Sauder Economist - "It's not sustainable."

Excerpted from an article [nsnews.com 25 May 2011] discussing a recent surge in sales and prices of properties on Vancouver’s North-shore:
A report on the Canadian real estate market released last week by RE/MAX pointed to a surge in the sales of luxury homes across the country, with overseas investment being a driving factor in the West. A May 19 report by Landcor Data Corporation, a company that specializes in B.C. real estate statistics, similarly pointed to China as the major force behind the Lower Mainland’s market.
But Tsur Somerville, a professor with UBC’s Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, cautioned against drawing such conclusions.
“Who knows?” he said. “It becomes very problematic sorting things out.”
Somerville did concede, however, that it was a plausible explanation.
“There is grounds for it in the sense that mainland China is the largest source of immigrants (to the Lower Mainland) right now,” he said. “Immigrants coming from China are disproportionately in the entrepreneur and investor categories; they’re coming in with wealth.”
Why it might suddenly be happening now, however, was hard to say, he noted. Somerville scoffed at the notion, floated by Landcor in an interview with the North Shore News last month, that it could be attributed to the Olympics, or to Canada’s recent designation as an approved destination by the Chinese government. “I would be very shocked,” said Somerville. “The approval by China affects tourism here; that’s not the same thing.”
One thing is for certain about the flurry of purchases, however, he said: “It’s not sustainable.”
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To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that Tsur Sommerville has been quoted as saying that anything about the Vancouver RE market is “not sustainable”. – vreaa