the price of the cookie.
This isn't a Nobel Prize-level insight. It's the conclusion every garage-sale owner reaches by noon.
I can't wait to hear from the resident elbows up Carney disciple(s).
Few things are more entertaining than watching people contort themselves into human pretzels defending a policy that boils down to: "If buyers won't pay that price, taxpayers should."
And that ignores the real reason he did it-to bail out his BFFs but I digress.