Analyst on Global – “Sheer insanity…You’re pricing local, hardworking people out of the market… It’s fueled by a money laundering bubble that politicians, in cahoots with the real estate industry, don’t want to end.”

Speaking on Global BC News Morning, Cohodes made it clear that he has no personal stake in the Vancouver real estate market.
Cohodes said he wants to speak out about the housing market in Vancouver because he feels strongly “people are being taken advantage of.”
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The Greater Vancouver real estate board says the benchmark price of a detached home in Vancouver hit $1.56 million in June, which is up 38.7 per cent in one year.
“I think it’s a money laundering-induced market,” said Cohodes. “Where the local politicians, or the BC Liberals, are kept or in cahoots with the real estate brokers, developers, lawyers, that angle. And they have sought Chinese money to keep the market propped up and it won’t last.”
“China has capital controls on and Vancouver has become the money laundering mecca of either the world or North America and something is going to change and change drastically.”
Cohodes said if the provincial government doesn’t step in to change the market, they’re going to be voted out.
“This is sheer insanity,” he said. “What’s going on is you’re pricing local, hardworking people out of the market and as I’ve said before, the housing market in Vancouver resembles the Vancouver stock exchange and penny stocks many years ago and that didn’t end well at all.”
Finance Minister Mike de Jong has said he does not believe Vancouver is in a real estate bubble, to which Cohodes said “he’s full of more crap than a Christmas turkey.”
“The market is ridiculously high and Christy Clark goes and takes real estate people over to China.”
“They have the records,” said Cohodes,” they just don’t want people to really know or they don’t want people to know the truth.”
In a statement to Global News, de Jong said:
We continue to work with both local governments and the federal government to address issues in Vancouver’s real estate sector, particularly to help bring new supply of homes to the market at affordable prices, and acting on concerns about regulation and enforcement. The premier announced last week that the province will end self-regulation of the real estate industry, and further steps aimed at helping make homes more affordable for the middle class will follow in the near future.
Cohodes said he has solutions to fix what the “issues are” but B.C. politicians don’t want to “take the medicine because their livelihoods depend on this.”
According to Cohodes, people who buy in this market will only become “debt servants for the rest of their lives.” He said when Vancouver’s market does tank or collapse, people are going to lose a generation of savings and equity.
“It’s fueled by a money laundering bubble that politicians don’t want to end.”
“At some point, bubbles burst.”
– from ‘Vancouver’s real estate is ‘fuelled by a money laundering bubble’: Market analyst’, Amy Judd, Global News, 5 July 2016