In a six-month period, 70% of detached homes sold in Vancouver’s west side went to Mainland China bu

[pentium]

[img]http://www.clarencedebelle.com/resources/clients_data/1/listing_images/943/749x497_1134-crestline-road-british-properties-west-vancouver-3-18017.jpg[/img]

[quote]The dominant influence of Chinese investors in Vancouver has finally been proven with comprehensive data.

In a recent six-month period about 70 per cent of all detached homes sold on Vancouver’s west side were purchased by Mainland China buyers[/quote]
[quote]Even more stunning, the study shows that of all self-declared occupations among owners — on homes worth an average $3.05 million — 36 per cent were housewives or students with little income.
And 18 per cent of the 172 homes purchased were not mortgaged by banks. That means roughly $100 million in questionable cash was poured into Vancouver’s west side from August 2014 to February 2015, much of it from China. Total value of all homes sold in the study period was $525 million.[/quote]
[quote]“We’re still at the point where we won’t even admit we have an issue, while other jurisdictions have studied this or taken action,” Eby said. “It’s my hope this data shows that this money has a profound influence.”

Canada does not collect data on foreign ownership, and the citizenship of buyers in Yan’s study is not clear. But Yan established that 66 per cent of all buyers had “non-anglicized” Mainland China names.[/quote]
[quote]The study also showed that five of eight homes owned by “students” were bought outright with cash at an average value of $3.2 million.

Tax experts have raised concerns that offshore investors are exploiting tax code loopholes to evade GST and capital gains. Housewives and students with little or no declared income can live briefly in Vancouver and flip properties tax-free, reports say, while claiming a home is a primary residence. In some of these so-called “astronaut” family arrangements, the real homebuyer lives and works in China while flowing money through relatives into Vancouver in order to store wealth.

Also, recent academic studies have shown that about 30 per cent of households in some of Vancouver’s wealthiest west side neighbourhoods, where Chinese migrant buyers are dominant, declare meagre incomes much below their annual housing costs.[/quote]
[quote]The questions that come up for me are: China is an authoritarian state that has lots of issues with corruption. Is the money coming into Vancouver the kind we want to be encouraging? And are we doing everything we can to make sure we leverage this investment to benefit British Columbians as much as possible? Or is this just benefiting the super-car dealerships on Burrard Street?[/quote]
[quote]Yan noted the majority of the homes were mortgaged through Canadian banks. This suggests the banks offer services to facilitate investment from high-net-worth investors who face strict rules against transferring more than $50,000 per year from China. The study did not look at details of financing arrangements and how foreign exchange transfers were made.[/quote]
[url=http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/in-a-six-month-period-70-of-detached-homes-sold-in-vancouvers-west-side-went-to-mainland-china-buyers]**SOURCE**[/url]

It's disgusting. Call us insensitive (as in, talk to anyone on the streets in Vancouver and they'll also express the same on what's happened to the region) but it's such a load of shit how you can be born and raised in greater Vancouver, yet you will never be able to afford a place of your own. You are essentially forced either to live in substandard housing or pay rent the rest of your life should you decide to not want to be pushed east.

[Xystus234]

Wow. Holy shit. Is this some sort of weird colonization attempt by China?

According to Wikipedia, 30% of Vancouver is Chinese.

[A_Pigeon]

Yes.

[aznz888]

this is literally happening on every major city up and down the coast, both in Canada & in the US.

it's pretty smart from a business perspective but it's pretty toxic in the long run. all it does is spread the housing problem from one place to another, while inflating the real estate cost of the local region.

[Rangergxi]

Canada needs to ban foreigners from owning property.

[elix]

They're using the Vancouver real estate market as a speculation playground, and to hell with the gentrification it spreads.

I've been visiting Vancouver since at least age 5, if not earlier, but never once have I felt I'll be rich enough to live there on owned property unless "in Vancouver" includes the far east asscrack of Richmond and hour-plus commute times.

[Daemon White]

Isn't the housing market poised to crash hard?

[aznz888]

[QUOTE=Daemon White;49042374]Isn't the housing market poised to crash hard?[/QUOTE]

quite so. a crash would be disastrous for everyone, though, so it's not a saving grace or anything.

[crumbleshake]

[QUOTE=Daemon White;49042374]Isn't the housing market poised to crash hard?[/QUOTE]

Yeah there's probably going to be another financial crisis very soon.

[Sobotnik]

[QUOTE=Rangergxi;49042132]Canada needs to ban foreigners from owning property.[/QUOTE]

what benefit would this have minus antagonizing immigrants and various racial minorities

[proboardslol]

Odd situation... I don't see harm in it? Unless it's one real estate company buying the property for... whatever reasons... Inflating the price of real estate so he can sell off the property at arbitrary and uncompetitive prices? If it's just a bunch of Chinese people want to live in Vancouver, I don't see the issue

edit:

[quote]Tax experts have raised concerns that offshore investors are exploiting tax code loopholes to evade GST and capital gains. Housewives and students with little or no declared income can live briefly in Vancouver and flip properties tax-free, reports say, while claiming a home is a primary residence. In some of these so-called “astronaut” family arrangements, the real homebuyer lives and works in China while flowing money through relatives into Vancouver in order to store wealth.[/quote]

ah. It's just tax evasion. Close those loopholes then.

[Missing User]

[QUOTE=aznz888;49042434]quite so. a crash would be disastrous for everyone, though, so it's not a saving grace or anything.[/QUOTE]

For Vancouver it would make it a buyers market hopefully... which isnt bad for [I]everyone[/I]. The banks just gotta play ball

[Kommodore]

[QUOTE=Rangergxi;49042132]Canada needs to ban foreigners from owning property.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Xystus234;49042103]Wow. Holy shit. Is this some sort of weird colonization attempt by China?[/QUOTE]

lol it's a fundamental issue related to estate investment and urban development, not a Tom Clancy plot. you get the same issue arising from domestic ownership as well. doesn't make it any more or less wrong. it has to be solved through regulation of the ownership of empty houses and improving the availability of affordable and middle income housing.

[editline]3rd November 2015[/editline]

it is essentially a form of gentrification

[editline]3rd November 2015[/editline]

although imo cities should just go the distance and make it illegal to keep property in residential urban areas as an investment - no turning over a property for 20 years after it's sold or something.

[proboardslol]

[QUOTE=Kommodore;49042698]lol it's a fundamental issue related to estate investment and urban development, not a Tom Clancy plot. you get the same issue arising from domestic ownership as well. doesn't make it any more or less wrong. it has to be solved through regulation of the ownership of empty houses and improving the availability of affordable and middle income housing.

[editline]3rd November 2015[/editline]

it is essentially a form of gentrification

[editline]3rd November 2015[/editline]

although imo cities should just go the distance and make it illegal to keep property in urban areas as an investment - no turning over a property for 20 years after it's sold or something.[/QUOTE]

Article says it's just tax evasion. Buy the houses, pretend to live in them, flip them at no taxes.

[Download]

[QUOTE=aznz888;49042434]quite so. a crash would be disastrous for everyone, though, so it's not a saving grace or anything.[/QUOTE]

It will only be disastrous for the people own homes and have enormous mortgages. Their fault really thinking interest rates would stay at the 2% mark.

[Kommodore]

[QUOTE=proboardslol;49042740]Article says it's just tax evasion. Buy the houses, pretend to live in them, flip them at no taxes.[/QUOTE]

not fundamentally different than air bnbs raising the price of rent in a neighborhood and reducing available housing, different cause but the effect is the same.

something needs to be done.

e:

generally, i mean, about people's right to live in a space without the menace of being priced out by forces totally beyond their control and with literally no moral justification

[HumanAbyss]

Nothing will be done. Vancouver is literally the most out of touch city.

[Kommodore]

there's nothing serious being done about it anywhere, not in san francisco, seattle, anywhere. there's so much anger and it boils over often enough to get these huge protests but there's just no political acknowledgement because it's constrained to city-level politics, it doesnt belong to the national political narrative yet

[proboardslol]

[QUOTE=Kommodore;49042773]not fundamentally different than air bnbs raising the price of rent in a neighborhood and reducing available housing, different cause but the effect is the same.

something needs to be done.[/QUOTE]

Who are the people being housed in these places? They said housewives and students, but are they housewives and students of the people buying the houses or are they just random dudes set up with the house for a couple months? I guess something should be done but I don't think banning foreigners from owning property or banning people from having long term real estate investments will solve it (or are good ideas). I guess one could simply limit the amount of property one can own or purchase in a given time period, but if they're simply giving ~3mil to some lady then she buys the house, flips it, and gives the money back, then it's not just one person owning the houses. I guess just close these loopholes and there will be no incentive

[Kommodore]

[QUOTE=proboardslol;49042815]I guess something should be done but I don't think banning foreigners from owning property or banning people from having long term real estate investments will solve it (or are good ideas).[/QUOTE]

nor do I? at all?

[proboardslol]

[QUOTE=Kommodore;49042835]nor do I? at all?[/QUOTE]

well you said

[quote]
although imo cities should just go the distance and make it illegal to keep property in residential urban areas as an investment - no turning over a property for 20 years after it's sold or something.[/quote]

Unless I misunderstoof what you mean. I didn't mean to imply you wanted to ban foreigners from owning property, I was responding to someone earlier in the thread

[proboardslol]

[QUOTE=The golden;49042981]The benefit would be so Canadians can actually afford to live on their own soil and don't get shoved off by people that don't even live here.

I live in Vancouver. It's a fucking joke. There are entire neighborhoods full of empty houses because the owners don't even live in Canada.[/QUOTE]

What do you qualify as "foreigner". Someone not even inside the country, or someone who's not a citizen? Cause if you say "someone outside the country", I can see the sense in that, but if you mean "someone who's not a citizen" then that's just straight up racist ignorance

[Sobotnik]

[QUOTE=The golden;49042981]The benefit would be so Canadians can actually afford to live on their own soil and don't get shoved off by people that don't even live here.

I live in Vancouver. It's a fucking joke. There are entire neighborhoods full of empty houses because the owners don't even live in Canada.[/QUOTE]

you do realise that rich canadians would just buy the housing instead

banning foreigners from buying the housing doesn't fix the problem and smacks of racist kneejerking

it also ignores the possibility that rich foreigners might end up buying the houses through some kind of proxy anyways

[Rangergxi]

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49043062]
banning foreigners from buying the housing doesn't fix the problem and smacks of racist kneejerking
[/QUOTE]

Foreigners isn't a race though. We basically have billionaire foreigners owning tons of land and just enriching themselves. Thats not in the interest of Canadians.

[Sobotnik]

[QUOTE=Rangergxi;49043102]Foreigners isn't a race though. We basically have billionaire foreigners owning tons of land and just enriching themselves. Thats not in the interest of Canadians.[/QUOTE]

there's a lot of chinese people in the city who are canadian citizens, and they might find it questionable that the government is banning foreigners (i.e chinese) from owning housing there

they might even get more annoyed when it turns out it doesn't fix the problem

[HumanAbyss]

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49043062]you do realise that rich canadians would just buy the housing instead

banning foreigners from buying the housing doesn't fix the problem and smacks of racist kneejerking

it also ignores the possibility that rich foreigners might end up buying the houses through some kind of proxy anyways[/QUOTE]

The housing is inflated in price so that only the rich can buy it period.

If foreign investment wasn't as common as it is, the prices wouldn't be just for the rich.

God damn

[editline]3rd November 2015[/editline]

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49043140]there's a lot of chinese people in the city who are canadian citizens, and they might find it questionable that the government is banning foreigners (i.e chinese) from owning housing there

they might even get more annoyed when it turns out it doesn't fix the problem[/QUOTE]

We don't need a ban. We need regulation. We need control. The price bubble here will never pop because this is literally the most favourable place for the Chinese to come, that's not my opinion, that's the opinion of several hundred thousand Chinese. It's fine for them to buy property here but you literally cannot buy or rent for non crisis levels as a native vancouverite for the average vancouverite.

[Sobotnik]

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49043149]The housing is inflated in price so that only the rich can buy it period.

If foreign investment wasn't as common as it is, the prices wouldn't be just for the rich.[/QUOTE]

if it wasn't the chinese it'd just be other rich people doing it, it might not be happening as rapidly or as strongly, but the core root of the problem hasn't been solved

it's also a rather racist policy in that while yeah, it targets "foreigners", everybody really knows it targets the chinese, and considering that there are chinese people in the city i don't see it ending well if policies are being introduced that discriminate against the chinese

like banning foreigners from owning houses wouldn't do anything and it would just make matters worse

[HumanAbyss]

[QUOTE=Sobotnik;49043171]if it wasn't the chinese it'd just be other rich people doing it, it might not be happening as rapidly or as strongly, but the core root of the problem hasn't been solved

it's also a rather racist policy in that while yeah, it targets "foreigners", everybody really knows it targets the chinese, and considering that there are chinese people in the city i don't see it ending well if policies are being introduced that discriminate against the chinese

like banning foreigners from owning houses wouldn't do anything and it would just make matters worse[/QUOTE]

I clearly said we don't need a ban.

We need control of these things so that our own citizens, our native vancouverites aren't second citizens in the city they grew up in and love whole heartedly. We're a very open, and inclusive people, to pretend that we're a bunch of racists is to be blind to our situation. There's a serious issue in our city of property values skyrocketing out of aitainability for the regular folk who live here. This issue extends out through to the major extensions of the metropolitan area, aka, Mission, Maple Ridge, Abbotsford, etc, they're an hour away from Vancouver and are seeing prices skyrocket at similar rates, even as homes are built in the the hundreds, perhaps the thousands(Maple Ridge has 12 major areas of 2000 plus homes that have popped up in the last 6 years). Our growth is massive, and constant, and the price bubble for the area is growing in terms of size, as well as value.

We don't need a ban, we need regulation of our market place because if we let things go all totally free market as you'd like, we'd all have to leave the city in the next few years, rather than in 10 years as projected based on our wages stagnating and costs rising so rapidly that people are literally going homeless due to those levels of inflation.

[PILLS HERE!]

[QUOTE=aznz888;49042130]this is literally happening on every major city up and down the coast, both in Canada & in the US.

it's pretty smart from a business perspective but it's pretty toxic in the long run. all it does is spread the housing problem from one place to another, while inflating the real estate cost of the local region.[/QUOTE]

it's especially bad in san francisco since now rent is crazy fucking expensive and is becoming quickly gentrified

[Sobotnik]

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;49043236]I clearly said we don't need a ban.[/quote]

wasn't in your post before you edited it, but ye i see it now

[quote]We need control of these things so that our own citizens, our native vancouverites aren't second citizens in the city they grew up in and love whole heartedly. We're a very open, and inclusive people, to pretend that we're a bunch of racists is to be blind to our situation.[/quote]

you might not be, but as for others:

[QUOTE=Rangergxi;49042132]Canada needs to ban foreigners from owning property.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Xystus234;49042103]Wow. Holy shit. Is this some sort of weird colonization attempt by China?[/QUOTE]

[quote]We don't need a ban, we need regulation of our market place because if we let things go all totally free market as you'd like, we'd all have to leave the city in the next few years, rather than in 10 years as projected based on our wages stagnating and costs rising so rapidly that people are literally going homeless due to those levels of inflation.[/QUOTE]

i've never advocated for the "totally free market" lol, anybody who does that is a loony

and while there can be regulations introduced, banning chinese people from buying houses is absurd and won't do anything to fix it

that was the original point being addressed earlier on by some of the kneejerk idiots who think china is going to turn canada into a colony