Global BC TV Shameless Helicopter RE Infomercial – ‘Waterfront’; ‘Good School’; ‘Chinese Buyers’ A ‘Powerful Force’; Metro Vancouver RE ‘Cheap’

The US has ‘Helicopter Ben’, here in Vancouver, we have ‘Helicopter Cam’, as in ‘Cam Good’, local condo peddler, who took local realtors who have mainland China marketing connections on a promotional helicopter flight over White Rock. Somehow a Global TV crew happened to come along for the ride.
This all came just one week after tincup, on an earlier thread at VREAA, had presciently commented: “I think the next anecdote will be that rich asians are rappelling down at night from black helicopters with duffle bags of cash, signing a few docs and then zooming away in jet packs.” [1 Feb 2011] Well, the helicopters weren’t black, but the gist and the intention of the story were precisely as tincup predicted. The Global piece has been very extensively discussed at other sites, but we feel we’d be remiss to not document it here. It reads like a shameless infomercial. Possibly it’ll mark some kind of ‘high point’ in the fever.  Here follows visual and quote excerpts from ‘Chinese Buyers Flock To White Rock’, Global BC TV network, 9 Feb 2011 [thanks to Greenhorn for the video archive] –

“Could this be a sign of the times?
While Chinese buyers have long been a powerful force in places like Richmond, it looks like they are now casting their investment nets even wider.”

“These aren’t your average group of helicopter riders. They are on a mission – To find property for their clients back in mainland China.”

“For five thousand bucks today ‘The Key’, a real estate marketing group, invited Vancouver’s top mainland China realtors to sell their clients on White Rock”.

“White Rock is a very good location.” – Realtor voice over

“I like the area. And I like the school. And also the environment here.” – Lui Wei

“Waterfront view, you know, actually, yes, very good school, a lot of Chinese, they’re looking for, good school for their kids.” – Chris Chan

“In Vancouver, freehold land, you own it forever. But in China, it’s not freehold, they are leasehold, … just like the condominium in UBC, you have to return the land to whoever owns it. This is a new concept to them, and they like real estate here.” – Chris Chan

“Finally for mainland Chinese, metro Vancouver is what Phoenix or Arizona is to Canadians right now… Cheap. Today’s trip netted the marketing group about a half dozen sales.” – Voice over

—-

ADDENDUM:
Further information from unicas at RE Talks 10 Feb 2011 – “From a translation of a Sing Tao article: The same company that invites those chinese realtors on helicopter tour to white rock is setting up display centre in downtown beijing. The centre will open in March to sell Avra, a 17 story condo project. The centre will employ 6 people. Over 50 of the 117 are already sold in Beijing, before the centre opens. Big draw to the Chinese, Semiahmoo which offers the IB course.  Of all the real estate sales in the city of White Rock for the past 6 months, 75% are by the mainland buyers.”