3 dead, 2 injured after shooting at a rented Airbnb in a downtown Toronto CONDO building – February 1, 2019,
Canada has some interesting laws on the books in which Canadians have become accustomed, one of the main laws that exist in Canada that is no longer up for debate is our Gun Control laws. Recently Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has allowed a flood of immigrants to flow into Canada and most of these immigrants are making Toronto their home, after all, Toronto is one of Canada’s most recognized cities.
This has, of course, led to a housing shortage that the mainstream news tries to avoid talking extensively about because to get into the specifics of Toronto’s housing shortage is to comprehend the failed government policies that are putting illegal and newly arrived immigrants ahead of Canada’s existing population. Now, it should be noted if most of the Condos in Toronto were Rental Apartment buildings, Toronto wouldn’t have a housing shortage nor would Toronto have a problem housing all of these newly arrived immigrants.
Now, because of these housing-related problems, rookie-investors and other legal entities who shouldn’t be in the housing market are in the housing market and these real estate investors are doing whatever necessary to pay their mortgage and maintenance bills.
Now, typically in a rental apartment building shootings will happen from time to time, but the landlord is incentivized to prevent criminal activities in their rental apartment building by doing a variety of different things, namely by knowing who lives in a particular apartment unit so in the event of shooting, the landlord will already know who is supposed to be there. Secondly, usually, if there’s a Party, the landlord is called and then the police are called
You see when there’s an abundance of apartment buildings and places to rent, you’ll typically know the good areas to live from the bad, which will be reflected in the price of the rental unit. Not anymore, now, some of the worst apartment buildings in Toronto will rent for $1300 for a bachelor apartment, the reason for this is that there’s a lack of supply. Now, one of the reasons for this lack of supply is because a lot of Condos are being built where rental housing should be and because of existing rental control laws, most real estate investors do whatever they can to avoid the Rental Control regulation, enter in Airbnb.
Is Airbnb to be blamed or could it be the BoC, The CMHC and Rental Controls?
Now, if there was a shooting, most likely a target shooting in Airbnb chances are that there were some locals attending this gathering and it wasn’t an Airbnb for out of towners. Airbnb is flourishing in Toronto as I’ve stated plenty of times because of two Crown Corporations. The Bank of Canada and the Mortgage insurer known as the CMHC. During the Stephen Harper era, the Canadian economy was getting so good that the Canadian dollar was reaching parity with the U.S dollar, then, of course, the then Prime Minister Stephen Harper didn’t want to lose his Political Grip on Eastern Canada(who demand a lower loonie), he and Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz decided to allow the Canadian dollar to fall unnecessarily(currency manipulation).
This, of course, proved to be the fatal blow that sealed the Canadian economies fate and housing prices all over Canada began to inflate, as asset prices began to inflate, the purchasing power of Canadians began to deflate because it’s important to remember that Capitalism isn’t fueling this housing market, this is a government-subsidized, socialist housing market we have in Canada.
Long story short, there is more of an incentive for housing developers to build Condos over high rise apartments and therefore that’s what the housing developers did and that’s the main reason why there are so many EMPTY condos in Toronto. Buy hold, Airbnb and/or flip is typically the thinking behind many of these real estate investors, also there are of course people who rent their condos to people they know and then there are people who have no social circle and instead use APPs like Airbnb to pay their mortgage and strata fees.
Now, how this relates to the shooting is that sometimes there are entire floors in Condos that are 30% occupied, meaning that even if there’s a party going on in a unit a large percentage of occupiers might not even know there’s a party or a large gathering going on. Plus even if there is a party going on, if there’s no Security guard on duty and it’s a Friday night, who are you going to call? The police? Now, if you own a property in order to keep the value of your property high, you don’t want there to be multiple instances of police being called to your Condo.
You’ll notice if you read the CBC article below, it’s almost as if the writer intentionally omitted using the actual address of the shooting. Now, had it been a rental, the entire apartment address would have been exposed to the public.
The shooting happened on an upper floor of a condo on Queens Wharf Road, near Bathurst Street and Fort York Boulevard. 3 dead, 2 injured after shooting at Airbnb in downtown Toronto – CBC
Even, CP24 generalized the story adding in the area of “85 Queens Wharf Rd”, now, the police report says “Police confirmed that the incident started inside a 32nd-floor unit that was being rented through Airbnb.” This basically gives you an idea of what I’m talking about in regards to empty condo units.
Police: 3 dead, 2 others injured after shooting inside downtown condo | cp24.com
Why this is problematic in the future is what happens when real estate prices in Canada remain either flat or out of reach for investors, real estate investors and occupiers of housing and condominiums think very differently. An investor will sell once he realizes that 5+ years have passed and he’s not profiting, in the event the Canadian housing market becomes a buyers market, which I see as unlikely for the next decade, that’s a crash and in the event, the housing market in Canada remains a sellers market, that equates to stagnation.
Stagnation is the worst-case scenario for the Canadian housing market because what will happen is one day it will become the norm for people to be defaulting on mortgages. While this is happening of course either there will be fewer high paying jobs or they’ll be a different type of high paying job. Canada is evolving into a service sector, a high-tech economy. This doesn’t bode well for the lower-skilled worker, minimum wages are also a stimulus for the people who are worth a lot more than minimum wage.
Let’s say a skilled worker makes $30 per hour, but the minimum wage one day is $25 an hour, do you not think the more skilled worker won’t demand a pay hike? Government intervention into the economy eventually reaches a boiling point and it will be interesting to see the economic future of Canada because I always make sure I keep my passport handy. Canada is dominated by socialists and socialists tend to think economics is simple and not worth debating. The political leaders will fix economic problems socialists will argue amongst themselves.
Making matters worse is that Canadians, for the most part, are disarmed, in New York City former mayor Rudy Giuliani managed to get tough on crime and it worked, but the problem is it worked while the economics of New York didn’t change that much.
This is why there’s an exodus out of New York, the cost of living is too high, now, the difference between New York City and Toronto is that New York has a lot of millionaires and billionaires who currently reside there. Toronto, not so much, I think Canada has 53 billionaires total, New York State has about 112 billionaires all by itself. Now before you say that well Canada only has 38 million people, well my dear reader New York has only 8.6 million people.
You see people don’t know their numbers, a large portion of Canadians don’t understand how socialist this country already is, another example there 93 billionaires in Hong Kong, Hong Kong as less than 8 million people around 27 billionaires live in Toronto and by the way, when you do the research a large portion of Canadians who are billionaires don’t reside in Canada.
The point I’m trying to make is you can’t tax the rich if the rich don’t live here! In America at least Bernie Sanders can say the rich will pay and idiots will believe him, in Canada, that narrative is disappearing rapidly.
People don’t look at millionaires the same anymore if my house will sell at a million dollars, even I can barely pay my mortgage, on paper I’m a millionaire!
The economics of Canada are already heavily socialized and our standard of living is decreasing, sure we can do more socialism in Canada, but we risk becoming even less competitive globally and when this happens the brain drain that already exists in Canada might start to accelerate, being that living in Canada is like living in a Nanny State, in which the upper-middle class can’t even protect themselves because of silly gun control laws, if crime begins to increase and I haven’t even brought up Canada’s justice system, Government workers in Canada may soon be faced with unforeseen challenges, that a bloated government can’t fix!
Interesting times ahead!