Most new real estate development are rentals. That's the direction the country is headed... into a renter society.
When government officials talk about affordable housing, they're no longer talking about houses that are affordable to buy. They're talking about affordable rentals. The housing minister's doublespeak one month ago, made this very clear.
The dog crate condos that aren't selling right now are what homes in major Canadian cities are going to look like in the future. They're hardly livable by Canadian standards today, but those standards are going to shift as the years go by.
What does "banning corporations from owning residential homes" mean and how does it work?
All the apartment buildings in the city are owned by corporations. They're residential [shoebox] homes, for the people living in them. If you're going to tell citizens that a handful of corporations are allowed to monopolize ownership of rentals while ordinary citizens cannot own real estate for the purpose of being a landlord, you're not going to get far.
Ban them from owning single family dwellings, townhouses, individual condos, trailers in parks. Large apartment buildings are designed to be owned by corporations. But private equity groups have been buying up the former, and either hiking rents, or in some cases allowing them to sit empty to further lower prices on a street, buy them up by paying cash and then rent sell at a profit. Or to gentrify years later but in the meantime allow the area to slowly die.
Notice I said individuals can own more homes, up to two more, for investment purposes. That does allow people to buy property for that, also for later downsizing, help out family etc, while preventing mass buying and ownership.
It's not difficult to set up rules to reflect this.
