Yes or No: The Upcoming Federal Elections Will Improve Housing Affordability

Badly needed—that’s how experts define the housing platforms that are surfacing on the coming elections, and every Canadian voter must expect a resounding message from major federal parties during the election campaign—particularly on how housing will become more affordable.

Why the high cost you may ask

Consider back a decade ago, building cost for a single-family home would be around $100/square foot, and compare that with today’s similar build which costs roughly $325-$400/square foot. That is a jump in price of more than 300% in just a couple of years.

Add to that the wage inflation caused by the shortage of quality manpower to build a home. Let’s take for example an electrician who charged $50/hour way back a couple of years ago, and compare that with an electrician’s current rate at $100/hour. These additional costs add up to the affordability or non-affordability of a home.

Platforms and federal elections

Those are the affordability struggles to buy a house. Indeed, we all deserve to have a home. After all, it’s one of the basic needs, and for it to incur affordability issues is one of the great debates in government policy and political platforms. But what do we know about these housing platforms so far? And, the bigger question is, with all these housing platforms, how sure are we that the upcoming federal election will improve housing affordability?
We’ve been through several elections, with several policies made on housing affordability, still things are a lot less bright. Taking a quick look at the housing platforms made by the different parties—Canadians deserve affordable place to live in, so they plan to build more affordable houses, ban foreign investors, create seven to 10 and up to 30 year mortgages, ensure savings for first time home buyers, increase tax payable on flipped properties, et cetera. It’s quite interesting to see when and how will all these be implemented.

You see, governments cannot just do this or that and implement this or that, only to lose the balance between housing affordability and other governmental real estate friendly mandates (such as maintaining low interest rates, COVID funding, setting millions of immigrants, and so on).

House pricing will continue to rise, and people will still continue to buy houses no matter what. But perhaps there might be some new programs that will help with housing affordability. Let’s wait and see.