Ep. 44 - New Government, Same Market: The Post-Election Real Estate Outlook

In this episode of The Last Honest Realtor, host David Fleming tackles the aftermath of Canada’s 2025 federal election—and why, despite all the promises, Toronto’s housing market remains stuck in the same cycle of gridlock, speculation, and political soundbites.

What begins with a sharp story about development roadblocks turns into a no-holds-barred analysis of the post-election housing landscape. David breaks down why new legislation, tax promises, and party platforms won’t deliver affordability—and how politicians continue to mislead voters about what’s really possible in Toronto real estate.

In This Episode:

• Why the election outcome won’t change market fundamentals
• How GST and HST rebate promises misrepresent real buyer impacts
• Why political gridlock at the municipal level continues to block real solutions
• How developers, not governments, are dictating the pace of new housing
• Why every party’s housing plan was more about votes than viable policy

Timestamps:
00:00 – The Election Is Over. What Happens Now?
04:00 – The False Promise of GST and HST Housing Rebates
10:00 – Why Politicians Can’t (and Won’t) Deliver Affordable Housing
18:00 – Municipal Gridlock: The Real Barrier to New Supply
25:00 – Developers Press Pause, Governments Point Fingers
33:00 – Soundbites vs. Reality: The Future of Toronto’s Housing Market

Also in This Episode:

• David shares a real-world example of political interference in housing development
• A critical look at “Build Canada Homes” and why government-built housing is a flawed idea
• Why Toronto real estate is too big to fail—and what that means for buyers and sellers moving forward

Subscribe to The Last Honest Realtor on YouTube or your preferred podcast app. Drop a comment if you’re fed up with political promises that never materialize—or if you just want straight answers about what’s really happening in the market.

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Election Is Over. What Happens Now?
• 4:00 The False Promise of GST and HST Housing Rebates
• 10:00 Why Politicians Can’t (and Won’t) Deliver Affordable Housing
• 18:00 Municipal Gridlock: The Real Barrier to New Supply
• 25:00 Developers Press Pause, Governments Point Fingers
• 33:00 Soundbites vs. Reality: The Future of Toronto’s Housing Market

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

The election is over and so too is the real estate market decline in Toronto. Maybe, or perhaps not at all. Hello and welcome back to the Last Honest Realtor podcast. I'm your host, David Fleming. Thank you so much for joining me here today, the first podcast post-election, where, of course, we're going to delve into the election promises that were made, a lot of the legislation that has been enacted or is expected to be enacted, and what this means for you. Now, before I jump into this, I want to tell you a very quick story. This story seemingly will have nothing to do with a federal election, but it is a microcosm of the intersection of politics and real estate. Now, let's say that there's a very big developer, and let's say that they own property in the Golden Horseshoe. As you can tell, I'm trying to protect the people involved here. Now, let's say, as a fact, the properties that they own are zoned as of right for fourplexes. As of right, as you would think, means that you don't need to do anything. You don't need to change any zoning. They are as of right. This is what you may do. Now, the local city councilor has told the developer privately, we would really prefer if you just built single-family dwellings here. Now, whether or not the developer was going to build fourplexes doesn't matter. But say they wanted to build towns. Say they wanted to build semis. Why is the city councilor telling them, We would prefer for you to build singles because that's what the constituents want. And here is the problem with the intersection of real estate and politics. And I have long stated that politics is not about serving the best interests of the people. It is about staying in power. That is the point. Because if a politician is no longer a politician in office, they're unemployed. So in this particular case, The as of right land, you can build four units on there. The constituents said, we don't want four plexes. They want single family dwellings. The developer said, we have the right to do this. And the local city councilor said, you absolutely do, but we will fight you every step of the way, and we will make this process miserable. Now, why would a city councilor do that? Well, it's about self-preservation. That's my cynical side, saying that that's what politics is about. And here you see a situation where, and this city councillor said, publicly, I will support it. Privately, I will fight it. Yeah, what did Voltaire say? about politicians. You can Google that on your own time. So that story, folks, is a true one. It is just simply to lead us into the conversation, which, as you can tell, I might have a little bit of a cynical viewpoint. What people say publicly and what happens privately or what you say before or during an election and what happens afterwards does not always line up perfectly. Now, the Liberals have won again. They have yet another term. What does this mean for real estate in this country and more specifically in Toronto? Let's have a basic recap just to say that we did. The Liberal Party has secured$100 It is a minority. It is 17 shy of a majority. Conservative leader Pierre Polyev lost his own seat in Carleton, marking a very big setback for the party. And I will say that as far as politics goes, it is dirty. Having 89 independents run in Pierre's riding, that was absolutely brilliant strategy. Exceptionally dirty. But hey, the dirtiest usually wins. Now, the election was influenced, as we know, by President Donald Trump's aggressive trade policies, annexation threats, which galvanized Canadian voters and bolstered liberal support. But I do want to make one point here. And no, this isn't a political podcast, but if you did not read this article in the National Post, this is fascinating. Tristan Hopper, first reading, if this had been any other election, Polyev would have been prime minister. Folks, listen to this. This is fascinating. Conservative leader Pierre Polyev captured 41.4% of the vote. This has never been equaled by any of the seven prior elections contested since the party's 2003 founding. Now, what does this mean? This 41.4% vote is higher than the 39.6% that Stephen Harper needed to win a majority in 2011. More importantly, this 41.4% vote that the Conservatives just gained in 2025 is higher than anything ever won. by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Trudeau's only majority win in 2015 was delivered with just 39.5% of the vote. Now, if this doesn't make sense to you, well, there's something missing. The NDP. So the NDP had their absolute worst showing. The article says the NDP's wholesale collapse saw the progressive vote consolidate around the Liberals unlike any time since the 1950s, ensuring the Conservative Party at the top of its game was not only denied power, but isn't likely to increase its caucus size more than a dozen seats. If Polyev had brought a vote total of 41.4% to any other federal election in the last 45 years, he would be prime minister. Polyev's Conservatives received 3.2 million votes in Ontario, which is 1 million higher than the 2.2 million ballots that Doug Ford wrote to a majority in the provincial election. So essentially it is this. The problem for the Tories is that the greatest electoral performance in their history coincided with the worst-ever performance by the NDP in their party's history. In conclusion, And this is from the article. Although multiple pundits noted the Conservatives had lost a 20-point polling lead that was recently as December, their performance on Monday was on par with what had been projected. It's just that the Liberal opposition surged 30 points in the interim. That is the true story of what just happened in this election. And most of the story is that the Conservatives collapsed, Pierre dropped the ball. No, what happened was that the Orange team... became completely irrelevant, which if I'm going to be honest, I've always kind of thought they were. I don't want to be like the United States. They have a two party system and it has made them so incredibly divisive. But here we are in Canada where basically orange went red and that made all the difference. Now I can tell you this, and I debated whether to have this conversation with you, the viewer, knowing that half the country voted for the liberals. I don't want to alienate the viewers and say, listen, I voted conservative. I have always thought I'm a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. I still maintain that. I did not enjoy the last 10 years from an economic standpoint. I did not think the government did a good job. But I'm Canadian. I have a maple leaf tattooed on my back. I am eager to move forward. No, I don't love Mark Carney. No, I don't love the liberals. But I want to know what is in store for this country. Let's move forward. That was such a divisive election. And... To be honest, I'm still not happy about it. I do not like the party that is in power, but I am ready to move forward and I hope everybody else in this country is as well. So having said that, guys, one of the things I want to talk about is a CBC article that was about removing GST off of new home sales. And so I can tell you that... having just said, you know, open publicly and not everyone wants to opine about politics. No, I don't love the party in power. I think that over the last few years, there were so many mistakes made just from an economic standpoint by that government that when we see Mark Carney come in and everybody's touting his business acumen, everyone's talking about, you know, he was the governor of the Bank of England. And of course, Liz Truss doesn't like him, but I mean, she had the shortest tenure in the history of anybody in England. So what we want to know is, What, among other things, that has already been discussed or announced by Justin Trudeau is Mark Carney going to do? And so, again, not to make this too political, and part of the reason why I'm really not enthused by the Liberal Party in general over the last 10 years is because—and I know all politicians lie. That's just what they do. Pauliev is no different, even though he had my support. Mark Carney supported— all the climate change initiatives that have now been walked back. Mark Carney supported the increase in capital gains tax, which has now been walked back. So when you have a party and you have Krista Friedland and you have Mark Carney, who both say, here are our bright ideas, and then once they get into a political race, they walk them all back, it's very, very difficult to trust or listen to all of the things that have been said up to this point. And again, as I said, all politicians lie. It is part of what they do. But this article in the CBC I found very interesting. Now, this goes to before the election. I wrote a this in my blog and it's a very simple conversation which I want to have today just as an example of how one small idea can have a monumental impact on the real estate market. Now this was in the CBC and it was called removing GST off of new home sales. So Mark Carney and Pierre Polyev both promised to eliminate the 5% GST off the purchase of some new homes, but the promises differ. The liberal proposal is limited to homes under a million and for first-time buyers only. The conservative proposal would cover a wider range of purchases, all new homes under 1.3 million, regardless of the buyer. So again, elections are all about promising. I have often maintained that you are basically buying people's votes. And I'll go off on a tangent here, because why not? There's this school of thought that free... means that you don't pay for it. Free is not a real thing. If you take a dollar of revenue and put it up against a dollar of expenditures, okay, we have an equilibrium. Now, if you have a party that says, we're going to have free dental and free daycare and free this and free that, it's not actually free. You have to pay for it somehow, either through a big budget deficit or more taxation. And so when you have political parties that are saying everything's going to be free, I just say, guys, come on, what are we really doing here? So when I look at these proposals, And I say that Pierre is saying all new homes priced under$1.3 million regardless of the buyer will be exempt from the GST. And Mark Carney is saying, no, it's only going to be first-time buyers. It's only going to be under$1 million. The first thing I think of is, what are you going to do to replace that revenue? So take something as simple as Doug Ford saying, hey, I'm going to eliminate the little sticker that you pay for, the vehicle registration, and it's going to put$250 into your pocket. Okay, great. Where are you going to get that$250 from? It's that simple. And that's what people don't realize. When a government says, hey, today we're announcing a$1 billion Pharmacare plan. That's great. Where are you getting the money from? That's what politicians never really explain. So we can talk about the budget deficit in the United States and that everything Donald Trump is doing is a bit of a look here while I do this thing over here. They have, what, a$20 trillion deficit. Here in Canada, much was made of this liberal government policy basically taking us from a 40 billion deficit and pushing us towards a 60 billion deficit when the original promise was to balance it. It's worth noting that neither Carney or Polyev said they were going to balance this budget at any time. So back to this story here. There are questions about these proposals and what they would do to make the housing market more affordable. Now, I have long maintained that there is very little that the federal government can do or the provincial or the municipal to make housing more affordable. And when we have written on Toronto Realty Blog in the past about the ridiculous amount of taxes that are buried into the price of new construction, I continue to make that point that, hey, if you eliminate it all, you've got to make it up somewhere. So if the average million dollar property would cost$750,000, if not for all the collective taxes, if you To eliminate those taxes, well now you have to eliminate, I don't know, snow shoveling or crossing guards or what, raise taxes. It's a zero sum game. You have to take a dollar from Peter to pay Paul. That's how it works unless you want to run a ridiculous budget deficit. So as this article continues, and I'm going to read this here. GST is not charged on resale home purchases, and resale accounts for three quarters of the residential real estate market Toronto, and this is based on TREB data. Now, what I would say is that historically correct, three quarters of sales are resale, and one quarter would be pre-construction where you have this GST, HST. But if you look at the stats over the last 18 months, and we've written about this a lot on Toronto Realty Blog, pre-construction sales have halted. They're down 80%, 90%, 99%. So as both of these politicians are making this promise, I'm going to make housing more affordable. I'm going to eliminate the GST. We have to look at this and say, okay, but if a tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound? If pre-construction is down 90%, then who are you really helping? Not only that, if you're only doing it for first-time buyers, then, well... What if on the other side of it, it's for all buyers? Are we talking about investors? Because who buys? pre-construction. And I'm going to come back to that because the people interviewed in this do as well. Now, Steve Pomeroy, a professor at the Canadian Housing Evidence Collaborative at McMaster, where I went, says the GST cuts will help stimulate some new home construction, but says that the liberal and conservative claims the move would save new home buyers$50,000 or$65,000 off their purchases are not accurate. He says, quote, it's a good 10-second political soundbite. The reality is it's not going to have that big an effect, which I, of course, agree with. He says that's because developers build the sales tax into the market price of a new home. He says you negotiate with the builder for a price and let's say you agree to$700,000 which would be a relatively modest condo in Toronto. You don't actually add the tax on top of that. It's absorbed into the price because that's the price you've negotiated. Now I wrote on my blog last week that if you take a million dollar property and HST is buried in and it would be$885,000 without it. On the flip side if you posted something for$885,000 and then you walked up to the proverbial cash register and said, I'm going to pay 13% and now it's a million dollars, I think that would drastically affect sales. We can all walk up and buy a Gatorade for$1.99 and then pay$2.26 or whatever it is, 13% of that. Sorry, that's actually a lot more. But I was quoting the blog that I wrote the other day when I said you take something that's a dollar and now it's$1.13, okay? That's fine. But when you do it on a million dollars, that's really expensive. heavy. Now, that is why developers have always buried HST in the price. Now, John Pasalis, as we know from Realosophy, has said, how do we make it more affordable for the next generation to own? He says, I tend to think a policy that gives a tax benefit to first-time buyers, younger families, rather than people who are using homes as an investment, is a way to get that down the road. The Liberals, the Conservatives, the NDP have all set up targets upping the pace of new home construction in Canada, which only totaled 245,000 last year. Now, the Liberal Party doubled the current pace of construction to 500,000 new homes per year in a decade. The Conservative Party, a 15% increase in the number of new homes built each year, which would double the current pace in five years. The NDP, 3 million homes built over the next five years. This is all absolute nonsense. Don't you just picture Austin Powers, 1 billion homes. No offense, okay? Do you think Jagmeet Singh has any plan on how to build 3 million homes over the next five years? These guys are basically just playing poker and saying, I'll raise you, I raise you. There's no plan. And if you were to boil it down to how many homes has to be built per minute, It's ludicrous. So back to this idea of the HST and connect all the dots here because as I'm explaining this, I'm having so many thoughts and trying to veer off with different examples. But Mr. Pasalis and Mr. Pomeroy are absolutely positively correct. Here's how this looks. First, who primarily buys pre-construction? Investors. So if you're going to eliminate the GST on pre-construction, you are helping investors. Now, Pre-construction is down 90%. It won't always be like that. But right now, if you're saying we're going to make housing more affordable by eliminating GST portion of HST on new construction, how many people are you really helping? So you put this all together, and then you say, well, is it first-time buyers or is it all buyers? And you take what John Pisalis said, and it makes perfect sense. If you actually want to help the next generation, then you've got to do more than just give a soundbite. And that is exactly what Carney and Polyev did. I don't know if they put a lot of thought into that. I don't know what their advisors were telling them, but the HST portion on new construction is not going to move the needle. Now, if this was in 2022, when the market was ripping, yes, back then, one quarter of all sales were in fact pre-construction. Okay, so you're helping one quarter of all home buyers. But most of them are investors. So I wrote on my blog last week that if you really want to help the next generation, you want to help first time buyers, look at the ridiculous amount of land transfer tax that people pay. And I use the example on my blog. If you're buying for$1.2 million in Toronto, which is about an average property, you're paying$40,000 in land transfer tax to the municipality and to the province. Now, if you were to buy a property and there's HST buried into it, you're amortizing that. You don't know the difference. But when you're paying$40,000 in land transfer tax, that forms... money up front. You're taking that from your down payment and that is in part what makes it so much less affordable. So as I wrote on my blog throughout last year, there was a report that said 35.6% of the price of a new piece of real estate is made up of taxes. We have owe so many taxes. I mentioned the land transfer tax. That is provincial and that is municipal. We have development levies and charges and fees like crazy through the municipalities. And while someone roasted me on my blog, I wouldn't say roasted because I don't care, some random blog reader in their mother's basement said something about, of course developers should be paying for this. They're building the infrastructure. They're using the roads. Of course they should pay for it. What this person is missing is what I always say. Look past, look, you know, play chess, not checkers. The developers paying for it means that the buyer pays for it. They just pass the cost along. Unless, as this person would describe, I don't know, the government just takes control of everything, which will probably be the case in 15 years after another three terms of a liberal government. We will all work for the government. That is probably where this country's headed. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. A little. Sort of. Maybe. But point is, this gentleman that posted on the blog saying, hey, developers should pay for it. Of course they should. It is passed along to the buyer. Look one step further. And that is what I am saying when you consider what Carney and Polyev are talking about, reducing the HST, GST portion of that And in the end of the day, you're just helping speculators because that is who buys pre-construction. So with every promise comes a great soundbite. And from there, we've got to take the next step and look. And as this article continues, and I'm sorry to just roast this, but it's so insane. These promises of building all these houses, the government's not in the business of building houses. And Carney went on and he talked about, we need to get building homes again. And I was downtown on the weekend with my family and stuck on a pole was some... website about how we need to build more not-for-profit and more co-ops and it should be like 1950. A lot's changed since 1950. And you can't just sort of expect the government to just start doing what they did 80 years ago again, post-World War II. And yet that is what a lot of what Carney was promising sounded like to me. So... Continue with this article. To get there, being all these homes built, each party proposes various methods to persuade municipalities to allow more home construction. persuade municipalities yes so much of the roadblock is at the municipal level now i gave you that example at the onset for a reason the developer basically being threatened by a city councillor who says my constituents don't want fourplexes we are going to fight you build single town homes and i go back to my cynical side that says politics is about staying in power that is absolutely what you have to do look in the united states where someone makes 300 grand a year puts together a super pack funded with 55 million dollars that's what it's about so the The Liberal Party campaign document talked about building on the success of the federal government's existing housing accelerator fund launched in 2023. Building on the success. Building on the success. Building on the success. Was that successful? No, no, it wasn't. Basically, it's providing$4 billion over four years, primarily towards housing-related infrastructure in cities that agree to higher-density housing and faster permit approvals. The federal government is saying, if you do a better job, Billy... We will give you this cupcake. Now, whether or not that's actually going to motivate cities to do that, it depends on this local city councillor wanting to get reelected and blocking this development over here. Politics is about staying in power. There is no grand plan. When you are in power for four years, it's very hard to plan something that's 30 years down the line. Now, continuing here, the NDP... I don't know why we're having this conversation, their housing plan. It's kind of like the Green Party's plan. Like the Green Party, I know you vote Green Party, like plastic straws. Yeah, you're doing your part. I mean, there's 100 billion pounds of plastic waste from all the lawn signs all over Canada. But I'm glad you're not using that plastic straw. Now, the Green Party, for them to have a plan, I don't know. You're not going to form a government. But the NDP, for what it's worth, hey, okay, their housing plan proposed to double the size of the accelerator fund to$8 billion. Okay. You know what? Why not triple? I got an idea. Six-minute abs. It's faster than seven-minute abs. Yes. Why not just double it to$8 billion? Why not triple it to$12 billion? The NDP said they're going to double the size of the accelerator fund. They're just going to take that from somewhere over four years and make it permanent and rename it the Canadian Homes Transfer. God, that's sexy. The NDP says they would require more cities to allow more multi-unit homes in all neighborhoods. Didn't I just tell you about that developer where the local city councilor said they can't build multiplex? Okay, yeah, I got it. Build more housing near public transit routes and speed up permits and approvals. I love how the NDP in this, and to be fair, the liberals and the conservatives, feel like they can do anything about it. A conservative party housing plan would require all cities to increase the number of homes built by 15% each year and would withhold a portion of federal funding from those municipalities that fall short of the mark. I mumbled over that part because I was already thinking about my response. They would require all cities to increase the number of homes built by 15%. Oh, you would? Oh, you would require it? Okay. Guys, what are we doing here? None of this makes any sense. Every single political party had an idea of pressuring municipalities. You're talking about withholding federal funding for municipalities that fall short of the mark. Billy, if you don't ace your test tomorrow, I'm not giving you dinner for the next week. What effect do you think that's going to have? The article says that this is a carrot and stick approach. Mr. Pomeroy contrasts these and says, you catch more bees with honey. We are lost in the analogies here today, folks. He said, I think being positive and proactive and working with the municipalities is probably going to get you further than the case of penalizing them for not doing things. It sounds like he likes my Billy not getting dinner example. He questions whether municipalities, or municipal policies rather, are truly to blame for the slower pace of new construction. As much as government wants industry to build more homes, industry basically has put the brakes on. Municipalities in the GTA have fully approved projects amounting to tens of thousands of housing units, and Pomeroy says it would be unfair to penalize municipalities when developers don't start construction. The builders are choosing not to proceed with those developments because the market circumstances have changed. So again, here comes the issue where the kid that didn't go to school for economics or just doesn't care, the same one that Doesn't want to drink from a plastic straw, even though every night at Rogers Center, there's 100,000 disposable plastic beer cups. Enjoy that soggy straw. But point is here, when you look at this, and I'm going to read this quote again, the builders are just not choosing to proceed with those developments because the market circumstances have changed. You can't force a developer to build at a loss. It's just not going to work. Okay, the kid with the plastic straw doesn't care, didn't go to school for economics. He does not care. He says, you should be forced to build. So when a developer launches a pre-construction project and everybody buys into it, it gets canceled. And I've always complained about this, but I complain about the fact that people act like this can't happen. If the market changes, the price of labor goes up, the price of goods goes up, everything else goes up, that developer's not going to build for$100 million loss. So how is the federal government going to force municipalities and force developers to build? If a developer owns a piece of land and they rezone it and they're ready to build, and guess what? The world economy collapses, we're going to force that developer to build? Because there are ideas out there in that school of thought, which I don't want to use left and right, but this idea that if a developer owns a piece of land and it's ready to be built on, they can't just sit on it. Okay, well, now my libertarian views are going to start to show. I don't think that we can tell people what to do all the time everywhere. I also don't think, and this might be an unpopular opinion given where we are in this country, that it's the government's job to solve everything. In fact, whether it's their job to do it or whether or not they actually can is kind of the nexus of where we're at with critical thought. in this country. So when you have a developer sitting on a piece of land that's ready to go, ready to build, and that developer looks at interest rates and the cost of labor, the cost of materials, and says, well, I can't go ahead and build because I'm gonna lose$100 million, the idea that we're gonna force them to build is absolutely ludicrous. Now, again, going back to the election, Carney proposed to create a crown corporation called Build Canada Homes that would finance affordable housing construction across the country. The agency would provide$25 billion in financing to the builders of prefabricated homes and allocate$10 billion towards affordable housing, including$6 billion in direct funding of projects and$4 billion in low-cost loans. Billion, billion, billion, billion. The money has to come from somewhere. I think it's great. A crown corporation called Build Canada Homes. So... Are we on the same page here? The private sector is more efficient than the public sector. If you take a dollar and you filter it through government, I think like 81 cents comes out. That's just how it works. Now, again, the capitalist in me is going to say the private sector is more efficient and can build at a lower cost. And the counter argument is going to be Oh, it's for profit and oh, they're greedy and all that wonderful stuff that comes with that critical school of thought. I do not believe that the government at this juncture should be getting into building homes. I think builders build homes. So if you look on my street right now, the government is not paving the road. That's contracted out. Jimmy from the city of Toronto is not out there throwing down asphalt and rolling over top of it. It's contracted out. Everything the government does, snow shoveling, snow clearing, tree trimming, it's contracted out. Now, we're talking about the government getting into the business of building homes. And that scares the you-know-what out of me. Because I just don't think the government is that efficient. Depending on who you voted for. and what your political leanings are, you might think that I'm crazy. You might say, David, in 1950, the government, I don't want to hear it. That was a long time ago. I'm just being honest. Now, Pierre Pelliev's conservatives have dismissed this Crown Corporation as more liberal bureaucracy. and instead proposed to sell 6,000 federal buildings at an unspecified thousands of acres of federally owned land to developers of market and non-market housing with preference for housing deemed to be affordable. The issue with this becomes the general public does not trust this. The general public, and this is why I love politics and tangent time, Donald Trump, I mean, it's just wild. It's absolutely wild. He will say things and people just listen and believe it. the stock market tanks, and he says, this is Joe Biden's fault. This is Joe Biden's fault. This has nothing to do with tariffs. And you know that there are a lot, what, 40, 50, 80, 100 million people that are like, yep, absolutely. Now, by the same token, here, we've always had this idea that Doug Ford's developer buddies and the croonies, and it's all insiders. When I read this and I say that Pierre wants to sell federal buildings and land to developers, I already know the argument. It's going to be that it's all insiders and it's crooked and they're giving deals and they're playing favoritism. I mean, look, you can think that. I don't blame you. And in fact, I've always gone on record that saying that I don't believe that anytime a paving contract is awarded at the city of Toronto, like you don't think someone's making money off of that. That's how politics works. So people are not going to like that idea. But then, okay, Jagmeet Singh says, hold my beer. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh says, all surplus federal land should only be used for building affordable housing and not sold to private developers. And there you go. And then he gets in his brother's Maserati and drives away. So other NDP proposals on housing include making the temporary ban on foreign home buyers permanent.

UNKNOWN: 30:01

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_00: 30:02

It's like they read my blog. The biggest red herring ever. Trying to discourage property flipping by taxing profits from selling a non-primary residence within five years of purchase as income. rather than a capital gain. God, I'm just waiting. I'm waiting one day for someone. Hello, we're from the government. We hear you have 10 pairs of shoes and that's too many. We're here to take some because there's some people that don't have any. I think some people might not like the cut of my jib today. No, look, we're all politically charged. Come on, give us a break. That was a tough election. Can we not have fun with this? Because I definitely am today. Now, John Pesalis, our friend from Realosophy, is skeptical that the Liberals' Build Canada Homes proposal, which Carney is calling the most comprehensive and ambitious housing strategy since the Second World War, works in the GTA in the 2020s. Yeah? Our worlds are very different, Pesalis said. You mean from 1950? Back then, the people who bought homes were families. And in that environment, we had this natural anchor that homes could not exceed what the average household could afford. So here's where, right, the guy who doesn't like plastic straws is going to start to say, right, right. And that's why, and he's going to give his ridiculous example of we need to build homes for$100,000. Like labor and materials and land and all that stuff doesn't count. John Pasalis says, that anchor has been cut off because houses become a global financial asset and the money flowing into them is disproportionately coming from investors. John's not necessarily wrong. I think a way smaller percentage than it used to be because no one's buying pre-construction because that was primarily driven by investors. We've done so many blogs over the years of why we got it in this situation where we only build once we pre-sell. Topic for another day. People buying homes not to live in but as an investment have driven up prices, Pasalis argues. pushing home ownership out of reach for many younger would-be buyers. Now, another issue Posales sees in the GTA is limited availability of sites that would suit the liberals' focus on prefab homes. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Mr. Posales calls out, I'm sorry I keep laughing, but Carney's saying, we used to build in this country 80 years ago, and you're trying to compare that to now? It's such a soundbite, and y'all voted for it. Now, Posales says, of course, limited land that suits the liberals focus. He says this idea that we can just take prefabricated plans and drop them in everywhere, I think is unrealistic. I think they have a place, but I don't think they're going to play the same role they played in our housing market in the 1940s. I had to laugh a lot during this election. And we're talking about real estate of which I'm an expert because I'm in the business. So I understand it. The average person out there has no idea. So when someone sits there, you know, like, Canada's dad, that was kind of like what he was going for, right? He dressed like my buddy Chris over here, who's got kind of like the sweater over top of the button down. And he's talking about, let's get back to the good old days where we build houses, you know, 80 to 90 years ago. People don't understand. It's just not possible. You don't have the amount of land. And if you do, right, because the average person, you know, the housing crisis, the housing shortage, what they mean is that they don't have the red brick Georgian. in Rosedale, readily available for$600,000. When you say, hey, we have the great piece of land, it's in between Toronto and Barrie, people are like, well, I don't wanna live there. How am I gonna get to work? So all these proposals in the end, they're exactly what I expected. You know, Steve Pomeroy said, addressing the housing affordability crisis requires serious policy. It can't be solved with one-off initiatives. Everything I just described to you, they're all sound bites. They're talking about removing the HST. We just debunked that. One quarter at the peak of all sales are for pre-construction. Now it's non-existent and it's driven by investors. So how are you helping families there? You have all of these ideas, right? I just laugh at some of these. Even the conservatives, it's across the board. Every single one of these ideas. We're gonna build 500,000 homes. We're gonna build 600,000 homes. We're gonna build a million homes today. None of this meant anything. Now, one more point here. John Pesalis says, the government should invest in subsidizing the construction of affordable housing, provide incentives to encourage more purpose-built rental housing, and reduce the scope for investors to fuel price increases in the residential market. John said, I do think there's a role that the governments have in making home ownership potentially more affordable by discouraging investment and speculation in houses so the younger generation can have a bit of a chance. Now, if John Pasalis and Steve Pomeroy were running this, I think we'd be doing a hell of a lot better than Jagmeet, Pierre, or Mark. It is like those three gentlemen, wasn't there a Green Party? Yeah, I don't know why. When they weren't invited to the debate, I was like, yeah, and? So I think between those three gentlemen who basically just gave us sound bites throughout the campaign, which has made me laugh through an entire podcast, and I'm sorry, not sorry, none of them have really done anything in terms of policy. And I want to go to a couple of notes here before we finish off about the confirmed liberal housing planks. Continuation of the Housing Accelerator Fund. with incentives for municipalities to increase housing supply. I think we talked about that. Extension of the foreign buyer ban to 2027 with tighter exemptions. Again, what I might say is a bit of red herring. No immediate changes to the 50% capital gains inclusion rate, but a fairness review is scheduled for later this year. Boy, I'd love... Love to know what's going to go on in the fairness review. You know what would be fair? More than a 54% marginal tax rate in this country. Why not just all of it? Now, maintenance of immigration levels at 500,000 per year with a forthcoming cap on temporary permits. I think what would be really interesting is to know of all of the people that come over temporarily, how many of them stay? because the government doesn't track that. I would also look at the number of students that come over, how many of them actually go to school, because there was a report on that. I wish I had pulled that. Maybe we'll Google that later. And last but not least, initiation of a national flood insurance program funded through the CMHC. So good to know that that is what they're spending their time on. Cynicism. It's the theme today. It's what I'm good at. So some key dates to watch. May 10th, the cabinet sworn in. The housing minister expected to reintroduce the foreign buyer extension bill. To me, This is absolute grandstanding. We look back at 2017 when we started talking about foreign buyers. It has still continued. This idea that we're keeping prices where they are, we're doing it, it's because we've banned foreign buyers. Absolutely ludicrous. And I mentioned earlier that story where I've got two clients that are highly sought after medical professionals, can't come here and buy a home from their family because the speculation taxes are 35% of the purchase price. I do believe that we really need to look at this idea of banning foreign buyers. And when we're not banned and they are exempted, the municipality and the province are taxed them to death. We're stopping people from coming here who we need to come here. Now, June 12th to 19th is the budget If passed, there are potential enhancements to the GST HST rebate for new builds, but that remains to be seen. And to me, that's the first time we're really going to know these promises during the campaign. Are they actually going to come to fruition? July 2nd, the CRA is going to publish rebate regulations. Closings, real estate closings on or after August 1st may qualify for new incentives. July 16th, the Bank of Canada will, excuse me, announce their interest rate decision. 25 basis point cut will probably stimulate midsummer activity. And I think this could lead into a fall, which, well, far be it for me to say, might be busy. August 15th, CMHC announces municipalities receiving accelerator fund grants, anticipate zoning changes in areas like Scarborough Centre, Markham and Brampton. So I think we beat this horse to death and beyond the idea of the government using the carrot approach or the stick approach. I just don't know how this is going to play out over the next four or five years. Early September, Parliament reconvenes, foreign buyer ban bill moves to the second reading, potentially influencing luxury market activity. Again, remains to be seen just how much activity from the evil foreign buyers there actually is. And last but not least, mid-September, the IRCC will release details for immigration levels for 2026 to 2027, including caps on study and work permits, which is critical information for downtown condo investors. So folks, if I were to sum this up, and this is gonna sound cynical, but it's about as honest as I can be, I would say this. There is very little that the federal government can do to actually make housing more affordable. Sorry, not sorry. And again, you've put up with a lot of laughs and smirks and smiles and cynicism and sarcasm so far today. But I'm coming to you hat in hand and I'm saying that, guys, honest to goodness, the way that real estate is in this country, it is just too big to fail. The overwhelming number of seniors that voted liberal in the last election tells me this government is not going to take away their wealth. Their wealth is in their homes, their nest eggs. Seniors own homes. And again, part of the next generation is saying that's not fair. You have, you know who, Dr. Paul Kershaw, Generation Squeeze Fairness, that's out there talking about home equity tax and trying to force seniors from their homes. I understand that if a senior paid$100,000 for their house and now it's worth$3 million, that doesn't sound fair. But we also covered the fact that it's not 1940 anymore. It's not 1950. The idea of building post-World War II homes in 2025 doesn't make any sense. Neither does this idea of fairness as it pertains to somebody that all they really did was just buy a house and live in it. So I don't believe that the government can take away that wealth and that nest egg from their biggest voter pool. I also don't believe that CMHC can allow housing to fail in this country because the CMHC has backstopped All of this that is on the back of the taxpayers is simply too big to fail. Now, you want to put your tinfoil hat on and think conspiracy theory here. The government has conspired to keep real estate prices where they are. No, it's not that. It's that if magically real estate prices across the country drop 50%, the country would implode because the CMHC is backstopping all of the bank's loans. So when I look at ideas like this, Makes absolutely perfect sense. A lot of sound bites. Grant here, eliminate here, motivate here, stimulate here. What's actually going to happen in the next couple of years, in my honest opinion, is a whole lot of the same. We're going to have gridlock at the municipalities because one politician doesn't want fourplexes built in their area. Because the constituents have said, you're not doing that here. And I've told you a story once before. I did a land consolidation in Midtown Toronto. And although 30% of that condo development was going to be affordable housing, a local city councilor, extremely well known, said to the developer, quote, over my dead body. That's what politics is about. It's about self-preservation. There's no 40-year plan. And on a micro level here, we see that there are a lot of roadblocks at the municipal levels. And the government's best idea so far has been The Housing Accelerator Fund, we will give you money if you build. That's what we'll do. And even the conservatives' ridiculousness of 15% target and we'll punish you if you don't achieve it, right across the board, you can see the best idea the three parties had with respect to the Housing Accelerator Fund is to say, if you don't, then we will. We will hold funds if you cannot build X. That's not a plan. And I didn't see a plan from anybody. of these parties. So I wish I could end on a better note, guys, other than to say, come on, that was a lot of fun. That was a lot of laughs. And you know what? Sometimes it's a little bit more dry, a little bit more concise here on The Last Honest Realtor. But I think that today was a reflection on the election that we had. If laughter is the best medicine, and some of these ideas were pretty funny, that was a tough election. And elections can be extremely divisive. I mean, I can't believe the fights that people pick with their friends on Facebook. Sometimes I read that. I don't know why. The algorithm thinks that I should. But that's what's happened over the last little while. And I think We need to move forward. So no matter who you voted for, this is where we are. This is who our leaders are. Let's now hold them accountable. Let's monitor their activity, their promises, both those that were during the campaign and what they actually talk about moving forward. Let's, from the list of dates that I just identified there, monitor the activity as it pertains to the intersection of government and housing. And let's hope that we're moving forward in the right direction. Folks, thank you so much for watching. As always, feel free to drop me a comment there in the YouTube section below If you're listening to this, Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you get your podcasts, please remember to like, comment, or subscribe. And we'll see you next week on The Last Honest Realtor.