“Fun & Games” continue unabated in Vancouver’s real estate market, as illustrated here and here and here. This comment from one of the articles accurately describes the situation:
The offshore elite have nothing to worry about in these trivial rezoning nuisances for their projects. They are fully aware and cognizant of the fact that Canadians have an international reputation of being the most gullible and easily manipulated naive clowns in the world. They would sell their children’s future, environment and literally the land from under their feet for some measly laundered loose change. Simply greasing the appropriate palm, like they do back home, is all that is needed.
Now that housing in Vancouver is unaffordable by most Canadians, now that there are endless streets with empty homes and empty condominiums (50+ weeks of the year), might it be long overdue for the residents of Vancouver to have an honest conversation about what has happened to their city? Nope, because anyone who dares question any of it is immediately deemed a R-A-C-I-S-T!
Last year Premier Christy Clark gave a firm ‘No’ to an offshore investors tax. But the pressure is mounting for her to change her mind.
“Might it be long overdue for the residents of Vancouver to have an honest conversation about what has happened to their city?”
FYI, the people who actually own the homes have a right to sell their home to whomever they wish at whatever price they wish. That’s why homes are called PRIVATE PROPERTY. The residents of a city do not have any collective right to ownership of PRIVATE PROPERTY. People who have no skin in the game who want to determine who should be allowed to purchase PRIVATE PROPERTY and who want to retro-actively re-zone PRIVATE PROPERTY should just bugger off.
Priceless, beyond parody.
If you own an expensive home, the city and province will now tell you how many hours/month/day/year ?that you must reside in your own home, or face financial penalties.
Note it is always the thin edge of the wedge, first the owners who are overseas for whatever reason, then it is everyone.
What! You can afford a road trip? Pay up.
For these Statist morons never doubt, they KNOW better than you or I how we shall use our time, income and own property.
Lynching is too good for these fools and bandits.
Robert, since when has paying MORE taxes ever solved a problem, and made things cheaper?
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Here’s some more interesting perspective on how it may have been government interference in the first place that assisted these inflated prices and not the free market at all.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/vancouver-is-mortgaging-its-future-for-a-market-thats-anything-but-free/article25558615/
I would have to say that political correctness is not the only factor influencing the outcome here. The libertarian notion of a free market finding its own level is also at play. There are more rich Chinese investors than local citizens, so more houses are owned by those rich investors who choose (not a careless choice of words given the context) not to live in Canada.
There are two separate political questions here. Is there any political will to intervene among that ruling class who are mainly p.c. leftists? And is there any momentum to suggest change from the stakeholder real estate interests who will probably be more guided by libertarian philosophy?
Neither of these more or less opposed political lobbies seems interested in taking much action. Those who are concerned would appear to be an eclectic and rather disorganized alliance of nativists, people with personal stakes (not wanting to pay the higher property taxes to hold on to their otherwise cushy home ownership investments) and people looking to turn this into an environmental issue (empty homes get vandalized, therefore torn down, thus wasting resources).
It is one of those rare things where either the left or the right will have to swallow their pride if they want to see a solution, and pass some sort of legislation that might technically violate their ideology. Imagine that. And imagine it from both sides, because it will take imagination to fix this problem, if you want to call it a problem. The related problem is that rental accommodation is slowly being transformed into higher price condo high rise options that can also turn into empty shells at least in a sort of checkerboard pattern — we will only know how many black and how many white squares when the towers are built and the lights come on at night, or not.
Christy never saw a tax she didn’t like. She’s not to be trusted – the sale of the Provinces interior railroad proved that.
How about rent controls? Maybe that will work….this time?
When money costs next to nothing to borrow, this is what you get. This has nothing to do with offshore financing.
Also, if the various levels of government suddenly dumped the subsidies to home owners, including the provincial Land Tax Deferment program (a form of publicly-fund reverse equity in BC) and tax-payer funded CMHC insurance, you would see a very rapid decrease in cost of private of housing.
My own take on this is that the foreign buyers who excessively bid-up real-estate on the west coast are, without exception, recently retired Federal and Alberta provincial civil servants who have spent their entire 25 year career in Edmonton or some other tropical locale and can’t wait to pay anything to retire here. The local realtors can spot them a mile off.
Would you like to know just how many 1,800 SF single family homes there are here in Silicon Valley … modest homes that sell for $ 1.5 – 2.5 million … that are bought by the Chinese (read: speak no English). They proceed to partition these homes to create anywhere from 6 to 10 bedrooms each with new exterior doors cut into the exterior walls. Of course all of this is done without any approvals or building permits, because it is ALL so illegal at every level. The Chinese owners rent these rooms out (to only other FOB Chinese) for outlandish rents that cover triple their mortgage payments. They are running high density multi-family rentals in single family neighborhoods. … … And the local building officials (government workers) won’t do anything about it for fear of racism. No, this isn’t in the nice neighborhoods of Palo Alto, Atherton, Belmont … but the fringe neighborhoods of San Mateo, Redwood City. These immigrant squatters don’t need any more political cover than they are given by feckless building officials who look the other way. Does it wreck neighborhoods ? Of course it does. And what do you think would happen to a native-born Bay Area resident, if they tried this ?
An excerpt from the globe article posted above…
“This brings us to the most distortionary government program of all – the immigrant investor program. Through this scheme, 45,000 millionaires migrated to Vancouver between 2005 and 2012 alone. It was thought that investor-class immigrants would create jobs and boost the economy, but the program has been such a massive failure that investor-class immigrants pay less in taxes than refugees. Through a series of loopholes and abject fraud, this class of immigrant continues to funnel untaxed money into Vancouver from abroad.
They come because Canada has some of the loosest property ownership and tax laws in the developed world, and Vancouver is its wild west. The city has among the country’s lowest property taxes, developers hold disproportionate political influence and a league of professionals, such as real estate agents and immigration lawyers, are ready to take their slice of the pie.
The idea that foreigners should have the same rights as nationals to purchase real estate has no economic basis. Global free markets can have terrible externalities when supply is fixed. You can’t produce more land in Vancouver in the way you can produce more iPads or cars. This is why Canadians are restricted from buying property in countries like Switzerland, Iran and China. Those spouting free market arguments have no understanding of its real world constraints and prove the adage that a little understanding of economics is more dangerous than none. The countries with cities in Demographia’s top 10 international housing least affordability list all have regulations to at least measure, and in most cases curtail, foreign ownership, except for Canada.”
Maybe the guys who came up with the Chinese exclusion act were smart enough to figure out what we’re to stupid to.
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What needs to be understood is that being called a ‘racist’ nowadays is exactly the same as being called a ‘realist’.
Realists deal with truth and fact and sometimes those things are hurtful to overly sensitive people who have been living in a bubble all their short helicoptered lives. Or if they happen to not be white folks, then they have been laboring under the weight of unfairness to previous generations ‘n shit because a bunch of touchy feely university professors told you so …
Enough …
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But this is Vancouver where they made it so prohibitive for Walmart to open there they opened in Richmond, think of the greenhouse gases generated . The horror the horror
And Google Mayor Moonbeam’s new squeeze and the fact(In my opinion) that he is a fan favourite of G. Soros esq..
I am a Calgarian and own land in BC. There is already a non-resident owner tax there. I pay taxes in full and residents pay less, much less, because they get a rebate.
Vancouverites are complaining in complete pig ignorance, but they are lefties so what can one expect.
From the perspective of city and provincial finances a non resident owner with an empty residence is a thing of beauty. He pays lots of taxes and uses almost no government services.
His kids do not go to school there. He uses no medicare. He pays basic utility bills and uses no utilities.
Really ?
http://www.theonion.com/article/super-bowl-halftime-show-marred-functioning-sound–52312
The Onion got it exactly right
So we gave up the Chinese head tax for what reason?
In a way you are correct, your not a burden in the tax sense. However if absenteeism is high enough, then the small business sector suffers (except for landscaping and property management firms). From my understanding part of the issue is the “assigning the sale” several times over during the initial deal, driving the price up with no benefit to the seller. I bought in 2000 when prices were somewhat sane ($300,000), now the price of my house would be roughly 1.2 million. I have absolutely no idea how people can afford to buy here, I certainly expect my daughters to leave Vancouver as it is quickly becoming un-affordable. In the Public Service it’s getting harder to find people to come here, I know small businesses struggle to get good employees and other services like police and fire-fighters all have members living far from their duty area. There is a major traffic jam where I live that is mostly contractors leaving the city after a day of work. what the answer is I am not sure, dealing with the worst of it, might solve 10% of the problem, but a lack of land, good weather and a interesting international mix is going to keep Vancouver expensive for a long time.
Who owns these mostly empty homes and why are they mostly empty?
The Walmart is still being built but will open by the end of the year.
I live in Richmond and to give you an idea of what is going on here: my son’s in-laws sold their home near Railway and Moncton for $1 million in Mar ’15. The new owners flipped it for $1.3 million a few months later. The new owners have recently demolished the house so the land value of the lot is now $1.3 million. I reckon the lot size is about 7,000 sq. ft.
can’t for the life of me see what grounds certain sellers have to whine when their property sells soon after to yet another seller. regardless of the numbers. I had a stooopid sister-in-law couldn’t WAIT to unload a place she inherited. saw another for sale sign pop up, made inquiries and found out she missed out 10s of thousands of dollars. she undersold by such a huge margin the intermediary sold it real quick at whatever they priced. obviously they saw an opportunity created by the woman’s impatient greed to sell a.s.a.p.
I betcha she whined. she was the type.
whine whine whine. tsk tsk tsk. wtf obligation does the intermediate owner have to purchase at a price approaching that he intends to sell at? I mean, wtf? that goes against everything that is advantageous about thrift that puts the intermediary in the position they can cough up the financing, and what seems now to be an anachronistic idea that one way to support yourself is find a niche, find a demand, find opportunities to then translate the fruit of previous work and research into more of the same.
I guess that’s where leftism enters. throw out all the rules and then govern by edict and intense adherence to ideology.
There are 110 million Japanese living in an area 1/3 the size of BC. Geography not that different. Lots of room for expansion.
Walked down Robson Street not that long ago. Huge number of young Chinese there, in fact I was much the minority.
What was the excitement in Van. The LNG projects in Rupert and the apparent establishment of Van as a world financial center. International banking is moving into Vancouver.
Not sure what all this means but am sure that real estate is another bubble brought on by worthless currencies around the world.
Do you really think the Chinese folks that own these million dollar homes won’t figure out a work-around a non-resident tax. The ownership of that home will be quickly transferred to Young Son Ming in a heart beat.
Outlets are really competitive with one another, therefore utilize this in your favor.
You could possibly approach per day and goto the store to learn the coupon cann’t count
for what you assumed.