"So let me get this straight: If you ignore all of the expensive houses, then all of the rest of the houses are inexpensive? Brilliant!"

Extracts from ‘Busting the myths of Vancouver real estate’, by Frances Bula, G&M 25 May 2011 -
Mr. Bob Rennie [local Vancouver condo marketer], who commissions research on real-estate trends for an annual talk to the industry, said that once the skewed prices paid by a small group of mostly mainland Chinese buyers in Richmond and the west side of Vancouver are removed, housing prices are comparatively reasonable.
“When you’re looking at the numbers, you have to build a fence around the west side, where there are external forces operating that have nothing to do with local forces,” Mr. Rennie said.
Yes, he said, the sale prices on those houses have increased dramatically in the past year.
But that top one-fifth of the market operates in its own world and has almost nothing to do with what is happening with real estate in the rest of the region that is connected to the local-buyer market, he said.
Some expressed disbelief in Mr. Rennie’s assessment when it was delivered last week.
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Mr. Rennie noted the average condo in Metro Vancouver sold for a mere $313,000 last year after the most expensive condos in the top fifth of the market were taken out.
Similarly, single-family homes in the top fifth of the market average $1.72-million. But once those high-end sales are removed from the price-averaging mathematics, home buyers in the rest of the region paid an average of $632,000.
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From the comments section of the same article:
‘What did I say’ 25 May 2011 at 2:53am -
“So let me get this straight: If you ignore all of the expensive houses, then all of the rest of the houses are inexpensive? Brilliant!”

Well said.
Remarkable that the Globe runs an article like this without any critical analysis.
- vreaa