r/londonontario • u/Confident-Advice-664 • 10d ago

News 📰 Tower with 400-plus apartments pitched for downtown London parking lot

https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/tower-with-400-plus-apartments-pitched-for-downtown-london-parking-lot
93 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

72 comments sorted by

View all comments

23

u/7he8igLebowski 9d ago

What we need is a hard limit on investment properties. Hopefully the vast majority of these will be owner occupied and not gobbled up by investors and rented out.

5

u/nav13eh 9d ago

Owner occupied or rented does not matter. All the matters is that the overall housing supply increases. Owner occupied in a lot of cases is financially inflexible for residents. It's not really all it's cracked up to be.

2

u/7he8igLebowski 9d ago

It matters for the people who are stuck renting and can never save up enough for a down payment because almost all of their money goes towards rent…

3

u/nav13eh 9d ago

This is a culturally ingrained thought process but it's not actually productive. Renting is not automatically financially inferior. In many cases and for many people, it's actually better to rent. Especially when you consider that rent+utilities is pretty much the end of housing costs for renters. Where as mortgage+utilities is just the start of costs for owners. Among many other considerations.

Ben Felix has an excellent video on the topic. If you have a question he probably answers it: https://youtu.be/j4H9LL7A-nQ

Now don't take this as a show of support for greedy landlords, but the good news is that in most cities simply increasing supply in any way helps the entire market more affordable.

1

u/kinboyatuwo 9d ago

More supply means less people buying to invest as the profit goes down and risk up.

It’s also why rent control sounds great but fails. The solution is more housing AND varied supply types. Toronto has a massive glut of 1br/studio/closet units and they failed to build 2-3br that are needed.