Last week I joined Amanda Lang on BNN Bloomberg to talk about how we make housing more accessible for the next generation of Canadians.
The core point I made is simple:
If governments want more homes owned by Canadian families, they have to make it harder and less lucrative to treat houses as investment properties. There are no shortcuts around that.
That view puts me at odds with much of the housing economics community. The dominant argument is that zoning, red tape, and supply restrictions are the real problem. Fix those, and affordability takes care of itself.
But that theory ignores how housing actually works in the real world.
Even if every zoning rule vanished tomorrow, you can’t triple homebuilding overnight. Construction is constrained by labour, infrastructure, financing, and time. Those frictions don’t disappear just because policy changes.
Capital, on the other hand, is frictionless. It moves instantly.
Billions of dollars can flow into housing long before the construction sector can meaningfully expand. That’s why young families aren’t really just competing with each other. They’re competing with investment capital, and potentially global capital again if the foreign buyer ban is lifted in 2027.
There’s a real-world example of how this plays out. About a decade ago, the UK government introduced policies that made it harder to buy and less profitable to own residential investment properties. Investor demand fell, and over the following years a larger share of homes went to first-time buyers. That shift didn’t require a construction miracle. It came from changing the incentives.
And while investor demand is quieter today, greed isn’t gone. Homes, and especially the land beneath them, will remain highly coveted assets in the years ahead.
The choices policymakers make now will shape whether the next decade belongs to families who want to live in their homes or investors who want to own them.
You can find the full interview in the link below:
Are we creating a generation of renters? – BNN Bloomberg
John Pasalis is President of Realosophy Realty. A specialist in real estate data analysis, John’s research focuses on unlocking micro trends in the Greater Toronto Area real estate market. His research has been utilized by the Bank of Canada, the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Have questions about your own moves in the Toronto area as a buyer, seller, investor or renter? Book a no-obligation consult with John and his team at a Realosophy here: https://www.movesmartly.com/meetjohn
January 16, 2026
Market |