May you buy in interesting times;
I have read so many stories about Vancouver homes selling above their listing price over the years that I find myself completely numb to the phenomenon now. Of course every once and a while I’ll read a story of some house selling at an astronomical price, and I’ll try to comprehend the logic and fundamentals behind these moves. But after so many years of seeing these stories, I find the shock and confusion fades quickly and I get back to my day as if everything was normal. But I think it doesn’t take a real estate specialist or an international monetary watchdog to see that things in the Vancouver real estate market are far from ‘normal’.
Some news articles have made an attempt to explain the drivers behind the market’s incredible jump. In this link, a real estate agent explains that the premium paid on the home he sold recently was simply the result of a very successful marketing strategy.
Yeah, that must be it.
h/t Melinda Romanoff
The buyers are Communist Chinese cadres hiding money.
Next question?
I’ve participated in Chinese fire drills. Is Chinese real estate back assward or something? Maybe they don’t understand the process. Whenever I sell something it’s the annoying lowball offers.
Defintely. I go to open houses and all conversation is in Cantonese. And add also local Canadian-based drug money. Vancouver is the money laundering capital of Canada. My kids will never be able to have a house here.
A piece of investigative journalism could prove or disprove the thesis.
Only the rebel.media would have the hutzpah and integrity.
Please note: if Vancouver’s Real Estate bubble is based on foreign(Chinese) stashing/laundering/buying it as an emergency or vacation property, than the bubble won’t burst.
Not until the Chinese navy lands to protect their investment and claim the entire city.
“May you live in interesting times!”
With 100,000 Hong Kong residents having Canadian passports of convenience… well that comes with a political and economic cost.
Does anyone remember when CISIS was warning about prov. politicians being subject to offshore influence?
There is a reason why the Triads were able to move into Vancouver and stay.
Canada’s “multi-culturalism” is a method of Balkanization, for the three main cities into literally multi-national.
Or as they call Vancouver in Bejing, “the colony”.
Soon, all job applicants will require fluency in Mandarin, some jobs advertize for that now. That will include for the job of Member of Parliament.
Why would you want to live in a place where you have to do a homeless hurdle every time you walk down the street?
It’s not just a Vancouver problem:
Yes foreign money is one of the factors that drives prices ever higher in the lower mainland but a big reason is the limited supply. Over the last 40 years the market there has never been able to satisfy the demand. Stringent green anti-development ideas coupled with laws against developing farmland for housing drive people, Canadian and foreign, to pay stupid prices for existing real estate.
This is very much tangential to the story, and not knowing what is what
in the land of the Great North Woods, I cued on the line “May you buy
in interesting times.”
I have a former neighbor who I am attempting to steer into self reliance.
He is a 77 year old alcoholic. His wife just died and he is now attempting
to “Drink Canada dry.” He is an absolute book whore who reads more books
in a week than I read in a month. (And that is saying something) My
mother created a monster and had me reading at a second grade level before
I entered Kindergarten. By the time I was 14, I was eating classic literature
and contemporary books like The Carpetbaggers, Steinbeck, Hemingway, books
like MASH, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Catch 22, etc.
My buddy Frank used the old Ornamental saying “May you live in interesting
times.” He thought that was some kind of compliment. I had to burst his
bubble and tell him it was a subtle insult. I am still fighting this old
man in an attempt to him from dying homeless in an alley. It is an
absolute bitch to be a bleeding heart conservative!
I live in Richmond BC just south of Vancouver and where YVR is located.
Demographics: population: about 200,000.
50% Chinese, 20% south Asian, 30% Caucasian.
No people sleeping on the street.
No graffiti.
No panhandlers.
I have found the city to be very friendly, clean, prosperous, and beautiful. I could live anywhere in the world but I have picked Richmond and am quite willing to pay the premium to do so. So do a lot of other people from around the world and the prices simply reflect the demand.
Richmond is a great city in what is arguably one of the best countries, if not the best country, on the planet. As the rest of the world deteriorates, Canada generally, and Greater Vancouver particularly, will be in even greater demand. There is no bubble here. Prices are rising for sound reasons and there is no reason to concoct wild theories to account for it.
The Vancouver real estate market is a world onto itself. I tried to buy a condo there in 2004, a few blocks from Joe Fortes. I could buy the unit for over a million or lease it for half of what a mortgage would cost me with a 25% down payment. “Who would buy” I asked the real estate agent. “Welcome to Vancouver” he said.
As a dumb ass American, I now understand Kate’s use of the term May you
buy in interesting times. I know very little of Canada’s demographics.
We had a saying in Southern California: Will the last American to
leave Monterrey Park please turn out the lights? The one thing you
cannot say about Asians is that they are not industrious!
It’s a know brainer why this occurs, of course it involves money laundering, but not only Chinese origin funds.
Google FINTRAC and then ask yourselves why realtors and their related brokerages are compelled to report, but lawyers are exempt?
And Toronto. It’s why concerns about “over-heated” real estate market cannot be addressed by the Canadian government policy.
“ask yourselves why realtors and their related brokerages are compelled to report, but lawyers are exempt?”
Really? Ignoring the fact that the top echelon of politicians and all the judges in every court of any kind are lawyers and that they’re a bunch of sick-Os who regularly pour their skivvy black hearts out to psychiatrists, lawyers are exempt for the same reason your psychiatrist is exempt; as a specialized professional service which could not operate at all without a privacy exemption by law.
“It’s why concerns about “over-heated” real estate market cannot be addressed by the Canadian government policy”
Of course it can. The Canadian government simply has to pass legislation restricting real estate sales to Canadian citizens and further make it a crime for Canadian citizens to act as a go between to buy/sell real estate for/to foreign nationals.
Many nations already have exactly this kind of law on the books and these laws are rigorously enforced.
Do you think the Chinese are buying up huge tracts of Russian housing or real estate?!
WTF!
As long as the vancouverites stay away from the island I’m fine. Vancouver is a rat hole. I know because I endured it and it’s traffic disaster for years.
Given that the Cascadia subduction zone is long overdue for a magnitude 9 earthquake, Richmond is the last place in the Lower Mainland I’d want to live. It’s mostly silt, sand, and peat, and a scant couple of meters above normal sea level, and most of that soil is water-saturated. In the event of a big quake, that soil will probably liquefy, and large buildings will simply settle into it. I doubt there would be a huge loss of life, but most buildings will be rendered uninhabitable. And if the big quake cause a tsunami, Richmond could be completely destroyed.
Many of the patriarchs of these well-off and successful Chinese families lived through the Cultural Revolution. Many of their friends did not survive, or were broken by the experience. They want a safe bolt-hole for their families, far away from China when the economy stops growing and the bubble ‘pops.’ Because when China’s economy implodes, the communist leaders will be looking for scapegoats to blame. And the rich, but not powerful make easy scapegoats.
In China, the goats often do not survive the scaping. If they are somewhere other than China, their families can survive
exactly
Because it was near transit and spacious and affordable when I bought.
The name of a big new real estate broker here: NEW COAST Real Estate.
That question was tongue in cheek to a point OZ. I really had no idea whatsoever that some politicians and judges were lawyers(sarc).
This has nothing to do with privacy as per shrinks or lawyers, purchasers of property are registered on land title which is in the public domain.
right on
Where else without endless winter?
“Minorities”.