“I think we’ve been in bubble territory since at least 2004. I’ve been waiting and saving to see how it would turn out. In the intervening years I realized that I really can no longer stand Vancouver. I’m looking for my out.”

Posted on 23 November 2011 | 74 Comments

“I think we’ve been in bubble territory since at least 2004. I’ve been waiting (and saving) to see how it would turn out. In the intervening years I realized that I really can no longer stand Vancouver. I’m looking for my out.
When will the bubble burst?
Will it take a crash in commodity prices when China’s real estate market is in a tailspin? Or will loss of consumer confidence in China cause the fleeing of the HAM? Or will an expansion of credit suffer the consequent (inevitable) contraction as described by Von Mises and Schumpeter?
Perhaps the trigger will simply be that many people realize this isn’t such a nice place to live after all.
My feeling is that in Canada we’re always about 10 years behind the rest of the world.”
- Pococurante at VREAA 19 Nov 2011 9:19pm

This entry was posted in 07. Avoiding Vancouver, 09. Delaying Buying, 10. Demoralized Renters? and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

74 Responses to “I think we’ve been in bubble territory since at least 2004. I’ve been waiting and saving to see how it would turn out. In the intervening years I realized that I really can no longer stand Vancouver. I’m looking for my out.”

  1. space889 | 23 November 2011 at 9:00 am | Reply

    Or the price hits an affordability wall and can’t go up any higher while more and more supplies piled onto the market. Add in people with mobile skills in demand elsewhere who throw up their hands and say screw this, I’m willing to trade x, y, z for higher pay, cheaper housing and more savings and retire back here or to some tropical paradise, and the market will pretty much be toast. Off course, with the crappy construction quality, a massive leaking crisis would also help kill the market, even if it decreases supply due to massive amount of house being under tarps or left to rot.

    • bubbly | 23 November 2011 at 1:57 pm | Reply

      US real estate is more affordable than at any time in the past decade, yet it keeps falling.
      It’s not just the affordability or math or laws of physics.

      It’s more about psychology, faith and delusions. Until we reach peak delusions, vanRE will keep rising.

  2. chubster | 23 November 2011 at 9:44 am | Reply

    when i don’t have all the facts, or like any of them, i like whip out the koolaid master toolbox and speculate (yes, there is a good kind). 3 useful tools:
    (1) nose. hardwired to r-complex. no thinking. just the right amount of paranoia goes a long way (the c to your fe, techies)
    (2) occam’s razor. that with the fewest contingencies is the most likely.
    (3) cui bono. nowadays, follow the money.
    and like what pops out of the imagination oven this AM is the northern crony masters manage their serfs more ‘responsibly’. most everyone sticks to the club rules, except there is this cowboy contingent getting a bit fat on ham. the fed-boc network can bail out the can banks with a flick of the wrist – tiny market. so don’t look for that to precipitate a fall. euro banks taking down large chunks of the system. now, that might do it.

  3. diablo | 23 November 2011 at 9:45 am | Reply

    actually, we’ve been in bubble territory since 1988. Expensive Vancouver real estate is not a new paradigm.

  4. jesse | 23 November 2011 at 1:38 pm | Reply

    Vancouver: in bubble since 2004. Others tried and failed, we persevered.

  5. bubbly | 23 November 2011 at 2:05 pm | Reply

    Totally agree with Pococurante’s sentiments. Still haven’t given up completely on Vancouver (I even talked to a few local realtors recently, sort of…), but wife would like to move somewhere else…

  6. Makaya | 23 November 2011 at 3:36 pm | Reply

    In case you haven’t seen this article on Business Week:

    China’s Super-Rich Buy a Better Life Abroad

    “Self-made millionaire Li Weijie runs his own ski and golf resort outside Beijing and considers himself a patriot: A lifesize statue of Mao Zedong on a four-meter base towers over the entrance to his resort. What would Chairman Mao say if he knew Li was the proud holder of a Canadian residency card? “I wanted access to the education system and health care of a developed country,” says Li, 43, whose other businesses include one of Beijing’s largest private taxi companies, two car dealerships, and a real estate company. Li now has a $6 million house on Vancouver’s Westside, known for its rich Chinese. His wife tools around Vancouver in a black Maybach while his 20-year-old son drives a dark gray Maserati to classes at the University of British Columbia. His wife and son live in Canada full-time. ”

    (…)

    “So why are they looking at residency abroad? The top motive cited is to pursue better educational opportunities for their children, according to the Bank of China-Hurun and China Merchants-Bain surveys, as well as comments from émigrés.”

    (…)

    “He says that if things got ugly, the rich would be targets not just for being rich but for their close connections with the government. Most of China’s wealthy have an “original sin,” or some illegality relating to earning their “first bucket of gold,” says Yang.”

    (…)

    “A serious issue for both the Chinese applicants and their prospective host countries is the origin of their wealth. To ensure that those with criminal backgrounds aren’t let in, and to make sure they’re truly affluent, officials of the U.S., Canada, and other countries want thorough documentation of their assets. That can be difficult. “Wealthy Chinese almost all have a history of evading taxes,” says Gao Tong, who emigrated to Boston six years ago and is now setting up his own immigration services company called Harmonia Capital USA, with his brother, a wealthy Shanghai businessman. “They fear getting caught if they have to report their income globally.”

    Some middlemen collude with clients to forge documents, say Well Trend executives, since many émigrés don’t have papers to prove the origin of their finances, or they may have gotten rich through illicit means. “There are more than a few bad apples,” says Victor Lum, a vice-president at Well Trend and a former Canadian visa official. “USCIS takes allegations regarding EB-5 program malfeasance very seriously,” USCIS spokesman Christopher Bentley wrote in an e-mail.”

    We’re not only importing crap from China, we’re also importing criminals and dirty money. Shame on our government!

    http://tinyurl.com/87r8gl9

    • keeperofthederp | 23 November 2011 at 4:24 pm | Reply

      this is culturally insensitive

    • jesse | 23 November 2011 at 5:25 pm | Reply

      Must… suppress… anger! Even the most rational are swayed by these stories, not getting their “fair shake” at life in one of the country’s most desirable enclaves.

      It is entirely possible that the government might be angry too. I know they don’t show it and they’re inherently evil but, hey, they have priced-out kids too! They just can’t say anything public about it.

      • Julian Lee | 23 November 2011 at 8:09 pm |

        Why do you have to suppress your anger Jesse? I think that government has an opportunity and is taking it. Now we have a 800000 dollar requirement for immigration. If I was the government, I would raise it to 1.6 million at the very least and require somethign similar to the US where it must create x number of jobs, it would just be money to our coffers. I also feel that CRA should grow a pair and try to get as much money as they can from these guys for evading taxes, some of them pay less taxes than we do.

        But as for them coming here, don’t see what the big deal is. We need to take advantage of the situation and ensure that we get the maximum benefit from it. It is simple business. There are a ton of vancouver businesses benefiting from this, just look at Holt Renfrew having to double their store size to meet the demand for luxury goods.

    • Vesta | 23 November 2011 at 6:27 pm | Reply

      Thanks Makaya for lots of good information in your recent posts. Does Business Week article need to be forwarded to local politicians who seem not to want to confront certain realities here that the rest of the world is acknowledging exist? Life here is surreal.

      I’m trying to recover from my disappointment about unaddressed issues in the last civic election and the fact that too many people here apparently don’t vote (I think Frances Bula or another blogger said only about 40% of Vancouverites vote in municipal elections).

      In any case, thanks again to VREAA for querying candidates, and to some of the commenters on this blog who have given me some very rueful laughs since the election.

      Never thought I’d start saying things like this, but I do believe the situation here in terms of affordable housing is hopeless.

      • vreaa | 23 November 2011 at 7:43 pm |

        Vesta ->
        The herd has spoken. They clearly want as much more of the same as can be served up. For instance, Sandy Garossino, who came closest to openly speaking sense about the RE market, finished 22nd in the race for the 10 council slots, with about 40% of the votes necessary to gain a spot.
        Should we be surprised by this? No, it is completely expected.
        As you know, we strongly believe that only Mr Market will make sense of all this… and he will, that’s what he does.

    • Jeff Murdock | 23 November 2011 at 7:51 pm | Reply

      Great link. Your excerpt skipped an important part:

      “The U.S. investor visa, also known as the EB-5, requires a minimum investment of $500,000 by the applicant in a commercial project in the U.S. that employs at least 10 Americans within two years. If the Chinese applicants can’t generate those jobs, they and their family may have to leave the U.S.”

    • Julian Lee | 23 November 2011 at 8:13 pm | Reply

      Btw, there are a ton of annecdotes like this on the westide of Vancouver. Again, I won’t go into the whole diatribe about why they chose us over other places, but they have and they will continue to come. Let’s just hope that our government and tax revenue agencies sharpen up and take maximum advantage of these guys. God knows we could use the tax revenue and god knows that how many of these guys evade taxes here.

  7. Renters Revenge | 23 November 2011 at 3:37 pm | Reply

    I’m in a similar position. I am certain this market will crash and crash hard. I thought it would crash in 2004-2005 too, but was obviously dead wrong. Anyway, this place is going to be a horrible place to be when it does finally crash. I mean mad max horrible.
    Plotting my escape late spring next year. Maybe earlier if the SHTF in euro land. Nice part about renting, hire a mover and leave, simple as that.

  9. El Ninja | 23 November 2011 at 5:44 pm | Reply

    Agree with you Renters Revenge. An epic reckoning awaits Vancouver. We’re out of here end of Feb…

  10. El Ninja | 23 November 2011 at 6:03 pm | Reply

    It’s bizarre that Vancouverites can continue to delude themselves about RE, despite the disaster that is unfolding–in technicolor–south of the border. Or is it so bizarre, after all? We seem hardwired to make stupid choices. Consider smokers, who will sit and watch others die of lung cancer, while continuing to light up. It feels too good to stop. And besides, bad things only happen to others…

  11. Renters Revenge | 23 November 2011 at 7:19 pm | Reply

    Detroit Michigan was once the envy of the world, and the best place on this planet in which to live. Today it is a post-apocalyptic barren wasteland. Is Vancouver on a similar trajectory?
    Progressive/liberal politics? Check
    Big unions? Check
    Dependance on a single industry source of employment? Check (real estate)
    Hubris? Check
    Racism? No, not yet.

    • Jeff Murdock | 23 November 2011 at 9:00 pm | Reply

      Interesting video. Only slightly worse than Winnipeg and Sudbury.

    • chubster | 23 November 2011 at 9:16 pm | Reply

      fyi. you can get like >25% rental yield ‘speculating’ in the more bombed out (i.e. prices) parts. there are some maintenance and mgmt costs of course but it’s actually a good spec.

    • Yank | 23 November 2011 at 10:29 pm | Reply

      Detroit has been a sh*thole since the 1970s, just like a lot of former cities in the rust belt. Actually, it started with Ford, who moved his plant out of the city.

      Starting in the 1960s — a bunch of people moved into the suburbs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosse_Pointe,_Michigan. There are nice suburbs around Detroit. But the inner city deteriorated.

      That’s not to say that Vancouver doesn’t have problems. It does. But different problems from Detroit.

    • Nemesis | 24 November 2011 at 9:20 am | Reply

      FunnyOldWorld, RR – for ‘Nem’ is, at this very moment, poised to GoWetBack into that very same ‘post-apocalyptic barren wasteland’… Something to do with DeadTurkeys (and no, I’m not referencing the Wolverine State’s economy)…

      PS – it’s cold here and the only helicopters orbiting the real estate are on combat air patrol.

  12. vreaa | 23 November 2011 at 7:50 pm | Reply

    Makaya -> Thanks for Business Week link, will headline the anecdote.

  13. Vesta | 23 November 2011 at 8:18 pm | Reply

    Vreaa host, you write: “Vesta ->
    The herd has spoken. They clearly want as much more of the same as can be served up. For instance, Sandy Garossino, who came closest to openly speaking sense about the RE market, finished 22nd in the race for the 10 council slots, with about 40% of the votes necessary to gain a spot.
    Should we be surprised by this? No, it is completely expected.
    As you know, we strongly believe that only Mr Market will make sense of all this… and he will, that’s what he does.”

    Well, I’m not sure enough of the herd has voted. The more publicity that gets out there (and this blog helps) about the RE situation here, the better, and maybe people won’t be so blase the next time about getting to the ballot box. I hate apathy!

    Also, Sandy Garossino may have been defeated this time, but she’s just gearing up for another race, according to a statement she made on her website. She includes searing anecdotes about housing in this statement.

    I’m back to thinking it ain’t over till it’s over. I believe your wisdom about Mr. Market, but would Sandy have even run without people already taking a stance on what’s wrong here? Come on all you Joshuas-in-waiting, Jericho (not the beach) can still come down.

    • jesse | 23 November 2011 at 10:07 pm | Reply

      It’s far from clear what council can do, even if it had the will, and whether the majority of the electorate would want it. Agree with vreaa, the market will flush out much of the issue but the concept of protecting real estate for “locals” leaves me skeptical. It’s difficult to draw a line, Canada has a more open concept of citizenship and residency than many parts of the world.

      The right angle is to concentrate on high prices being a net economic impediment for the region — that in my view is the root of the problem — but that will boil dilemmas to the surface and my bet is many who are otherwise “pro-business” and “pro-growth” may find their personal interests at odds with what needs to be done, which is to bring land prices back down and keep them there.

      One must consider that tragedy is a plausible and probable outcome. Even in the US I’ve heard comments that prices are depressed. Nu-uh. Even after punishing drops since 2006, they’re still above fundamental value.

  14. calguy | 23 November 2011 at 8:57 pm | Reply

    “God knows we could use the tax revenue and god knows that how many of these guys evade taxes here.” The article says they come to take advantage of our health care and education. You are contradicting yourself – yes we could use the revenue but guess what?, the father is back in China exploiting workers while the mother is here not working and the kids are in school. The only tax contribution would be through property taxes, no income tax. It is no wonder the health care and education systems are stretched out. Again – how are they contributing to the community? By going in and out of the back of the house in their triple garage – going to school, eating at Asian restaurants and using our facilities. I know there are also examples of people who truly embrace the city and attempt to become involved but from what I witness on the westside – it is usually the first example.

    BTW – I spoke to a Chinese family today in Calgary from Richmond. They have been here 3 months. They like it!! They say the traffic is much better and the people are way nicer. They made good coin on their place in Richmond and have bought a very nice place here for almost half th eprice.

    • jesse | 23 November 2011 at 10:11 pm | Reply

      I think this is a product of excessive wealth, and it is not exclusive to a particular ethnic group. Sitings of rich douchebags have been commonplace for decades. A lot of Vancouverites own condos in Whistler. When was the last time they attended a musical at Whistler’s community theatre?

    • Doug | 23 November 2011 at 10:22 pm | Reply

      “The only tax contribution would be through property taxes, no income tax”

      Again, not correct. Mother and kids here means domiciled in Canada and all worldwide income is taxable.

    • Royce McCutcheon | 23 November 2011 at 10:23 pm | Reply

      @calguy: Off topic, but can you recommend neighborhoods and also maybe rental websites for Calgary? Would really appreciate this.

      • CanuckDownUnder | 24 November 2011 at 12:33 am |

        You could try rentfaster.ca

        We used to live in Rosedale, close enough to walk to work downtown and the C-train station in Sunnyside wasn’t too far away. We liked the fact that the only time we ever really used the car was to head to Banff or Waterton. Unless you love suburbia you need to stick to inner city suburbs, places like Sunnyside, Mission, Inglewood. Unlike Vancouver Calgary isn’t running out of land so there is lots of lots of sprawl. :)

    • Julian Lee | 24 November 2011 at 12:14 am | Reply

      Well, let’s see, for one thing, everything they buy here contributes to local economy. And let’s face it, they are not cheap. They spend A TON of money here. Note how Vancouver’s luxury items business has taken off. Our dealerships are loving it too with all these high end cars being bought here. Our restaurant industry, especially the asian ones are booming with business. Vancouver has traditionally been a service town, now we are more of one than before.

      Look, free education and healthcare are all over the place in Canada, why are they so concentrated in Vancouver, because they can easily integrate into the community. Besides, they didn’t just come here for the free healthcare, I know a lot of them who can’t stand the wait times here and usually fly back to China and get their issues taken care of at top hospitals in beijing where they don’t have to wait. This guy in the article is probably worth tens of millions of dollars, do you really think he wants to wait 6 months so that he can save 40K on surgery? As for education, it is far superior to China’s, but so are schools in the US. Like I said before, Vancouver is the easiest place in North America and one of the easiest places in the world for them to integrate.

      As for taxes, they are supposed to report their foreign income because the family is here. But again, CRA is useless and they never catch these guys evading our tax system. So our own taxmen needs to become wiser.

      Calgary is way better than Richmond in terms of community. I totally agree with that. But if you just landed here, you need a place that speaks your native language. Richmond does. After a few years, these people eventually scatter. Most of them go to places like West Van, Burnaby, etc. But there are some that go to other places. I personally can’t stand Richmond, and I am Asian.

      • jesse | 24 November 2011 at 12:13 pm |

        “So our own taxmen needs to become wiser.”

        FWIW the IRS is starting to lay down the hammer on US citizens who reside abroad. If you think CRA is not getting its marching orders to fill up the trough you’re dreaming :)

    • jesse | 23 November 2011 at 10:57 pm | Reply

      But wait. Wasn’t it Australia that instituted a strict property ownership for foreigners law? Now we hear that mainland Chinese are still heavily active in the Sydney marketplace?

      Meesa so confused!

      • CanuckDownUnder | 24 November 2011 at 12:11 am |

        LOL, myth propagated by racist HAMsters. You too can come buy property here as long as it’s new housing, you don’t have to be mainlander!

        I love how all these articles claim that rents are lifting, surging or some variant. They’ve been going up directly in line with wage growth and no more, funny that.

  16. chubster | 23 November 2011 at 9:34 pm | Reply

    definitely local absorbed enough color now. thx vreaa for letting spew nonsense on your blog. this place is totally messed up worse than i thought. cui bono. for everyone ready to scapegoat the outsiders-newcomers when this thing finally blow, think to yourselves, in the end, who is actually making most of the money and will have everyone on the hook? it’s not the newbies. it’s the guys collecting your mortgage interest. ciao-out.

    ps. @derp. i think you need to extend the bag fries lexicon. a couple suggestions:
    - home fries – this is the real target market – it’s everyone choking on mortgage interest and will end up bankrupting themselves
    - tater tots – up and coming home fries

    also, rusty/diablo/f1/fred work in the bag fries division. says a lot. cheers good bud.

    • jesse | 23 November 2011 at 10:18 pm | Reply

      Remember this, chubster: 70% polled on CBC thought foreign ownership restrictions were a good idea. The one civic candidate who promised to directly look into it mustered about 15% of cast votes.

      Vancouver, apparently, is made of more complex stuff than ire for “rich foreigners” whomever they are. Perhaps it’s not much of a problem for those who just want to live a simple life.

      • chubster | 23 November 2011 at 11:05 pm |

        jesse. if i understand, you’re saying is it is easier to blame another than to admit to having been duped. i agree with that. and a simple life is a better one, i’ve found anwyay. cheers.

      • jesse | 24 November 2011 at 12:05 am |

        chubster, yes, and the media do not speak for most of us, nor necessarily do comments here.

      • Julian Lee | 24 November 2011 at 12:24 am |

        But how would you restrict foreign ownership? They all are landed immigrants. Is that foreign? Or they could put the house under their wife’s name, she is here, so is she considered foreign as well?

        I think if you want to prevent underutilization of land, then just tax the empty dwellings like someone suggested here.

      • jesse | 24 November 2011 at 12:19 pm |

        @Julian “But how would you restrict foreign ownership? They all are landed immigrants. Is that foreign?”

        No, which is the big problem. It’s also a bit messy when you consider that there are a few “locals” who reside elsewhere for large periods of time, say on sabbaticals or what have you. Even relatives can claim residency, just a $10 bed on craigslist and get the mail once a month.

        Julian you get the problem I think. The viable “solutions” for land speculation are either wet noodles or exorbitantly complex. It also completely misses the root cause, that a solution to “foreign ownership” is in part to ensure everyone cannot gamble on land speculation. But that’ll never happen, it would be unAmericanCanadian to quench market forces!

  17. Vesta | 23 November 2011 at 10:41 pm | Reply

    Julian, you write: “But as for them coming here, don’t see what the big deal is. We need to take advantage of the situation and ensure that we get the maximum benefit from it. It is simple business. There are a ton of vancouver businesses benefiting from this, just look at Holt Renfrew having to double their store size to meet the demand for luxury goods.”
    I’m grateful for your perspective on this blog, and agree that seeking a “maximum benefit” from “the situation” is a good idea. But what is “the big deal?” Well, how about these optics: son of mogul described in Business Week article, who lives in $6 million mansion on West Side, drives Maserati to UBC. UBC professors can’t find affordable housing anywhere near where they work. I may be crazy, but I suspect that $6 million mansion and grounds it sits on might be able to accommodate more than two people. But hey, if Holt Renfrew is expanding, all must be right with BC, to paraphrase Robert Browning.

    Sorry, I sort of can’t take it anymore when people justify some of what’s going on here.

    • Julian Lee | 24 November 2011 at 12:21 am | Reply

      Yes, I get your frustration. I am more of a realist and practical person. I can’t see why we would want to keep rich people out of BC, they have a right to immigrate here just like everyone else. We are all immigrants, the only real people of this land are the natives, so I think everyone has a right to this place. I feel they have a positive effect on our economy. So I can only think of ways that people like you and I can benefit more from it such as maybe grabbing more taxes from them. For one thing, some of the taxation ideas here on the blog is excellent. And I can’t stand how useless our CRA is in going after these guys for foreign income.

      I am a business person / capitalist by nature and work well with money and numbers, so when I see this type of immigration, I am much more concerned about using it to our advantage. Such as maybe using some of their wealth to increase our government coffers. You’d be surprise to know that they actually don’t mind it that much. It is a fair trade off, they get to move their money to a safer place and have a way to escape the regime when needed, we get to pay off our national debt with some of their money.

      • space889 | 24 November 2011 at 9:11 am |

        I believe this is also in a way tradng short term benefits -> increase economic activities, higher property taxes, etc for long term pain -> decrease attractiveness for highly skilled people who can actually contribute to long term regional growth and wealth, saps entrepeurial spirits because everyone is so strapped for cash due to high RE and rent prices, less income tax bases to pay for most of government services, etc, etc.

        If you want Vancouver to be a retirement resort town then the current trend is good. If you want Vancouver to be more than that, to fulfill its potential which I always is a lot then this is just the opposite of what you need.

        Put it this way, I have always wanted to stay in Vancouver even during the IT bubble years. I was willing to trade away a potential jackpot in US to stay in Vancouver. Now, even without a prospect of a IT jackpot, I want to leave Vancouver. Frankly if I ever get rich enough or start a big enough business, I’m 99% certain I’m out of Vancouver.

        Lastly, if I have to spend $2M+ for a house, i would rather buy in that middle of nowwhere, expensive cost of living, hot, humid, and rainy place called Hawaii than Vancouver.

      • Canis | 26 November 2011 at 12:18 am |

        Julian,
        In one paragraph you say CRA needs to “go after these guys,” and in the next you say “they actually don’t mind it that much” — where I infer that “it” is paying taxes to support the benefits such as health care they enjoy in Canada. If “they” were willing to “increase our government coffers” by reporting their worldwide income and assets, as all those with resident status are expected to do, then CRA wouldn’t need to “go after” them — right?
        And enough with the “there’s really not much you can do.” I think people have just started to talk, in public, about what might be done about the various causes of the affordable housing crisis in Vancouver.

  18. Vesta | 24 November 2011 at 8:22 am | Reply

    Julian, yes, I think your ideas about CRA picking up the pace and Canada benefiting from the wealth via taxation are very good.

    • chubster | 24 November 2011 at 11:36 am | Reply

      the foreign capital isn’t your problem folks. but feeding leviathan certainly is. this dude seems to speak a pretty pure shill.

  19. Vesta | 24 November 2011 at 2:21 pm | Reply

    People who work at Canadian colleges and universities and go on sabbatical = people who don’t actually live here and own a lot of the land and housing? (By the way, many people if they do go away on sabbatical at least rent out their places or let people housesit !) I don’t think that’s a persuasive comparison.

    I honestly don’t get why people here keep repeating “You can’t do anything much about foreign ownership.” (Defeatist KoolAid?) It just doesn’t make sense. It’s not like Sydney and New York are extremely exclusive/repressive about immigration, and they’ve managed.

    • chubster | 24 November 2011 at 5:30 pm | Reply

      that foreigners are bringing capital into the community is true. while it is certainly at least a catalyst, the case for this being the major factor driving up prices is not proven. dangerous to proceed with incomplete or incorrect diagnosis – primum non nocere. can one be truly sure of destructive unintended consequences? more fundamentally it is also a property rights issue. once one proceeds in this direction, what is there to stop further intrusions upon any other private property at the whim of public opinion?

      ultimately, i cannot see how injecting capital into a community can be a viewed as detrimental in itself. what the community ultimately realizes with the ‘windfall’, however, may be another story altogether.

  20. Vesta | 24 November 2011 at 8:30 pm | Reply

    it’s detrimental when people who have to live and work here cannot find housing because the housing’s been bought by people who DON’T have to live and work here.

    am i crazy? is this not true?

    otherwise i see your points — in the abstract. what can i say, i’m not a math jock.

    • diablo | 24 November 2011 at 8:57 pm | Reply

      same as Canadian citizen buying a home in Costa Rica or Spain. Money made here and spent elsewhere. Vancouverites are near the top of the food chain now

      • Airedales | 24 November 2011 at 10:27 pm |

        yeah diablow exactly the same – all those Canadians outbidding the local Costa Ricans on those highrise condos near the beach in exclusive expat resort communities. You’re so stupid!

    • Julian Lee | 24 November 2011 at 10:13 pm | Reply

      Vesta, you are not crazy, I can see your point.

      But, two points. One, as Jesse correctly points out, even someone who do not share the crash theory like myself cannot emphatically tell you that it is the investor immigrants who are causing the market to go like this. I personally think that it is an important factor, but there must be some local speculation in our market, there always are in situations like these. Without good and careful analysis it is dangerous to draw conclusions.

      Two, say if it is the investor immigrants who are causing this whole increase in the market. There really isn’t much that you can do. It is very hard to put foreign ownership restrictions on these guys as they are residents of Canada, they are not foreigners. You have seen statistics that show that most of the home owners in Vancouver have their property tax statements mailed here because they actually live here. Restricting foreign ownership will do no good to us. Now, are you going to start restricting inflow of capital into Vancouver? Any such restrictions would have to be Canada wide, so it can’t be city by city. Not to mention that every other city in Canada would be up in arms over such restrictions cause they may not have our problem.

      If immigration of very rich people is truly the cause of Vancouver’s rising housing prices, then there aren’t much that you can do. It’s a free world, anyone is welcome to go anywhere they want, there is a price to be paid for entrance however. If refugees can come and go, why not rich people, selfishly, I’d much rather take the money than the burden? The only thing that you can do is make the more desirable areas denser. For example, city hall is trying to cram 16000 new residents into the Cambie corridor. I think that is a terrific idea. The only issue with this is that it will make the existing SFH’s even more rare and expensive due to lower supply. But the condo prices will likely come down so people can still enjoy the city and the best parts of it, they just have to live in a condo or a townhouse. If you want a bigger place, just have to move a bit further away.

      • Julian Lee | 24 November 2011 at 10:16 pm |

        Btw, not to mention that Christy Clark has no plans to restrict immigration into BC. That is one of her key strategies to improve our economy, she wants stronger ties to China and specifically chinese money. On the surface, tying yourself to one of the fastest growing economies in the world is a great idea, but you are already seeing some of the issues associated with it. And if the investor immigrant theory is true, it will only get worse as China invariably gets stronger.

  21. Vesta | 24 November 2011 at 9:22 pm | Reply

    no it’s not the same as buying a home in costa rica! i don’t believe for a minute you know anything about buying houses in spain either. and what a disgusting metaphor, “the top of the food chain.” are you a shark? no wait, you’re a bear.

  22. Vesta | 25 November 2011 at 11:51 am | Reply

    Thanks Julian for thoughtful explanation.

  23. Vesta | 25 November 2011 at 12:10 pm | Reply

    PS though — but Julian, why do you say that restricting foreign ownership would have to be done countrywide? Someone else posted on here recently that PEI restricts foreign ownership by requiring anyone who wants to buy more than 5 acres get special permission.

    • Julian Lee | 26 November 2011 at 8:57 am | Reply

      I think my writing sucked on that last post hence it wasn’t very clear. What I meant was, you could restrict foreign ownership on a city by city basis. But as these guys aren’t foreigners by definition cause they are canadian residents, you would need a system that requires a special permit for every land transaction. That would bring great impedance to local buyers as well and there would be a lot of people up in arms over this change.

      However, you could also try to restrict the inflow of capital. So money that comes into Canada from abroad can be restricted. But this would have to be a country wide or province wide thing. That is what I meant.

  24. calguy | 25 November 2011 at 7:00 pm | Reply

    Sorry for the delay “Royce” – as far as rental sites I honestly am not too sure. For neighborhoods try the NW or SW – NW Brentwood is nice leafy mature community with rec centre, library, close to LRT(skytrain), close to the university. Homes are similar style to the original oakridge homes but go for about 450-600K. Also in the NW try Sunnyside or Kensington for a more “Kits” type feel. In the SW try Wildwood, Bankview, Glendale. Jut also depends what you are looking for.

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